EUROPE’S supine, corrupted and democratically exhausted bourgeoisie is finally starting to break from Donald Trump, at least superficially.

Having effectively endorsed the aggression against Venezuela, and earlier capitulated entirely to the White House demagogue on trade, it is now drawing a line of sorts around Greenland, which the US President approaches like – well, like a New York real estate mobster coveting a prime site.

Rather late, they have rediscovered sovereignty and international law, or at least its application to themselves if not the global South.

At present they are contemplating a trade war, with perhaps worse not so distant.

Yet they accept without question the president’s underlying premise – that Greenland is threatened by Chinese and Russian intrusion and must be protected against such a development, just not by unsolicited annexation.

The Arctic is apparently the latest theatre in the global confrontation.

Thus the Nato powers must hasten there, assigning to themselves an Arctic role along with all their other responsibilities, which in the last 30 years have included occupying Afghanistan, prolonging the Ukraine war, smashing up Yugoslavia and overthrowing the Libyan government.

Now troops will be perched in snowy wastelands scouring the seas and skies for Chinese or Russian military activity.

They will likely shiver in vain. There is no evidence whatsoever, outside Trump’s demented imaginings, of the Chinese navy circling Greenland looking to establish a presence.

As for Russia, it can hardly quit the Arctic without self-dismemberment.  It possesses half the Arctic coastline available, and one-fifth of its territory is within the Arctic circle.  

Doubtless Nato believes this is some geographical aberration, and that in any case Russia has no right to interfere in its own internal affairs.

But again, Putin does not obviously need a war to annex Greenland right now. His army cannot reach Kharkiv after four years of trying, never mind parking nukes in Nuuk.

So there is no “struggle for control” of the Arctic, except in Nato propaganda, and the dollar-starred eyes of cosmetics tycoon Ronald Lauder who apparently suggested the whole Greenland grab to Trump a few years back – yes, of course he has business interests there.

Thus even when Starmer, Macron, von der Leyen and the rest appear to talk of peace, it remains within the framework of preparing for war against their rivals. They sign up to the militarisation and the war psychosis, just under a different signboard.  

They want to avoid conflict in Greenland only to sustain it in Ukraine.

The defence of sovereignty and legality is not, and will never be, safe in their hands.  

To be against Trumpian aggression cannot mean lining up with the European imperialists.

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Has Keir Starmer given up? Britain’s most unpopular ever prime minister sometimes appears to have lost all heart.

It would be unsurprising. His achievements are negligible, his prospects cloudy at best, his reputation self-shredded. He skulks in Downing Street awaiting the knock on the door to tell him time is up.

Starmer’s performance at Prime Minister’s Questions last week was particularly dire.  

Skewered over his growing list of U-turns, all of them concerning disastrous initial policy decisions, he could only default on weak, over-scripted and poorly delivered jokes about the Kama Sutra and Ikea furniture (that was two separate jokes, lest there be any mind-boggling confusion).

More substantively, events offered the government two opportunities to do something.  

The first was the criminal negligence of South East Water, which has once again left thousands without running water.

Starmer could have taken it into public ownership as an emergency measure, or at least have demanded the departure of SEW’s over-paid, under-performing and highly complacent chief executive David Hinton.

Instead he huffed and puffed but merely waved the issue off to Ofwat, the bungling and negligent regulator the government is already committed to abolishing.

Second, a global scandal erupted over the “nudification” device deployed by X and its artificial intelligence sister Grok to produce non-consensual semi-pornographic images of women and children.

Again, much performative indignation, but it was really up to Ofcom — the regulator that has shown limitless capacity to avoid doing anything ever — to act apparently.  

Ministers? Heaven forfend.

X’s trillionaire owner Elon Musk, who doubtless Starmer is very afraid of, ultimately backed down, but only after other countries with more robust governments had banned the platform altogether.

Two chances to do some actual governing. Action against South East Water or X would be overwhelmingly popular. Two chances missed. Inertia in the face of events is the antechamber to the political end zone.

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Would a Reform government be fascist, or semi-fascist? The question acquires new urgency after the adhesion of the alarming Robert Jenrick to the Farage cause.

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy denies having said that Farage equals fascism, but did opine, ambivalently: “if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then you know what it is.”

Zia Yusuf, prominent within the court of Farage, offered an interesting riposte to Nandy. “What has Keir Starmer done,” he asked, before supplying the answer: repeatedly cancel local elections on grounds of economy and efficiency; proposed a radical reduction in the Magna Carta right to a jury trial and had his Attorney-General make “unprecedented and extraordinary political attacks against the Prime Minister’s key political rivals.”

He could have added, but obviously didn’t, that the government has also banned a direct action political group as “terrorist” and arrested thousands for peacefully protesting against this outrage; introduced draconian restrictions on the right to protest and allowed remand prisoners to fester in jail for years awaiting trial.

Plenty for Farage, Jenrick – and Yusuf – to build on there.

Does this make the present government fascist? We know it is not. Doubtless Nandy regards it as a very fine swan indeed, but on closer examination it seems to be looking, walking and quacking like at least a trainee duck. Dusk falls by degrees.

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It was perhaps inevitable that Tony Blair would pull the stake out of his heart, spit the garlic from his mouth and emerge from his midnight crossroads grave to serve as a sort of imperial overlord for Gaza, a fresh humiliation for the heroic Palestinian people.

If 21st-century neocolonialism has a face, it is his. Once given a sheen of respectability by virtue of the office he held, today he is just a routine grifter, keeping company on the Gaza “peace board” with sundry members of Trump’s family, real estate speculators and private equity wide boys; worthy heirs to the chancers who set sail in 18th-century East India Company ships in search of plunder.

That his career is entirely identified with war is apparently no bar to joining a Trump “peace” initiative. There are even rumours that the new board’s remit may extend beyond Palestine to other conflicts in which the president sees opportunity for profit, so perhaps Blair will eventually become a sort of secretary-general for a Trump international.

And to whom is the cadaverous Blair accountable? It seems only to Trump, or perhaps his own eponymous “Institute” — its motto “technocrats in the service of plutocrats” aligns exactly with the president’s priorities.

Maybe Blair will be in the running for the next Fifa peace prize if he learns from Trump’s approach – shooting protesters in Iran is forbidden, shooting them in Minnesota is essential. I would be sure he is up to it.

At this point, perhaps we should remember only this – Tony Blair is, ultimately, a product of the Labour Party and was for 13 years its leader. The party has never really come to terms with that bitter fact. It is time it did.

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Gordon Brown, 2007: “This is an era that history will record as the beginning of a new golden age for the City of London.”

2008: The City of London drives the British economy off a cliff in one of the biggest economic crashes in history, with consequences for living standards, social inequality and public services that are still with us today.

Rachel Reeves, 2026: “As the FTSE 100 reaches record highs and global firms once again choose London, we are seeing the first signs of a new golden age for the City.”

We have been warned.