A Peaceful Transfer of Power

And just like that, Germany's most pro-war government since, well, we all know what, has collapsed. The only solution that has ever been possible in Ukraine is coming down the line. I am not pleased that Donald Trump has won. But I am ecstatic that Kamala Harris has lost. If she believed what she had been saying about him, then she would not wish to "engage in a peaceful transfer of power". On the contrary, he would be a domestic enemy of the Constitution within the terms of her oath of office as Vice President. Yet there is no such suggestion.

Nor is there any mention this time of foreign enemies, not even by the likes of Dick Cheney and his daughter, the presumptive Democratic nominee in 2028. Cheney left office with an approval rating of 13 per cent, but it has taken 16 years to defeat him at the ballot box. The shock has already been felt in Berlin, and it will not stop there. There has been some crowing that NATO and EU interference had beaten Russian interference in Moldova, but that already looks like a last gasp.

If the Americans are no longer going to be backing the no longer elected Volodymyr Zelensky, a change of direction that has already effected regime change in Europe's most populous country and largest economy, then why should Britain continue to send him three billion pounds per year "for as long as it takes"? For as long as what takes? We need that money for our bus-catching workers, for our benefit-capped children, for our freezing pensioners, and for our farmers.

The Conservatives have long not known what to do about farmers. On the economic principles that they have convinced themselves were fundamental to their party, Britain would have no agriculture. Yet those who engage in it are the core of that party's core. The Labour Party did not return to office until it had become, like the Liberal Democrats but unlike the Conservative Party, constitutionally committed to the "free" market that if it were truly any such thing, would not require the constitutional commitment of political parties.

Therefore, for 40 years, all three main parties in government have assumed that the role of farmers was glorified gardening rather than the food production that was fundamental to economic prosperity and to national security. With no tribal attachment to them, nor they to it, Labour can no longer be bothered even with that. That attitude is wrong, but it is explicable. Kemi Badenoch has to try and explain how her contrary view was compatible with everything else for which she stood. Meanwhile, those of us who really can defend that interest, since our first principles compelled us to do so, are ready, willing and able.