Over The Moon?

This blog is 20 years old today. I shall be raising a small glass. Including to the crew of Artemis II, twice overshadowed when theirs should have been the biggest story in the world.

Still, they cannot complain at the double defeat of the Epstein Class. I am still here, and so is Iran. Donald Trump replaced Nicolás Maduro with an even more hardline Chavista who nevertheless gave him control of where Venezuela's oil went, and Trump has replaced Ali Khamenei with an even more hardline Khomeinist who will nevertheless share with him control of the Strait of Hormuz, including the revenue from the tolls. Mission Accomplished.

If you thought that the war with Iran was about anything else, then you were a fool to rank with María Corina Machado. And if Israel's continued war in Lebanon threatened Trump's Hormuz revenue, then Benjamin Netanyahu would go the way of Qasem Soleimani. America First is less and less convinced that there should always be that one exception, Marco Rubio and JD Vance are already squaring up for 2028, and nothing comes between Trump and his money.

Vance is interfering in the election in Hungary, but that is just what the Americans do. Barack Obama interfered in the Brexit referendum, to paroxysms of glee from the people who now castigated Vance. The Democrats and their international wannabes would have supported the war with Iran, branding all criticism treasonable and antisemitic, if it had been waged by any Democratic President, or by any previous Republican apart from Trump. The only British member of Trump's Board of Peace is Tony Blair, who retains his Labour Party membership card while Keir Starmer retains his Premiership. The latter would have been impossible if Britain had been anything other than a full participant in this war from start to finish; the Labour Party's grandees are veteran Blairities, and the enormous 2024 intake was handpicked by Peter Mandelson, 16 years after Jeffrey Epstein's conviction.

Yet the only permitted "opposition" has been the pretended complaint that Britain was not at war, or not sufficiently so. That is how Epstein Class politics works. In the present House of Commons, there is no party for which Epstein could not have voted, and for which Mandelson could not vote, and for which Peter Thiel could not vote, and for which Noam Chomsky could not vote. This is Epstein Island.