“Smashing”.

It was a little while ago that Sir Kier Starmer stood up and promised to “smash the gangs”. It was a moment of political stupidity right up there with Theresa May walking on stage to Dancing Queen whilst appearing to be on some huge pharmaceutical rush, or Neil Kinnock falling into the sea with his wife, or Ed Milliband showcasing his inability to do something as simple as eat a bacon sandwich properly. Every politician makes a gaffe once in a while and a few almost seem to relish dropping themselves in it as often as possible, but it takes something special to get captured in a moment that will never, ever stop coming back to haunt you: Gordon Brown with “that bigoted woman”, George Galloway appearing in some warped, awful, feline spandex erotica, and Tony Blair invading Iraq. Some seem trivial and some are earth shattering, but what they all have in common, what binds them all together, is their collective display of what happens when humans have more power than they can handle or deserve and then, well, fucking it up on the turn of a die. And these are the people who control us. No, worse, these are the people we vote for. Who’s the stupid one now?

But of all the political gaffes and blunders of late, I like Sir Kier’s the most. Technically it’s not even a gaffe, yet why does it smell so pungently like one? It’s his sincerity, his effort to look tough, his attempt to sound tough and his genuine belief that he IS the man for the job, voted in on a mandate for change, glowing with the certainty that the country adores him when in truth he only sleeps in Downing Street because he was, at a stretch, the least bad of a really, really bad bunch. Hearing him promise to “smash the gangs” just never had a ring of authenticity to it. You almost want to see Sir Kier confronted by “the gangs” in some dark alleyway, at which point he will turn out to be John Wick and set about detaching as many limbs and draining as much blood as possible – a dark, terrifying force of justice and retribution – but you just know it won’t work out that way and that the very best he could hope for is to come out of it without being in a wheelchair for the rest of his life and having to eat his cucumber sandwiches through a straw. Sometimes politicians shouldn’t make promises they can’t keep. No, scrap that, politicians should never make promises they can’t keep, but then if that was true politicians would never have anything to say about anything. Forever.

“The Gangs” which Sir Rambo Starmer refers to are, as you very well know, the people- trafficking sort of gangs. He’s not as interested in the drug gangs or the armed robbery gangs or the sexual grooming gangs or the gangs of New York or even Kool And The Gang, because being the shrew political operator that he is he knows that “smashing” those sorts of gangs doesn’t win votes in quite that same way that people- trafficking gangs do. What he wants to do is prove to every Daily Mail reader that he’s on the case, ready to puncture every dinghy and fast-track every deportation and thereby stop the relentless deluge of pesky foreigners who are either seeking refuge from starvation and tyranny or simply planning to set up their own gangs, quite possibly in the kinds of business that he is less fussed about; namely drugs and forced prostitution. That may seem a little simplistic, but then anyone who is alarmed by the rate of illegal migration into the UK will often have a very simplistic view of it, which is handy. When it comes to migration you have to prioritise, just like Sir Kier. I mean, how can you possibly find the time to stand outside the house of a drug dealer or sex groomer, with a St George’s flag draped over your shoulders and filming your mother-in-law and your eighth grandchild throwing bricks through someone’s window before setting fire to a car when you’re already very busy standing outside a clapped out hotel in Epping with a St George’s flag draped over your shoulders and filming your mother-in-law and your eighth grandchild throwing bricks through someone’s window before setting fire to a car? Today’s daft, unemployed racists simply don’t have the time to do two very similar things at once so they have decided to club together to ensure our streets aren’t flooded with funny looking strangers trying to take their non-existent jobs.

I wouldn’t know how to start to “smash the gangs” and I’m 100% certain that Sir Kier Starmer hasn’t got a clue either. I’m sure he wanted to see a change in numbers but I doubt this was the change he had hoped for, insomuch as they’ve gone through the roof. But that’s ok, because we’ve got other people with even better ideas. In the left corner we have the liberals who will mention that all human existence has relied on migration and that everyone deserves a chance for change, redemption or self-improvement, provided of course that it doesn’t directly involve them or their back yard. And in the right (political position, not correctness) corner we have Nigel Farage, who is already eyeing up the next election in 2029. Nigel says that his plan is to turn around the contents of every small boat crossing the English Channel in quick fashion and send back each individual from wherever the hell they came from, possibly paying someone French to grease the gears and make it all look like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. But that won’t work any better than Sir Kier threatening to “smash” stuff, like some magnolia shade of Hulk in a pair of corduroy slacks and a Cotton Traders polo shirt, because the gangs will always find a way and no matter how sharp we think we are they will work out how to be even sharper. So there won’t be any “smashing” happening any time soon, and not just because Sir Keir couldn’t “smash” it in an egg and spoon race with a imbecile with a balance issue.

To be honest I’m not sure where I stand with all our immigration problems. Where I live the social make up changes all the time and that causes me very few problems; you can come from anywhere on the planet and live on the outskirts of London or in a little village many miles away, but ultimately what matters is whether you’re an arsehole or not. This country is struggling with migration because it has left it too late to find a fair and workable solution. And this country may be worryingly overpopulated in places but it also has the sort of infrastructure that wouldn’t look out of place in the slums of Lagos, which is why it all seems so very overwhelming. We talk about investment and progress and keeping up with the neighbours but all of that is bollocks, and we know it is bollocks because it has been explained to us by a politician. Whatever plan Sir Kier comes up with to “smash the gangs”, like Batman, won’t work on any meaningful level and then there is a startling high chance that we’ll have Nigel as our next Prime Minister and he’ll be talking his own brand of politics; a brand which will smell and taste of bollocks all the same, the sort that persuaded so many idiots to vote for Brexit. And on and on we’ll go until the UK finally sinks to the depths of delusion, not from the pressure of migration, without which we’d be pretty stuffed, but from the sheer weight of our own stupidity. Anyway, I’ll wrap it up there as I’m off to paint myself red and white and lurch around with my tits out outside a run down hotel in Tamworth before settling down to watch myself on the news. Anything to help with all the “smashing”.

G B Burton. 27.08.2025