The United Kingdom shamelessly prostrated itself at the feet of Donald Trump on Wednesday, throwing a lavish welcoming party for his state visit to Windsor that resembled less diplomacy and more fealty.
In doing so, the U.K. has revealed something deeply unflattering about itself—in the scramble to keep America close, it will debase itself and its values completely.
It will silence dissent, empty out its traditions, and rent out its monarch like a sex worker, deployed to flatter the ego of a man who has spent much of his political life suggesting he should be treated like one, a monarch, not a sex worker, that is.
As stage props go, the monarchy is unbeatable. But if this is what the “special relationship” between the U.S and the U.K. now means, it looks to many in Britain less like a partnership and more like groveling, feudal servitude.
archive article: https://archive.is/DxOAv
There’s nothing the British monarchy loves to do more than to indulge and please a child molester
Damnit. Now he’s going to demand this shit happens back in the US.
To be fair all kings initially became kings exactly the way Trump is trying to do. No matter how they try to paint it as a God-given right or create elaborate origin myths, it all started with violence, marrying into power, betrayal, political scheming and a lot of inbreeding.
It’s kind of appropriate that a kingdom recognizes this (although that was probably not what they were trying to do).
America’s poodle, not just for joining invasions of Middle Eastern countries.
Also on display in Starmer’s policy of arresting old ladies as terrorists when they demonstrated against the Genocide being done by America’s pupetter.
The brits want to be colonialized for a change?
appeasement is kinda their thing
Ya buncha cunts
If there’s one thing the UK is good at, it’s making rich people feel important. It’s how all those Russian oligarchs feel so comfortable in London, comfortable enough to spill their secrets. Nobody suspects the butler, nobody suspects that behind the pomp and ceremony there’s a knife waiting for you.
Trump likes to be flattered, so flatter him, and then get as much cash out of the US as possible! $150bn investment so far as a result of this little bit of pageantry, since all those tech companies are now dancing to Trump’s tune.
From my experience living there for over a decade, including meeting some people from the landed wealth, such warm welcomes to the ultra rich aren’t some kind of 5D chess strategy to get their secrets, they’re pure and simply a mix of greed and no scruples whatsoever by people who are trained since their teens in image management.
If the English Gentleman stereotype of honorable behaviour was ever true (rather than an image crafted by films, which frankly seems more likely), nowadays it’s only about “projecting the right image”, which is quite independent of “doing the right thing” (given that the upper classes are literally taught in their private schools to be fake and tell people what they want to hear, being a “posh gentleman” might actually be negativelly correlated with “doing the right thing”).
In summary, do not expect honorable behaviour from the present day British elites, especially not the English ones - want to find honor in that country, try the Northern England and Scottish working class (maybe also Northern-Ireland, but I’m not as familiar with those) and a few amongst the middle and lower-middle class in multi-cultural large cities like London.
In summary, do not expect honorable behaviour from the present day British elites, especially not the English ones
I mean, read Wilde, Wodehouse, Austen, Dickens… That’s always been the case.
True.
After all, Workhouses and Indentured Servitude (the later, curiously, a reintroduction of Slavery - this time Debt-based - 3 decades after Britain abolished Chatel Slavery) were very common British practices in the 19th Century.
Also things that never get shown in modern portrayals of that time - such as Downtown Abbey - are how the “house staff” really got treated: for example they had to turn and face the wall when the lord or lady of the house passed them.
Well said 👍🏻
Charles fucked kids with his brother Andrew, and was friends with Epstein.
Britain is a pathetic redneck country of EU. Remember they sent their worst people over to the America’s. Absolute garbage ass country and extremely racist.
The UK is somewhere in the middle
Now Romania… THAT’S where the real rednecks are (I live there, it’s more conservative that any US state lol)
Hey, Britain sucks ass for sure compared to parts of the EU but it’s still lightyears ahead of America so maybe sort your own shit out. People in glass houses and that
Britain has some very particular quirks in their Fascism that America doesn’t have, most notably huge and centuries old class stratification well entrenched in its culture (“people should know their place” style), reflected in things such as the very high land ownership concentration in Britain.
Also the elites in Britain go to special schools (known as “public schools” even though they’re private, a detail which itself should hint at how deceit is commonly used in Britain to present one impression of something which is something else) were they get taught amonsgt other things techniques to deceive others (plus some weird sociopathic shit in how to related to others, that for example means that pointing out to somebody with that upbringing that they “look a bit down” is actually taken as a gloating that “I’m not”).
Further, the country has long had subtle power control mechanisms in place, such as how over 90% of high court judges attended those expensive “public schools” which only the scions of the upper middle and upper class can afford to attend - something which gets reflected in very different legal outcomes depending on which social class one comes from - or how over 70% of people who enter Oxford or Cambridge also went to “public schools” even though only 11% of children attend those (the entrance criteria for those universities is an interview rather than a purely meritocratic one like a test or grades, and I know of people who were literally told “you went to the wrong school” as reason to reject them). Essentially and except for a short period after WWII (back when Social Security and the National Health Service were created) the various levers of power have always been in the hands of the upper middle and upper class and access to opportunities for social mobility have always been highly restricted - a dumb, lazy scion of the upper class will get a degree from a top university and maybe a judgeship on a high court, whilst a smart and hard-working working class lad or lass can pretty much forget about either and this is just on class discrimination even without taking in account the actual wealth discrimination.
Fascism in Britain has a different expression and is anchored of a vast foundation of image-managed authoritarianism that tends to control by constraining people’s options, and a subtler use of the Law for suppression under the cover of Lawfulness, rather than overtly the jackboot (though, as you see right now and was also on display at certain points during Thatcher’s days, they sometimes use the jackboot overtly), whilst American Fascism is loud and brash, on top of a tradition of self-reliance and independence: basically at its most naked and overt, British Fascism looks like the way Occupy Wall Street was suppressed in the US, though that expression is but the tip of a very large iceberg.
All this to say that it’s very hard to pin down just how bad Fascism in Britain is compared to America.
I’m fully aware America is a dingleberry that came from the shit pile of Britain
That was hundreds of years ago. All the shit over there is your own doing now, nothing to do with us.
What do you mean nothing to do? You’re fully committed and supportive of the genocide and pervious genocides criminal wars too, you might not be funding as much as America, but you’re fully complicit.
Queen Elizabeth was the devil, that racist cunt and her underlings have destroyed most of the global south for their benefit, the world hasn’t recovered from the destruction your expansionist empire caused.
Just because Trump is literally worse than Charles today doesn’t mean you’re good. You pay taxes to a monarch who follows a line of monsters who are directly responsible for most of today’s political landscape, and instead of overthrowing the monarchy when the evil witch died, you allowed an old fart to take over ruling you.
And now your monarch is treating Trump like a monarch, which sure looks like a pledge of fealty, so the only thing left to figure out is what motivated that? What does Trump have on Charles, or is Charles simply celebrating that Epstein is gone?
You’re knee deep in this shit, bud.
What do you mean nothing to do?
The USA has been self governing nation for long enough for them to solve their own problems, especially as they have a staggering amount of wealth and security.
Quite a few ex-colonies have done rather well for themselves too, so “the destruction our expansionist empire caused” can be recovered from. One can only wonder why it’s our fault some places haven’t recovered yet.
I also wonder which destructive expansionist empire you’re part of, Mr Pot.
The USA has been self governing nation for long enough for them to solve their own problems, especially as they have a staggering amount of wealth and security.
Agreed. And the UK is complicit in its support of the genocide… How does holding the US accountable for its own actions free the United Kingdom from its own?
You fully support the US, your labor party has doubled down on fascism and genocide, and your king just treated Trump like royalty… What do you mean you have nothing to do with it?
One can only wonder why it’s our fault some places haven’t recovered yet.
Only an ignorant person who refuses to learn anything about the world would wonder… You divided our lands and installed foreigners as monarchs and taught them how to use propaganda to train our youth to celebrate the new puppet rulers as “independence”.
I also wonder which destructive expansionist empire you’re part of, Mr Pot.
Ha! I’m Palestinian! Always under the rule of expansionist empires, never done it ourselves. And everything we’re suffering today can be tracked back to your Balfour.
Labour “Vote for us cause we’re not the Conservatives.” Proceeds to do everything like a conservative
Starmer is a conservative/neoliberal from 10 years ago. There is no “left” party in mainstream UK politics anymore. There is only a fascist party, and a conservative party.
Same with Australia, Canada, and most of 14 eyes. Weird… Almost like we said this Overton shift towards fascism was occurring the entire god damn time.
As an Australian I’m thankful that while our Liberal (conservative) party is shit and evil, they’re just barely not quite as unhinged as the UK and certainly USA overall. In part because we have reasonably strong democratic processes like the independent Australian Electoral Commission responsible for electorate zoning, running elections etc.
Wait, you think green party isn’t left leaning? They gained seats last election with their 2 million votes. who’s to say they are not a mainstream political party
I was a member of the Green Party back when I lived in Britain (about 5 years ago) and can confirm they’re left leaning. In fact back then (a year or so before Corbyn) they were the only left of center party in Britain with MPs.
At least the members tended to be middle class well intentioned in multiple ways (not just environmentally but also socially) types, but oh so naive (at least in my eyes, as I had a totally different background plus had spent a lot of time there in the seedy underbelly of that country - the Finance Industry, which is pretty much Sociopaths’R’us - hence felt they had a very gentle view of things which was quite ignorant of the life of the working class there).
If you want to pin down their ideas to an actual ideology, they were Social Democrats and Environmentalists.
Mind you, the party had only 2 MPs back them (on the vote of 1 million people, so they got only less than 0.3% of MPs on the vote of 2.5% of the electorate, almost 5% if you only count cast votes) because Britain two has the anti-Democratic First Past The Post system.
In a place like The Netherlands (which has Proportional Vote) they would’ve had between 7 and 14 MPs (depending on abstentions) with the votes of that proportion of voters and if the Tweede Kamer had 300 MPs (which it doesn’t) like the British Parliament.
They gained seats, yes, but 4 seats isn’t exactly a landslide. They’re a force in local politics, but at the national level, they’re just really not a major player - at least not yet
The next election will be split between Labour, Cons, Reform and Greens.
Yeah our “Liberal” PM was asked by the conservative government 13 years ago to be the finance minister. The Overton window is completely fucked up, we have neofascism on one side and the opposite side is neoliberals who are okay with neofacism as long as it keeps the progressives away from taxing the rich and regulating multinationals. Any suggestion that the systemic problems destroying society should be addressed with structural solutions, or even that genocide and ethnic cleansing are bad, has now become tantamount to terrorism.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/mark-carney-stephen-harper-1.7460897
better vote for a non-party or not vote at all to help your authoritarian chums, the real fascists, to get elected
like they did in the US
The royal family and child rapists name a more iconic duo
Is it a duo when they’re the same thing?
More like a team.
The gruesome twosome
Trump will feel very much at home with the Royal Family, particularly with Prince Nonce to swap fireside stories.
Made up ceremony
Wait till the Brits find out its all made up and the nobility doesn’t matter.
The entire Press in that country constantly pushes pro-Monarchy messaging and suppresses criticism of the Royals and much more so criticism of the actual system of Monarchy.
Even when the Royals do serious shit and it somehow leaks, it’s always spinned as a just this once mistake that doesn’t at all reflect on the rest, always making sure the reigning monarch is isolated from it.
The way Orban in Hungary makes sure he always wins election by controlling the Press is very much the way the Royals keep their power and money in Britain, with the difference that the latter has been going on for a lot longer than the former.
The problem is if they decide that William the conqueror didn’t actually have allodial rights to the land, then all property rights in the UK are made up too and that’s a bridge too far.
In the country with the highest land ownership concentration in Europe, that would trully be an unimaginable tragedy for the local upper class.
I mean, all property rights are made up though, in any country.
Well yeah, but that’s been fundamentally toxic to liberalism since liberalism existed.
There’s Liberalism the Ideology and then there’s the “Liberalism” practiced by politicians - those two are only a bit more similar than Socialism and the ideology of the National Socialist Party Of The German Worker (i.e. the NAZI Party) were similar.
If there’s one thing I learned from inside the Finance Industry during the 2008 Crash and subsequent rescues, after having read The Economist for years, is that (Neo)Liberalism isn’t at all the flat-playing-field meritocratic free market ideology they portray themselves as.
They’re in fact very much the opposite of that: they’re an ideology of maximizing the gains of pre-existing advantages, so wealth and asset ownership - which not only preserved but extends those advantages - hence they’re 100% in favor of current Land Ownership legislation and preserving the status quo in that, which was created well before proper Democracy and has nothing to do with merit of a flat playing field.
And historically that endeavor to preserve a broken playing field was always what liberalism was about, neo or classical. It was a key plank for the levelers in the English civil war. It’s always been a naked attempt to jump mental hoops to preserve their power. Conservatives forbid the question as to why power structures exist, they exist and are therefore good. Liberals try to justify them.
We all know it’s the rightful territory of the Senatus Populusque Romanus. It’s just a matter of time.
Italian Unification but it’s everything from Hadrian’s Wall to Istanbul.
Why stop there? Ctesiphon or bust.
Tbf, the whole thing WOULD be much funnier (and less embarrassing) with Colin Mochrie and Ryan Stiles playing the parts of the two doddering billionaire idiots and Aisha Tyler moderating 🤷
rent out its monarch like a sex worker,
I don’t know if they’ve been paying attention, but their monarch is too old for our President Pedophile. They’d have to offer up Princess Charlotte to interest him.
They should ask Prince Andrew. He knows.
I’m from the colonies.
Sure is an embarrassment. Shameful.
In my books kowtowing counts.
Britain is sucking the root big time.
From opening up china by force to sucking orange dick. What a fall.
still, the people in power clearly are. and so I won’t be travelling to the UK either.
I don’t know – is this really a “UK bending” thing?
I think this is just how NATO officials have realized how to play the game with him – fluff up his ego a bit and then get to the business talks – you play the game of politics with the hand you’re given.
I guess it might be the greatest public showing so far by a NATO Country(?)
I agree this seems to be more a case of Europe having cracked the code on how to manipulate Trump. That being said, I feel like they’re walking a very fine line between dangling the keys to the kingdom in front of the baby, and handing them over.
Honestly, as acts of appeasement go, a fancy dress party seems about the least humiliating thing a country can agree to. Play king for a day, like Make-A-Wish for senile fascists. If that settles the tariff negotiations, then well done.
If that settles the tariff negotiations
I agree that if there was a magic “fix this shit for good” button but you had to crawl around and call Trump “sir” a lot that would be worth it. But what’s actually going to happen is that he’ll hear a loud noise and forget who any of these people are and he’ll be like, “two million percent tariff on the uk!!”
What about the other capitulations to fascism, and equating anti-genocide with terrorism?
What about… ism
I guess it might be the greatest public showing so far by a NATO Country(?)
By far, although to be fair, most of the rest of us don’t have a royal family.
You can have ours mate.
We technically already have him, but not really.
I’m just back from your country and brought back a $2 coin with his face on it, just found it funny.
