The international news this last week has been dominated by the collapsing confidence in Joe Biden as the Democrat candidate for the US Presidential election. It seems to have come as a surprise to some people that Biden is long last his mental prime, to put it mildly. Have they all been asleep for the last four years? His senile collapse in the first head-to-head debate exposed the lie the Democrat party can no longer hide.
Putting aside the ghastliness of Trump and the incapability of Biden in the debate, the really interesting thing in the first head-to-head between them was the breadth of international issues that were covered in the debate which have been completely absent from the UK General Election campaign.
There are just a whole range of big issues that have been utterly absent from any debate, commentary or general discussion in the UK General Election, the election dogs that did not bark.
Where was the debate about climate change, a signature issue and a point of difference between the two main parties, indeed all the parties?
Where was the debate about Brexit, the most defining event in British political history in the last few decades. Brushed under the carpet by the two main parties, it has hardly been mentioned at all. Like Voldemort, the issue we dare not mention.
Where was the debate about the first land war in Europe since 1945 that is currently raging?
Where was the debate about Gaza and what stance we should take as a nation to Middle East peace?
Instead, we blathered on and on, day after day about whether our future PM supported his previous party leader too much or whether we should increase taxes on the parents of 7% of children or whether teenagers should do some form of community service. And God help us all if we ever again have to hear that Starmer is the son of an ever so humble toolmaker and Sunak’s parents worked in the NHS.
We have become so pathetically parochial as a nation. We used to rule the world not so long ago. How the mighty have fallen.
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