NATO countries should ignore Trump's latest rant. He threatens all sorts yet, just like Putin, he can't even successfully prosecute the one conflict he's already initiated.

When evaluating Premierships context is so crucial. Starmer inherited a flatlining economy, crumbling public services and constraints of high public borrowing levels. Internationally, a major European security threat in Ukraine and, within months of taking Office, an unhinged US President. Daunting!

'Trumpflation'. That epiphet will be Trump's legacy for the remainder of his days in Office.

US-Israel Middle East military strategy just becomes more and more bizarre and self-defeating. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

Whereas Trump - and those around him - are increasingly viewed as incompetent goons outside US, courting global disaster, Starmer is highly regarded on the international stage. Even more so given his patience over Trump's school playground invective directed towards him.

Contrary to promises, Reform politicians when they take control raise everyone else's taxes, whilst going to considerable lengths to avoid paying taxes themselves. Could explain why, as a Tory defector, Zahawi was welcomed with open arms.

Trump's spell broken. Alienated so many former US allies. His foolishness writ large for all to see. Unable to sustain consistent policy positions from one 24-hour period to the next. Nepotism, cronyism and corruption rife in his règime. What former strategic hegemons are like when unravelling.

Starmer distancing UK from US-Israel offensive in Iran increasingly vindicated. Badenoch will rue her terrible mis-reading of geopolitical realities. As for Farage, he just trots along, however wild the stakes, even though Trump can't be bothered to spend the time of day with him any more.

A characteristic feature of fascist ideology is revelling in state violence. Reflecting on some of the statements of Trump and Hegseth in recent days, bear in mind that association.

Trump's recklessness creates yet more global economic instability, layered on top of his moveable feast on tariffs. What governing by mere whim looks like. How populists behave given public office; unleashing chaos. Deriding diplomacy, evidence and science, too, for good measure.

The Trump Administration has no idea what it is doing in this Middle East conflict, or why it is doing it, other than showing off an arsenal of weapons. Foolishly co-opted into doing Netanyahu's bidding. A Secretary of State 'for War' demonstrating all the sophistication of a street thug.

Concentration of power in one person invariably ends in strategic calamity; Putin in Ukraine, Trump in Middle East - an historical pattern repeating itself endlessly over the centuries. The US desperately needs to re-establish checks and balances on which its constitution is supposed to be based.

This is what grown-up thinking sounds like. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

So many contradictory explanations on reasons for US offensive against Iran from those involved in the Trump Administration. Utterly incoherent, despite magnitude of all the ensuing consequences, not just for the region, but globally.

Trump was always going to overreach at some point and badly miscalculate, because he thinks his gut instincts are a better guide than informed evaluation. This is what happens when bar room bravado becomes a substitute for serious foreign policy.

How wise of Starmer to avoid doing a Blair in the Middle East - something that has cast a shadow over everything else that Blair achieved ever since.

Trump talks about an 'imminent threat' from Iran, having claimed following a previous strike on the country that its nuclear installations had been 'obliterated'.

The US electorate are seeing everything from Trump that he promised would finally be brought to an end by his Presidency!

The 'Great Kemi Revival' that, somehow, never caught on! www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Does anyone really want to live in a neo-fascist Britain where we all have to yield to every authoritarian whim of Farage: Trump- or even Putin-style? Do people really understand what they're voting for when they cast their ballot for Reform! www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Thoughts with Ukraine today, 24 February, as they remember the brutal invasion from a Putin terrorist state four years ago - and we acknowledge their on-going suffering instigated by a callous autocrat.

Starmer hasn't devoted his life to accumulating wealth as did Sunak; isn't reckless which was Truss's trademark; not corrupt in contrast to Johnson; won a parliamentary majority whereas May lost one; and is rebuilding relations with Europe not gambling them away Cameron-style.

Trump's domestic policy agenda in utter disarray after Supreme Court's ruling. In foreign policy, he's starting to see he is dependent on others, not just they on he. Meanwhile, the Epstein Files continue to corrode and disillusion his base. All with the mid-terms looming.

More chaos rains down on Trump's parade! www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Increasing circumstantial indicators that we have a President in the White House who is susceptible to policy blackmail from foreign governments, because they possess incriminating documentary evidence of the extent of his presence within the Epstein circle.

It's literally impossible to do business with a President where policy - back and forth - changes from one day to the next. Lunatics are more predictable than this! BBC News - Chagos Islands: Do not give away Diego Garcia, Trump tells UK - BBC News www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Starmer transitioning from 'making Brexit work' to 'we are not the Britain of the Brexit years any more'. The European tectonic plates are moving.

Surely just a matter of time before Trump Administration overwhelmed by Epstein Files, deeply embedded in associated networks as it was - with ever-escalating trajectory of their impact and members of Congress having access to unredacted documents. Number of times Trump himself mentioned astounding.

Over recent days virtually all mainstream media political commentators have mis-read the signs. Let the full implications of that sink in. Groupthink on stilts - feeding off each other.

Something else amplified during recent events: just how much of the media's output is merely a cacophony of competing noise, adding little or no value to national public discourse and understanding!

Would be deeply ironic if a British Prime Minister became a casualty of the exigencies of dealing with a volatile/corrupt occupant of the White House in order to safeguard UK interests - a President for whom Badenoch has expressed admiration and Farage positively fawned over.

Getting on her moral high horse over Starmer's appointment of Mandelson, Badenoch was a minister during all of the endemic corruption of Johnson's Premiership, until its very dying days. Her ethical principles were such that she had no compunction about retaining Office!

Don't focus on the convicted felon in the White House, whose fingerprints are all over the Epstein Files; or international war criminal in the Kremlin, into whose subterfuge Epstein was drawn; nor the one in Israel whose intelligence services have compromising material on Trump. All too big picture!

The individual pieces are all falling into place. Epstein's links with Russia; Trump circle's entanglement with Epstein; Trump's indulgence of Putin. MAGA conspiracy theories were there to distract us. As well as crimes committed on an industrial scale, these networks compromised Western security.

Mandelson yet another example of those moving in powerful circles who think normal rules do not apply to them. All there in BBC One's #Industry, using dramatic effect to skewer life styles of the rich. Thank goodness it's caught up with him. Many more to go, not least the other side of the Atlantic.

Victims are no nearer justice from the rich and powerful men who exploited them when the Trump règime has gone to such enormous lengths to launder release of the Epstein Files. So many associated with that règime are obviously deeply implicated.

So the real scoundrels turn out to be those spreading the conspiracy theories.

Redressing imbalance in much of reporting of Starmer's Government.

For those struggling to recall the lessons of a pre-1945 world heavy in ideology, the consequences of ultra-right alternatives are again coming clearly into vision: global disorder; stratospheric inequality; and rampant corruption. Beware of fool's gold from Reform canvassers knocking on the door.

Apparently Trump is making US security guarantees for Ukraine dependent on relinquishing territory that Putin has failed to conquer. That means these security guarantees are worthless anyway.

Trump over-reached on the global stage with his Greenland debàcle and derogatory comments about NATO troops. He has now over-reached in the domestic arena with the madness of ICE in Minneapolis, combined with continued suppression of the Epstein Files.

On news that matters: Minneapolis.

The public are rather tired of politicians standing for elected office promising to serve their alloted term, only to renege on that commitment the moment personal ambition gets the better of them.

Any British politician who advocated Trump's re-election in 2024 shouldn't be let anywhere near public office. No ifs and no buts.

Trump just makes stuff up. What he says has no known reality reference point. That he needs psychological help is the very least of it.

The week began with much of the media reporting that Trump had humiliated Starmer. As it draws to a close, that humiliation is all Trump's, with Starmer's reputation enhanced. We rediscover that a week in politics is a long time!

Oh, my! BBC News - www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cj... Trump rules out taking Greenland by force, drops threat of tariffs on Nato - BBC News

Fruits of Trump's foreign policy: a brutal règime still holds reins of power in Venezuela; an even more brutal règime survives in Iran; Putin acts with greater impunity in Ukraine; and Trump's 'Board of Peace' has surreal membership and with mission-creep beyond Middle East will wither on the vine.

I fear Donald Trump is cracking up under the pressure of it all.

Trump himself has now made it abundantly clear, through his obsession with the Nobel Peace Prize, that Greenland has nothing to do with national security, but everything to do with the disturbed state of his mind.