"More fundamentally, we must ask why so much of official Britain, and especially its security establishment, keeps clinging for dear life to the United States, behaving for all the world like someone stuck in an abusive personal relationship"
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/21/britain-us-special-relationship-trump-starmer
As you know, Simon, we have skin in that particular ‘over the pond’ game.
The fear and despair is real. Not least because the US is a currently a country that is perfectly content to kill off its own citizens with its insurance based health system.
Allow me to relate a case here:
A fully insured citizen with known cardiac issues is blue lighted to cardiac unit following an automated SOS alerted event. fully insured citizen with known cardiac issues is blue lighted to cardiac unit following an automated SOS alerted event.
This is the patient’s usual hospital where they are normally treated. Patient is tested multiple times/ways and discharged after 2 nights stay in the hospital.
The bill arrives and it is $239,000. Because the patient is fully insured, thank goodness, they only have to find $11,000, payable in a single lump sum, this would increase if only split payments were possible.
For those here in the UK or the EU, this appears almost outlandish. Over the pond people lose their lives, their livelihoods, their homes and their jobs in the name of profit.
I am so sorry Simon. I feel these things personally, as you know, and so try to fight here against descending into the abyss of insurance based health provision.
I note Reform are punting the ‘we will keep NHS free at the point of delivery’ line. This cannot be allowed to go unchallenged given their parallel offering of ‘pay as little tax as possible’
I have and heard Lord Offload’s hideous reply … burble wurble “fruity language in their past life” burble wurble … our candidates are real people burble wurble…
Simon Brooke
Maggie Gordon
Peter Brown