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PIERS MORGAN
From ditching wokeism to fixing immigration, 10 ways beleaguered Keir Starmer can learn from Trump’s blunt common sense
Trump’s tough, uncompromising talk on one particular issue was a key factor in his victory
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"IT'S just common sense."
If you’re wondering why Donald Trump has stormed back to the White House with a massive landslide win, those four words that he said to me the morning afterwards go a long way to explaining it.
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Whether it was his bluntly delivered views of the economy, illegal immigration, the gender wars, NATO funding, or even royal whiner Prince Harry, Trump’s instinctive ability to know what ordinary people are thinking is what resonated so strongly.
And common sense is what our own beleaguered Prime Minister, Sir Keir ‘Punish the pensioners!’ Starmer, needs to urgently adopt if he wants to avoid being a one-term turkey.
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Starmer, along with many of his cabinet colleagues, may not feel a natural affinity with The Donald, someone most of them have publicly abused for years.
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But he just won an astoundingly emphatic mandate that should make them all sit up and take notice.
Here are ten ways that Labour can get with Trump’s common-sense agenda in a way that would help make Britain great again:
- Abandon wokeism. People are sick and tired of being lectured and hectored by a bunch of rabid, joyless, virtue-signalling fascists who want to dictate what we’re allowed to watch, read, laugh at, dress like or historically admire. Trump’s win has shown the best way to be vaccinated from the insidious Woke Mind Virus is to ignore the whiny wastrels.
- Ban trans athletes from women’s sport, as Trump has said he’ll do. We all know it’s grotesquely unfair and increasingly dangerous to let biological men beat women, or as we saw at the Paris Olympics, beat them up in a boxing ring.
- End the war on gendered language. Men want to be called men, women want to be called women, and Latinos, as Trump successfully worked out, want to be called Latinos, not bloody Latinx.
- Fix our broken immigration system. There are way too many people coming into Britain, both illegally and legally. If there’s one thing more galling for impoverished people enduring decaying public services, it’s an uncontrolled soft touch border policy making things much worse. Trump’s tough uncompromising talk on this issue was a key factor in his victory.
- Stop playing the race card about absolutely everything. Trump’s hysterical critics branded him a vile racist, and the new Hitler, yet millions of Black, Latino and Jewish voters turned out for him. Labour supporters have been trying similar race-baiting stuff on new Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, even laughably branding her a ‘white supremacist.’ It will help not harm her, too.
- Shun celebrities. Nobody wants to be told how to vote by a millionaire actor or pop star when they can’t afford to feed their kids. Kamala was endorsed by everyone from Taylor Swift and Oprah to George Clooney and Harrison Ford, but Americans couldn’t have cared less. In fact, I think it drove many to vote Trump.
- Protect free speech like your life depends on it. Trump and X owner Elon Musk’s ferocious defence of everyone’s right to have an opinion, even if others find it offensive, proved very popular.
- Cancel cancel culture. Every non-woke-ravaged person hates this overly censorious bullsh*t, and, as Trump’s proven with his amazing comeback despite his opponents trying to cancel, jail and shoot him, it doesn’t work anyway!
- Be authentic. Trump’s triumph suggests many like the way he speaks his mind in a way that people can understand. Too many of our home-grown politicians sound like one of Musk’s humanoid robots.
- Fix the economy. Ultimately, Trump won because Americans trusted his ‘cut taxes, drive growth, America first’ mantra more than Kamala’s ‘tax the rich, spend billions on foreign wars, America last’ philosophy, to resolve the crippling cost-of-living crisis. Take note, Sir Keir - and take care of Britain first!
Well played
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Three weeks ago, I dined with Gary Lineker at an Italian restaurant in West London, along with England cricket legend Stuart Broad and Sky TV newsman Mark Austin.
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It went the way all our regular dinners go; a friendly welcome hug to start (Gary’s always bang on time, a legacy from when he’d be fined for every minute he was late for football training), a couple of Negronis to loosen the tonsils, and then, as the fine wine flowed, a series of intense, passionate arguments about everything from the Israel/Hamas and Russa/Ukraine wars to Trump, illegal immigration, and Thomas Tuchel becoming England manager.
Gary’s a smart, funny, loyal guy and always excellent company.
We probably agree on more things than we disagree, but both enjoy fiery conversational combat, and however contentious things may get, our evenings together always end as this one did, with another hug, and a resolve to do it again soon.
Gary Lineker's best Match of the Day moments
One thing’s for sure; although Gary’s not always right and can be amusingly stubborn when he is clearly wrong, he always means what he says, thinks about things surprisingly deeply, and he practices what he preaches, even taking a war-torn refugee into his home.
He’s also been a brilliant Match of the Day host, and live sport presenter.
And of course, he was one of England’s best-ever footballers.
So, amusing though it is to see how angry some people get about him, and his right to express his opinions – he got particularly incensed over dinner when I said he was now a more divisive public figure than me! – the bottom line is this: he’s a good bloke, with a good heart, and extremely successful at everything he puts his mind too.
Which is more, I suspect, than can be said for a lot of his most vociferous critics.
Mike drop
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A lot of people seem very worried about boxing icon Mike Tyson’s wellbeing when he fights YouTuber Jake Paul in Vegas on Saturday night.
I’m more concerned for Mr Paul whose stupendously cocky ego far outweighs his actual boxing ability.
As Iron Mike, now 58, says about his much younger 27-year-old opponent: ‘He is the manufactured killer. Television and papers made him a killer. I'm a natural born killer. That's the difference.’
It is, as I strongly suspect super-smug Jake’s chin will soon discover.
What a dope
A woman named Kim Hall says she agreed to bring home two large suitcases of what she claims she thought contained cash, for a pair of British men, only to be arrested in America en route back from Mexico because they in fact contained 43kg of cocaine worth £15 million.
"I’m not a bad person," she wailed, as she now faces up to 60 years in a US prison.
No, Kim, but you’re either a very bad liar or unbelievably thick.
Team Jane
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I’ll be writing this column in Jane Moore’s Wednesday slot for the next few weeks while she’s busy munching kangaroo testicles in Australia.
I will never do I’m A Celebrity because my long-suffering parents once said it was the one thing that crossed their red line of things I could subject them to, which given what I’ve done in my life is a quite a statement!
But I loved Jane’s typically admission that she’s doing it because since turning 60, and finding herself divorced and living alone, she craves a bit of adventure.
I’ve known her for over 35 years, and she’s not only a brilliant journalist, she’s also a woman of rare kindness, generosity, empathy and good humour; someone who would walk over hot coals for her friends, but who doesn’t suffer fools.
Jane’s a tough cookie with a massive heart - two formidable character traits for life in the jungle.
Don’t be surprised if she wins it.
Sobbing snowflakes
Nothing has made me laugh more this year than news that Guardian journalists are being offered support counselling therapy to get over the trauma of Donald Trump winning back the presidency.
Of course, it’s precisely that kind of pathetically hysterical over-reaction to him by sobbing liberal snowflakes that has fuelled his return.
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And ironically, Trump won by embracing everything the Guardian most hates.
No wonder they’re so traumatised!
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