Let’s talk war. That should distract them…

YES, let’s talk war. Europe must be ready to fight, says the latter-day Churchill, staring resolutely straight ahead into the camera, wearing a cross between his trademark embarrassed schoolgirl look and a badly rehearsed Bruce Willis Die Hard scowl.

There are many deeply worrying aspects regarding Keir Starmer, but near the top of the miserable list is his chronic, complete lack of self-awareness.

Watching him tragically trying to talk tough at the Munich Security Conference reminded me of Denis Healey’s famous ‘dead sheep’ put-down of Sir Geoffrey Howe. Does he not comprehend how ridiculous he appears?

And does he really think that people will be fooled by a politician desperately fighting for his own personal survival using that time-worn ‘external threat’ ploy to divert public attention?

As we know, all his former male ‘advisers’ have resigned. So that’s why we are presumably witnessing the real Starmer at work, hence all this war talk.

Clearly, he believes that the ‘horrible Ruskies’ line will go down well with the public and therefore take their minds off Mandelson, Epstein and the general grubbiness of power, politics and money.

And so, the message must be this. Europe should be ready to fight to protect its people, values, and way of life. Don’t bother with the Greens or Reform, they’re far too soft on Putin. Stick with the tough guys. Let’s keep on talking war. Psssst! Fingers crossed, that should get me out of the brown stuff…

Well, Starmer should be very careful about tempting fate. While I have no doubt that the current Russian state is a disgusting regime for all the obvious reasons, the prime minister’s reckless outbursts in Munich – heaven knows, what ironies in the choice of that location for a summit – this sort of inflammatory talk just increases the already near boiling point temperature of world tensions.

But purely out of interest, just WHO in Britain would actually participate in any future war? By my estimation, a vast swathe of today’s young people would refuse, or at least be unwilling to fight for their country. I say that not out of condemnation, rather from day-to-day observation.

An unhappy navel-gazing generation enslaved by social media, overly concerned about ‘wellness’, ‘mental health’ and gender politics is hardly going to defend a last ditch situated somewhere on a rough line between the Severn to the Thames after the regular army has stemmed any initial Russian advance.

And let’s face it, the only banner that many would now rally round is the Palestinian flag. After all, it’s been made abundantly clear in some quarters that the Union and St George’s flags are merely fascist emblems draped around the shoulders of tattooed, racist thugs.

I doubt very much that the Jew-hating, chanting extremists of the ‘from the river to the sea’ brigade would willingly go to their deaths with the poems of Rupert Brooke on their lips.

Talking of which, if Starmer is trying to conjure up a Kitchener-esque summer-of-1914 spirit, with the massed ranks of the working classes nobly being led by the equally suicidal bravery of the upper classes, then I fear he will be sorely disappointed.

Left-wing opinion these days is dominated by an emergent and growing middle class, which almost certainly wouldn’t relish a war that might get in the way of blissfully long annual summer holidays spent in second homes in the Dordogne or Tuscany.

Yes, there will be quite a few floppy-haired younger sons that once would have gleefully enlisted as cannon fodder, but I really don’t see the Glastonbury weekend hippies swapping that June jolly for an equally muddy trench on the outskirts of Chipping Sodbury.

There is, though, a serious side to this. Putin has clearly stated territorial claims to the Donbas, hence his genocidal campaign against Ukraine. But why would this dictator want to invade an over-populated, hopelessly divided and bankrupt country with no natural resources in which the rain never stops? What would be the point? Who would want to?

Which takes us back to Starmer. Like many men and women before him, the retaining of power is vitally important, and must be limpet clung to, no matter what the cost might be.

And that’s why his speech at Munich was really about softening up the British population in anticipation of some future rejoining of the European Union, hence the heavily loaded ‘Brexit years over’ comment.

Nevertheless, his address to assembled European leaders was a totally disingenuous, irresponsible exercise in political posturing that, while fooling no one, must also be regarded with utter dismay by all those of us who dread a repeat of the 20^th century’s horrors visited on future generations to come.