Staying in the UK, an extraordinary story is unfolding there with revelations that an Iranian terror attack was just hours away from being launched on British soil before it was foiled by counterterrorism officers. British police arrested eight people, including seven Iranian nationals, on suspicion of terrorism offenses. The UK Telegraph reports that authorities feared the attacks on a specific premises was imminent and there is speculation, Douglas, that the target may have been a synagogue or another target linked to the Jewish community.
This is Douglas certainly a frightening development. It is very frightening um but sadly not surprising. Uh Iranian terrorists have targeted people in a bewildering array of countries by now.
They of course famously carried out bombings of Jewish community centers in South America some years ago uh in New York City uh in in uh in in Brooklyn and elsewhere. Iranian government assassins tried to kill again just a year or two ago um a very brave Iranian exile who is critical of the regime. They tried to kill this young woman uh in America.
The Iranian government's most uh prominent uh media outlet um boasts about this. Just the other week, as I wrote in the post the other day, just the other week, uh, uh, the editor of one of the main organs of the Iranian revolutionary government, who has the ear of the Supreme Leader and is generally regarded as being a spokesman for him, said that it was still the intention of the Iranian government to put a bullet in the skull of President Trump and he said hopefully that day will arrive soon. It it is amazing.
We'll wait and see what unfolds in the UK uh about this terror cell and its prospective targets. Uh but but I don't think anyone should be that surprised by it. Uh Iran has been put pumping terrorists obviously around the whole the region it's in.
But the revolutionary government's also been trying to carry out assassinations with impunity in America in other countries for years now. I do wonder when we'll start to take them seriously and actually do anything in response. Meanwhile, Douglas K star continues to obsess about the threat from the so-called far right.
Now, Nigel Faraj's reform party had a stunning result at council and bi-elections on Thursday. The party has now taken control of 10 local councils, won two meal races, and added a fifth MP to its ranks. Farage is hailing reforms triumph as unprecedented.
He says it's the end of the two-party rule in the UK. Is he right? He's taking votes from Labour and the Tories Douglas.
Well, Nigel Farage has done this before, of course. Uh he led the Brexit party and indeed UK to stunning electoral successes principally uh back then in the European Parliament when Britain was still a member of the EU. Um so there there are two things I think people have to bear in mind when they look at these elections.
One is they are local elections, turnout tends to be low and it tends to be the case that people punish incumbent parties. Uh so that's definitely the case. It was an undoubtedly a successful night for reform.
That doesn't necessarily mean though that uh reform can see that through at a general election. As you know, Rita, the whole setup and as Naraj knows better than anyone, the whole setup of the first pass the post system uh which is intended to give strong governments and sometimes does uh but the the whole point of it really is that an insurgent party like those that Nigel Farage has led for some 30 years now uh is effectively it's very hard at general elections to break through. you see the number of votes that were needed uh uh or the number of votes that happened at the last general election per reform MP as opposed to the number of votes per Labor MP and I mean it's it's it's way off.
Uh so so we'll see. There are of course more than four years to go till uh the next general election in the UK. The problem that Farage obviously poses principally is not not to Labor although it definitely does chip away at Labour's vote and did do here.
the principal threat is to the Conservative party. If the Conservative Party cannot see off threat um from Farage and reform uh uh then they really don't deserve to exist. But it should be possible for the Conservative party to see them off.
It's just that the Conservative Party has to first of all have policies that can outflank Nigel Farage's policies and secondly of course to to find some way back into the public trust after 13 14 years of Conservative governments for instance saying that they were going to lower migration while seeing migration go through the roof. It'll take quite a long time for the electorate to forgive the Conservative Party for that I think. But the Conservative Party will have to address that question and it'll have to do so much faster than they're doing at the moment.
