STARMER: THE GREATEST SHOWMAN ( … OF INEPTITUDE)

Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, to witness the grand performance of Sir Keir Starmer, our Prime Minister, who has at last deigned to notice the Casey report—emerging from a decade-long slumber like a somnambulist who’s tripped over a spotlight while dreaming of Labour’s eternal glory. Once the lofty Director of Public Prosecutions, a man you’d think might spot a scandal the size of a small continent, Starmer has instead perfected the art of looking baffled, as if the Rotherham abuse dossier were a cryptic crossword clue he’s yet to decipher with his trusty biro.

Let’s rewind to 2014, when Starmer penned a Guardian article on Rotherham with all the gravitas of a man who’d just discovered tea stains on his desk. Back then, the scale of the abuse was a neon sign flashing “Do Something,” yet our hero dithered like a debutante at her first ball, more concerned with the hem of his political frock than the cries of the victims. Now, a decade later, he blinks into the limelight, claiming ignorance with the innocence of a choirboy caught with a slingshot—except this choirboy’s been running the country and turning a blind eye to a horror show that would make Dante blush.

But fear not, for Starmer is not alone in this cavalcade of incompetence. His cabinet, a rogues’ gallery of nodding dogs and yes-men, rivals the Keystone Cops in their slapstick evasion. Take the Home Secretary, who’s spent more time polishing her title than addressing the rot beneath it, or the Justice Minister, who seems to think “justice” is a quaint notion best left to Victorian novels. Together, they form a chorus line of apathy, pirouetting around the truth with the grace of elephants on roller skates, all while the Labour Party claps from the sidelines like indulgent parents at a talent-free school play.

Why, you ask, has this inquiry been shunned? Oh, the excuses are a masterclass in creative cowardice. Starmer opines that it might “undermine efforts” to implement the Jay Report, as if justice were a delicate soufflé that collapses under scrutiny. Then there’s the gem about victims not wanting to speak—conveniently overlooking the fact they’ve been screaming into the void for years, only to be met with the Labour Party’s soundproofed sanctimony. And the pièce de résistance: “Extremists might exploit it.” Yes, nothing screams “leadership” like letting imaginary bogeymen dictate policy, as if Starmer’s government were a haunted house run by a committee of timid ghosts.

This, dear reader, is the Labour Party in its current incarnation—a ship of fools captained by a man who’d struggle to navigate a puddle, crewed by a cabinet that thinks governance is a game of pass-the-parcel with the buck always landing elsewhere. Their strategy? Bury the scandal under a mountain of platitudes, hoping the public’s memory is as short as a soundbite. It’s a performance so exquisitely inept it could headline at the Edinburgh Fringe—if only they’d admit they’re the punchline.

Let’s not mince words: Starmer’s tenure is less a premiership than a prolonged audition for the role of Neville Chamberlain’s understudy, complete with an umbrella and a speech about “peace in our time” that translates to “inaction in our decade.” His cabinet, meanwhile, is a parade of mediocrity—each member a walking testament to the Peter Principle, promoted to their level of incompetence and then some. And the Labour Party? Once a beacon of working-class grit, it’s now a tepid bureaucracy, more obsessed with its own image than the people it purports to serve, a political equivalent of a heritage railway that’s run out of steam.

The victims, of course, are the forgotten extras in this tragicomedy. While Starmer and his troupe rehearse their lines, these souls are left waiting—like theatre-goers who’ve paid full price for a play where the lead actor has forgotten his script and the stagehands are on strike. The abuse scandals, particularly Rotherham’s grim legacy, deserve a reckoning, but instead, they get a masterclass in procrastination from a Prime Minister who’d rather rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic than steer it away from the iceberg.

So here we stand, June 2025, with a Labour government that’s less a lion of justice than a lamb of convenience, bleating about integrity while dodging responsibility with the agility of a sloth on a treadmill. Starmer’s legacy, if we can call it that, will be a monument to missed opportunities—a statue of a man peering through his fingers at a crisis he helped prolong. As for his cabinet and party, they’re welcome to their self-congratulatory backslapping, but the rest of us will be over here, applauding the only performance worthy of note: the slow-motion collapse of a government that never quite got the memo about governing.

THE DEATH OF BRITAIN

Oh, what a spectacle we’ve been served today, courtesy of the House of Commons—a tragicomedy so bleak it might make even Dante weep into his cornflakes. Once upon a time, Britain was the sort of nation that nursed the sick, shielded the weak, and stood sentinel at life’s fragile edges with a stiff upper lip and a cup of tea. Now? We’re debating whether to turn doctors into grim reapers and the state into a soulless abattoir, all under the sanctimonious banner of “dignity in dying.” Spare me the legislative silk; this is bureaucratised euthanasia, a bill so drenched in despair it could drown a nation’s soul.

Let’s strip away the euphemisms, shall we? This Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill—bless its cold, calculating heart—proposes that some lives are simply too tiresome to sustain. The criteria? Terminal illness, a six-month countdown, a nod to “mental competence” (as if a panel of psychiatrists could weigh a soul), and a rubber stamp from two doctors in a fortnight. Death, dispensed like a prescription for indigestion. Progress, they call it. I call it a surrender to the abyss, orchestrated by a Labour government so inept, so craven, so utterly undeserving of the reins of power that it might as well be a troupe of clowns juggling Molotov cocktails.

And who’s the ringmaster of this dismal circus? Step forward, Keir Starmer—oh, what a pitiful figure you cut, you hollowed-out husk of a leader. With your sanctimonious smirk and your poll-driven cowardice, you’ve turned Westminster into a mausoleum of moral bankruptcy. This is your legacy, Keir: you are a man so devoid of spine that you'd sign away the elderly, the disabled, the defeated, all while preening about compassion. Compassion? It’s a license to kill, wrapped in your clammy hands. Autonomy? A blank cheque for violence against the divine spark in every human, scribbled by a Prime Minister who couldn’t find principle with a map and a flashlight. Control? You’re not controlling life or death—you’re controlling the timetable, as if you, Keir, were some petty godling with a clipboard, too timid to face the messiness of existence.

It begins, as these things always do, with the tear-jerking tale—the terminal diagnosis, the public sob story, the earnest plea. But mark my words, it ends with coercion, corruption, and a cultural drift from care to killing, all under your watch, you spineless architect of decline. Today it’s six months to live; tomorrow it’s mental distress. Today it’s choice; tomorrow it’s expectation. Today it’s terminal illness; tomorrow it’s “too much of a burden.” The slope isn’t slippery—it’s a greased chute, engineered by a government too cowardly to build a society worth living in.

Look to Belgium, where they’ve taken to euthanising teenagers with the casual efficiency of a factory line, or Canada, where the disabled are offered death when your ideological kin refuse them a roof. This isn’t theory; it’s a ledger of shame, and you, Keir, with your vacant stare and your Ipsos-approved approval ratings, are scribbling the next entry. A society that no longer believes in truth, nation, or life itself—why should we expect restraint from you? What once was sacred is now situational, thanks to your fumbling, unworthy stewardship. What once was duty is now “choice,” a word you wield like a dagger while hiding behind parliamentary procedure.

This isn’t modernity, Keir—it’s moral collapse, and you’re its poster boy, a man so tragically unfit for power that you'd dignify death as an answer to suffering rather than muster the courage to offer support. What civilisation boasts of preserving statues while signing away its most vulnerable? What state, under your flaccid leadership, trades its dignity for a vote count? When this bill passes—and oh, how it stings to predict it—something ancient will die in Britain, something no chamber, no court, no poll can resurrect. Not just life, but the very idea that life is worth the struggle, even at its bleakest.

And you, Keir Starmer, will stand there, hands wringing, as the door swings open to this power— a power the state will never relinquish, only expand. From that death, we may never recover, and the saddest part? It’s overseen by a government, and a man, too feeble, too craven, to deserve the name of leadership. Let the vote be cast. Let the Commons wail. But know this: the soul of Britain slips away, and you, Keir, are its undertaker.

THE RANTING BRUMMIE REVIEWS: "BALLERINA - FROM THE WORLD OF JOHN WICK" (2025)

In the neon-drenched, bullet-riddled cosmos of John Wick, where every shadow conceals a contract killer and every gold coin buys a body bag, a new star ascends to spin her own tale of vengeance. Ballerina: From the World of John Wick, introduces Ana de Armas as Eve Macarro, a ballerina-assassin trained in the Ruska Roma’s peculiar academy of dance and death. De Armas, with her luminous presence and lethal grace, is the film’s pulsing heart, a vision of ferocity and finesse who commands the screen as if she were born to wield both a tutu and a tommy gun.

Whether she’s dispatching goons with a pair of ice skates repurposed as nunchucks or facing down a flamethrower-wielding brute in a climax that feels like a fever dream of Michael Bay’s excesses, de Armas is electrifying. She moves with a scrappy, strategic ferocity, distinct from Keanu Reeves’s stoic precision as John Wick, embodying the film’s mantra to “fight like a girl” with a blend of guile and grit. Her beauty, too, is a weapon: her wide, expressive eyes convey a haunted rage, a flicker of the orphaned girl beneath the assassin’s armour. In a franchise that often fetishizes its violence, de Armas brings a flicker of humanity, a pulse of emotional truth that makes Eve more than just a killing machine.

Yet, for all de Armas’s brilliance, the film around her feels like a lesser shadow of its predecessors. The plot is a threadbare tapestry of vengeance, stitched together from scraps of the John Wick template. Eve, orphaned after her father’s murder by the Chancellor (Gabriel Byrne, underused and underwhelming), is taken in by the Ruska Roma, trained by the stern Director (Anjelica Huston), and set on a path to slaughter those who wronged her. It’s a story we’ve seen before, not just in John Wick but in countless revenge flicks from Kill Bill to La Femme Nikita. The script, weighed down by expository dialogue and half-baked subplots, lacks the lean elegance of the original John Wick, which knew its simplicity was its strength. Ballerina tries to expand the Wick-verse’s mythology but ends up tangled in its own lore, with references to the Continental and the Ruska Roma feeling more like brand obligations than organic storytelling.

The film’s very existence raises a question that Barry Norman, with his rapier wit and skeptic’s eye, might have skewered: why does this need to be? The John Wick series, now four films deep and grossing over a billion dollars, has already stretched its premise thin, its once-fresh world of bespoke assassins and arcane rules growing creaky with each sequel. Keanu Reeves’s cameo as John Wick, though brief, still overshadows Eve’s story, as if the filmmakers feared de Armas alone couldn’t carry the weight on her slender shoulders. The reshoots reportedly overseen by John Wick director Chad Stahelski only deepen the sense that Ballerina is a film caught between two masters—Wiseman’s pulpy instincts and the franchise’s rigid formula—resulting in a product that feels neither bold nor necessary.

Ironically the heart aches for what might have been. De Armas’s star turn here only sharpens the longing for a different kind of spin-off, built on her electrifying performance as Paloma in No Time to Die, where de Armas stole the show in a mere twelve minutes, her Cuban CIA agent a whirlwind of charm, wit, and lethal efficiency. Paloma was a revelation: playful yet deadly, her chemistry with Daniel Craig’s James Bond crackling with a platonic warmth that felt fresh in a franchise often mired in romantic clichés. A Paloma spin-off would have been a chance to explore a new corner of the Bond universe, one infused with de Armas’s infectious enthusiasm and physical prowess, unburdened by the John Wick series’ increasingly convoluted mythology. Instead, Ballerina, a film that, while showcasing de Armas’s action-hero credentials, traps her in a narrative that feels like a cover version of a song we’ve heard too many times.

The action, to be fair, is a saving grace. Wiseman, a veteran of Underworld and Live Free or Die Hard, delivers set pieces that are as inventive as they are absurd: Eve wielding a firehose, smashing plates over heads, or engaging in a flamethrower duel that defies all logic but dazzles the senses. Yet even these sequences, thrilling as they are, can’t fully compensate for the film’s narrative shortcomings. The ballet motif, promised by the title, is little more than a garnish, with Eve’s dance training barely informing her combat style or the story’s emotional core. 

In the end, Ballerina is a paradox: a film elevated by Ana de Armas’s radiant, ruthless performance yet diminished by its rote plotting and questionable raison d’être. She proves she’s more than capable of leading an action franchise, her star power undimmed even as she’s battered by brutes and buried in clichés. But the film feels like a missed opportunity, a detour in a universe that’s already running low on fuel. Ballerina is a spectacle that satisfies in bursts but leaves one pining for a different dance entirely—one where Ana de Armas, unchained from this franchise’s baggage, could truly soar.