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      Climate researchers should play the Trump card | Brief letters

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      The obvious solution to American researchers having grants withdrawn for projects containing the word “climate” (Outcry as Trump withdraws support for research that mentions ‘climate’, 21 February) is to rename climate heating “Trump”. We could be amazed that “Trump makes seas rise”, “Trump makes Greenland a green land again” and “Trump makes summer warmer and longer”. Who would oppose that?Mark DavisFrome, Somerset My friend always said that you should never leave a small child and a dog of any size together as it is equivalent to leaving two toddlers together and giving one of them a pair of sharp scissors (The rise of the cane corso: should this popular status dog be banned in the UK?, 19 February).Vanessa RickettGreat Missenden, Buckinghamshire Aged 14, I received an otherwise good school report (Letters, 20 February) that included an observation made by Mrs Tinlin, my art teacher: “Steven is too easily satisfied by a mediocre standard of work.” Her acid comment provided me with the lifelong motivation to pursue a scientific career.Prof Steve ArmesUniversity of Sheffield When I worked in mainstream schools, pupils’ feedback on their teachers was all the rage. One favourite comment: “I hate RE with Mr Grieve as he occasionally manages to teach me something.” Ian GrieveGordon Bennett, Llangollen canal Re the Duchess of Sussex’s latest rebranding effort “As Ever” (Emma Brockes, 19 February), I couldn’t help feeling it was a little too close to “Whatever”.Sarah HallLeamington Spa, Warwickshire More

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      Top US prosecutor quits over pressure to investigate Biden climate spending

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      A top federal prosecutor has quit after refusing to launch what she called a politically driven investigation into Biden-era climate spending, exposing deepening rifts in the US’s premier law enforcement agency.Denise Cheung, head of criminal prosecutions in Washington, resigned on Tuesday after Trump appointees demanded she open a grand jury investigation into Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grants based largely on an undercover video, multiple people familiar with the matter told CNN.The directive came from the acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove through Ed Martin, Trump’s nominee for Washington DC US attorney. Officials wanted Cheung to investigate EPA contracts awarded during Biden’s tenure and freeze related funding, CNN reported.In her resignation letter, Cheung wrote to Martin that she and other prosecutors had determined there was insufficient evidence to warrant grand jury subpoenas, even if senior officials cited the Project Veritas video as justification.“When I explained that the quantum of evidence did not support that action, you stated that you believed that there was sufficient evidence,” Cheung wrote to Martin. “You also accused me about wasting five hours of the day ‘doing nothing’ except trying to get what the FBI and I wanted, but not what you wanted.”The dispute stems from the EPA administrator, Lee Zeldin’s claim last week about $20bn in climate law funding being held in a Citibank account.The resignation adds to broader upheaval within the justice department, where prosecutors considered unaligned with current leadership have faced termination, particularly those involved in January 6 investigations. More

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      ‘The path forward is clear’: how Trump taking office has ‘turbocharged’ climate accountability efforts

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      Donald Trump’s re-election has “turbocharged” climate accountability efforts including laws which aim to force greenhouse gas emitters to pay damages for fueling dangerous global warming, say activists.These “make polluters pay” laws, led by blue states’ attorneys general, and climate accountability lawsuits will be a major front for climate litigation in the coming months and years. They are being challenged by red states and the fossil fuel industry, which are also fighting against accountability-focused climate lawsuits waged by governments and youth environmentalists.On day one of his second term, the US president affirmed his loyalty to the oil industry with a spate of executive actions to roll back environmental protections and a pledge to “drill, baby, drill”. The ferocity of his anti-environment agenda has inspired unprecedented interest in climate accountability, said Jamie Henn, director of the anti-oil and gas non-profit Fossil Free Media.“I think Trump’s election has turbocharged the ‘make polluters pay’ movement,” said Henn, who has been a leader in the campaign for a decade.More state lawmakers are writing legislative proposals to force oil companies to pay for climate disasters, while law firms are helping governments sue the industry. And youth activists are working on a new legal challenge to the Trump administration’s pro-fossil fuel policies.Industry interests, however, are also attempting to kill those accountability efforts – and Trump may embolden them.The state of Vermont in May passed a first-of-its-kind law holding fossil fuel firms financially responsible for climate damages and New York passed a similar measure in December.The policies force oil companies to pay for climate impacts to which their emissions have contributed. Known as “climate superfund” bills, they are loosely modeled on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s Superfund program.Similar bills are being considered in Maryland, New Jersey, Massachusetts and now Rhode Island, where a measure was introduced last week. A policy will also soon be introduced in California, where recent deadly wildfires have revived the call for the proposal after one was weighed last year.Minnesota and Oregon lawmakers are also considering introducing climate superfund acts. And since inauguration day, activists and officials in a dozen other states have expressed interest in doing the same, said Henn.“I think people are really latching on to this message and this approach right now,” Henn said. “It finally gives people a way to respond to climate disasters, and it’s something that we can do without the federal government.”View image in fullscreenProgressives introduced a federal climate superfund act last year. But with Republicans in control of the White House and both branches of Congress, it has a “less than zero chance of passing”, said Michael Gerrard, the faculty director of the Sabin center for climate change law at Columbia University.The state laws are already facing pushback in the courts. This month, 22 red states and two oil trade groups sued to block New York’s climate superfund law.“This bill is an attempt by New York to step into the shoes of the federal government to regulate something that they have absolutely no business regulating,” West Virginia’s attorney general, John B McCuskey, who led the suit and whose state is a top coal producer, told Fox News.In late December, trade groups also filed a lawsuit against Vermont’s climate superfund act which, if successful, could potentially topple New York’s law.Fossil fuel interests were expected to challenge the climate superfund laws even if Kamala Harris was elected president and have been boosted by Trump’s win. “I think [they] feel like they have more of a shot with the executive backing them,” said Cassidy DiPaola, spokesperson for the Make Polluters Pay campaign.It “would not be shocking” if Trump’s justice department were to file briefs in support of plaintiffs fighting the laws, said Gerrard, which could tip the scales in their favor.More legal challenges may also be on the way, and if additional states pass similar policies, they are expected to face similar lawsuits. But Henn says he is confident the laws will prevail.“I think Republicans think that they’re going to be able to just scare off local legislators or local attorneys general from pursuing a polluter pays agenda, but I think they’re wrong,” he said. “We have widespread public support for this approach. People don’t like the fossil fuel industry.”Over the last decade, states and municipalities have also brought more than 30 lawsuits against fossil fuel interests, accusing them of intentionally covering up the climate risks of their products while seeking damages for climate impacts.As Trump’s pro-fossil fuel policies move the US in “precisely the wrong direction” on the climate crisis, they will “surely inspire yet more litigation”, said Gerrard. Michigan has announced plans to file a suit in the coming months, and more are likely to be rolled out this year.The cases face a formidable opponent in the fossil fuel industry, which has long attempted to fend off the lawsuits. Since January, courts have dismissed litigation filed by New Jersey, New York and a Maryland city and county, saying the states lacked jurisdiction to hear the cases.Other decisions have been positive for the plaintiffs. In three decisions since spring 2023, the supreme court turned down petitions from the fossil fuel industry to move the venue of the lawsuits from the state courts where they were originally filed, to federal courts which are seen as more friendly to the industry.Last week, a court in Colorado heard arguments over the same issue in a lawsuit filed by the city of Boulder. The outcome will have major implications for the future of the challenge.Trump has pledged to put an end to the wave of lawsuits, which he has called “frivolous”. During his first term, his administration filed influential briefs in the cases supporting the oil companies – something his justice department could do again. “It’s clear where their allegiances are,” said Gerrard. “And if they file briefs that would be good for the defendants.”Alyssa Johl, vice-president and general counsel of the Center for Climate Integrity, which tracks and supports the lawsuits, said: “There is still a long road ahead for these efforts, but the path forward is clear.”“As communities grapple with the increasingly devastating consequences of big oil’s decades-long deception, the need for accountability is greater than ever,” she said.Youth-led litigationAnother climate-focused legal movement that is gaining steam: youth-led challenges against state and federal government agencies, for allegedly violating constitutional rights with pro-fossil fuel policies.Trump’s second term presents an important moment for these lawsuits, said Julia Olson, founder of the law firm Our Children’s Trust, which brought the litigation. While some lawyers will fight each rollback individually, her strategy could “secure systemic change”, she said.View image in fullscreenOn Wednesday, a US judge rejected an Our Children’s Trust suit filed by California youth against the EPA, saying the challengers failed to show that they had been injured by the federal body. Olson said the judge “misapplied the law”.That same day, the most well-known Our Children’s Trust case, Juliana v United States – in which 21 young people sued the federal government – suffered a blow. In December, the plaintiffs filed a petition with the supreme court to send the case back to trial after it was tossed out. The US solicitor general has now filed a brief opposing their petition; Olson said it “mischaracterized” the case.Our Children’s Trust’s lawsuits have in other instances seen major victories. In December, Montana’s supreme court upheld a landmark climate ruling in favor of young plaintiffs, which said the state was violating youths’ constitutional right to a clean environment by permitting fossil fuel projects with no regard for global warming.That victory in a pro-fossil fuel red state, said Olson, inspires hope that children could win a lawsuit against a conservative, oil and gas-friendly federal government.She is working on another lawsuit against the Trump administration, whose “brazen” anti-environment agenda could bolster the challengers’ arguments, she said.“These policies will kill children … and by making his agenda obvious, I think that he helps us make that clear.” More

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      There are many ways Trump could trigger a global collapse. Here’s how to survive if that happens | George Monbiot

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      Though we might find it hard to imagine, we cannot now rule it out: the possibility of systemic collapse in the United States. The degradation of federal government by Donald Trump and Elon Musk could trigger a series of converging and compounding crises, leading to social, financial and industrial failure.There are several possible mechanisms. Let’s start with an obvious one: their assault on financial regulation. Trump’s appointee to the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Russell Vought, has suspended all the agency’s activity, slashed its budget and could be pursuing Musk’s ambition to “delete” the bureau. The CFPB was established by Congress after the 2008 financial crisis, to protect people from the predatory activity that helped trigger the crash. The signal to the financial sector could not be clearer: “Fill your boots, boys.” A financial crisis in the US would immediately become a global crisis.But the hazards extend much further. Musk, calling for a “wholesale removal of regulations”, sends his child soldiers to attack government departments stabilising the entire US system. Regulations, though endlessly maligned by corporate and oligarchic propaganda, are all that protect us from multiple disasters. In its initial impacts, deregulation is class war, hitting the poorest and the middle classes at the behest of the rich. As the effects proliferate, it becomes an assault on everyone’s wellbeing.To give a couple of examples, the fires in Los Angeles this year are expected to cost, on various estimates, between $28bn and $75bn in insured losses alone. Estimates of total losses range from $160bn to $275bn. These immense costs are likely to be dwarfed by future climate disasters. As Trump rips down environmental protections and trashes federal responsiveness, the impacts will spiral. They could include non-linear shocks to either the insurance sector or homeowners, escalating into US-wide economic and social crisis.If (or when) another pandemic strikes, which could involve a pathogen more transmissible and even more deadly than Covid-19 (which has so far killed 1.2 million people in the US), it will hit a nation whose defences have been stood down. Basic public health measures, such as vaccination and quarantine, might be inaccessible to most. A pandemic in these circumstances could end millions of lives and cause spontaneous economic shutdown.Because there is little public understanding of how complex systems operate, collapse tends to take almost everyone by surprise. Complex systems (such as economies and human societies) have characteristics that make them either resilient or fragile. A system that loses its diversity, redundancy, modularity (the degree of compartmentalisation), its “circuit breakers” (such as government regulations) and backup strategies (alternative means of achieving a goal) is less resilient than one which retains these features. So is a system whose processes become synchronised. In a fragile system, shocks can amplify more rapidly and become more transmissible: a disruption in one place proliferates into disaster everywhere. This, as Andy Haldane, former chief economist at the Bank of England, has deftly explained, is what happened to the financial system in 2008.A consistent feature of globalised capitalism is an unintentional assault on systemic resilience. As corporations pursue similar profit-making strategies, and financialisation and digitisation permeate every enterprise, the economic system loses its diversity and starts to synchronise. As they consolidate, and the biggest conglomerates become hubs to which many other enterprises are connected (think of Amazon or the food and farming giant Cargill), major failures could cascade at astonishing speed.As every enterprise seeks efficiencies, the system loses its redundancy. As trading rules and physical infrastructure are standardised (think of those identical container terminals, shipping and trucking networks), the system loses both modularity and backup strategies. When a system has lost its resilience, a small external shock can trigger cascading collapse.Paradoxically, with his trade wars and assault on global standards, Trump could help to desynchronise the system and reintroduce some modularity. But, as he simultaneously rips down circuit breakers, undermines preparedness and treats Earth systems as an enemy to be crushed, the net effect is likely to make human systems more prone to collapse.At least in the short term, the far right tends to benefit from chaos and disruption: this is another of the feedback loops that can turn a crisis into a catastrophe. Trump presents himself as the hero who will save the nation from the ruptures he has caused, while deflecting the blame on to scapegoats.Alternatively, if collapse appears imminent, Trump and his team might not wish to respond. Like many of the ultra-rich, key figures in or around the administration entertain the kind of psychopathic fantasies indulged by Ayn Rand in her novels Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, in which plutocrats leave the proles to die in the inferno they’ve created, while they migrate to their New Zealand bunkers, Mars or the ocean floor (forgetting, as they always do, that their wealth, power and survival is entirely dependent on other people). Or they yearn for a different apocalypse, in which the rest of us roast while they party with Jesus in his restored kingdom.Every government should hope for the best and prepare for the worst. But, as they do with climate and ecological breakdown, freshwater depletion, the possibility of food system collapse, antibiotic resistance and nuclear proliferation, most governments, including the UK’s, now seem to hope for the best and leave it there. So, though there is no substitute for effective government, we must seek to create our own backup systems.Start with this principle: don’t face your fears alone. Make friends, meet your neighbours, set up support networks, help those who are struggling. Since the dawn of humankind, those with robust social networks have been more resilient than those without.Discuss what we confront, explore the means by which we might respond. Through neighbourhood networks, start building a deliberative, participatory democracy, to resolve at least some of the issues that can be fixed at the local level. If you can, secure local resources for the community (in England this will be made easier with the forthcoming community right to buy, like Scotland’s).From democratised neighbourhoods, we might seek to develop a new politics, along the lines proposed by Murray Bookchin, in which decisions are passed upwards, not downwards, with the aim of creating a political system not only more democratic than those we currently suffer, but which also permits more diversity, redundancy and modularity.Yes, we also – and urgently – need national and global action, brokered by governments. But it’s beginning to look as if no one has our backs. Prepare for the worst.

      George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist More

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      The Guardian view on supporting vaccines: humans can work miracles – so why wouldn’t we? | Editorial

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      It is easy to become so used to scientific and social advances that we take them for granted. But sometimes we should pause to celebrate – to feel genuine awe – at the wonders that we have seen. Amid all the wars, the disasters and the crimes of the last half century, we have witnessed nothing short of a miracle.Vaccination, in addition to clean water, sanitation and improved nutrition, has been one of the greatest contributors to global health. It is responsible for much of the astounding fall in child mortality, which plummeted by 59% between 1990 and 2022. It has saved more than 150 million lives, mostly of infants, since the Expanded Programme on Immunisation was launched by the World Health Organization in 1974. Initially designed to protect children against diseases including smallpox, tuberculosis, polio and measles, the scheme has since been extended to cover more pathogens. Then, in 2000, came the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (Gavi), a public-private organisation that provides financial and technical support for vaccination in poorer countries and negotiates with manufacturers to lower costs.The results have been remarkable. Prevention is better – and cheaper and easier – than cure. Smallpox was declared eradicated in 1980. Almost all the world is now polio-free. Cases of many other diseases have been slashed. Much more can be done: an estimated 5 million children have been protected against malaria since routine vaccinations were launched a year ago. And from a scientific perspective, we are entering a golden age of vaccines.Yet this is a dangerous moment in other ways. The climate crisis is spurring disease outbreaks. Conflict has dramatically increased the number of unprotected children. Vaccine scepticism has grown. Now cuts to funding threaten to turn the clock back. The trashing of USAid will hinder delivery and has halted a groundbreaking programme to create new malaria vaccines. Robert F Kennedy Jr – who once claimed that “no vaccine is safe and effective” and who tried to persuade the US government to rescind authorisation for the coronavirus vaccine at the height of the pandemic – was confirmed this week as health secretary.Now the UK, one of Gavi’s founding donors and the country which has given most to its core programme, is considering a significant cut to its support. This would be a grave error. While some aspects of Gavi’s approach have faced sensible scrutiny in the past, it has vaccinated over 1 billion children and done so cost-effectively: 97 pence in every pound it is given goes on vaccine programmes. Its success is also evident in the number of countries which have graduated from being beneficiaries to paying their own way; some, including Indonesia, are becoming donors in turn. And Gavi’s stockpiles help to keep people safe in wealthier countries too, as well as ensuring that poorer nations are healthier and more stable.For all these reasons, Gavi has long enjoyed bipartisan support in the UK, which has given it more than £2bn over the last four years. Now, more than ever, its funding must be sustained. The world is full of apparently intractable conflicts and complex moral dilemmas. Few decisions are truly simple for governments. But this one is a no-brainer. It should astonish us that we can so easily save lives. It should be self-evident that we must continue to seize that opportunity. More

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      Musk’s ‘efficiency’ agency site adds data from controversial rightwing thinktank

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      Flanked by Donald Trump in the Oval Office this week, Elon Musk claimed his much-vaunted, but ill-defined, “department of government efficiency” (Doge) was providing “maximum transparency” on its blitz through the federal government.Its official website was empty, however – until Wednesday, when it added elements including data from a controversial rightwing thinktank recently sued by a climate scientist.New elements include Doge’s feed from X, Musk’s social network, and a blank section for savings identified by the agency, promised to be updated “no later than” Valentine’s Day.At the top of the website’s regulations page, Doge used data published by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a libertarian thinktank that claims to fight “climate alarmism”.The CEI’s “unconstitutionality index”, which it started in 2003, compares regulations or rules introduced by government agencies with laws enacted by Congress.The CEI claims to fight “climate alarmism”, and has long worked to block climate-focused policies, successfully lobbying against the ratification of the international climate treaty the Kyoto protocol in 1997, as well as the enactment of the 2009 Waxman-Markey bill, which aimed to place a cap on greenhouse gas emissions.The thinktank ran ads to counter Al Gore’s 2006 documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, claiming in one ad: “The Antarctic ice sheet is getting thicker, not thinner … Why are they trying to scare us?” In a second ad, the thinktank said carbon dioxide was “essential to life”, adding: “They call it pollution. We call it life.” The campaign incited pushback from a scientist who said their research was misrepresented in the ads.During Trump’s first term, the organization also successfully pushed him to pull the US from the 2015 Paris climate treaty. Today, it regularly publishes arguments against the mandatory disclosure of climate-related financial risks and increased efficiency regulations on appliances.Last January, the CEI lost a lawsuit filed against it by the climate scientist Dr Michael Mann for $1m in punitive damages.The thinktank has extensive ties to the far-right network formed by the fossil fuel billionaire Charles Koch and his late brother David. In 2020, the network provided some $900,000 to CEI, public records show – a number that is likely an underestimate, as it does not include “dark money” contributions which need not be disclosed. CEI also accepted more than $640,000 from the Koch network between 1997 and 2015.Its other donors have included the nation’s top oil and gas lobbying group, American Petroleum Institute, and the fossil fuel giant Exxon. The thinktank is also an associate member of ultraconservative State Policy Network, which has also received funding from Koch-linked groups and whose members have fought to pass punitive anti-pipeline protest laws.The White House and CEI were contacted for comment. More

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      Trump names oil and gas advocate to lead agency that manages federal lands

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      Donald Trump has nominated a longtime oil and gas industry representative to oversee an agency that manages a quarter-billion acres of public land concentrated in western states.Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Colorado-based oil industry trade group Western Energy Alliance, was named Bureau of Land Management director, a position with wide influence over lands used for energy production, grazing, recreation and other purposes. An MIT graduate, Sgamma has been a leading voice for the fossil fuel industry, calling for fewer drilling restrictions on public lands that produce about 10% of US oil and gas.If confirmed by the Senate, she would be a key architect of Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” agenda alongside the interior secretary Doug Burgum, who leads the newly formed National Energy Council that Trump says will establish US “energy dominance” around the world. Trump has vowed to boost US oil and gas drilling and move away from Joe Biden’s focus on the climate crisis.The former interior secretary David Bernhardt relocated the land bureau’s headquarters to Colorado during Trump’s first term, leading to a spike in employee resignations. The bureau went four years under Trump without a confirmed director.The headquarters for the 10,000-person agency was moved back to Washington DC under Biden, who installed the Montana conservationist Tracy Stone-Manning at the bureau to lead his administration’s efforts to curb oil and gas production in the name of fighting the climate crisis.Sgamma will be charged with reversing those policies, by putting into effect a series of orders issued last week by Burgum as part of Trump’s plan to sharply expand fossil fuel production.Burgum ordered reviews of many of Stone-Manning’s signature efforts, including fewer oil and gas lease sales, an end to coal leasing in the country’s biggest coal fields, a greater emphasis on conservation and drilling and renewable energy restrictions meant to protect a wide-ranging western bird, the greater sage grouse. Burgum also ordered federal officials to review and consider redrawing the boundaries of national monuments that were created under Biden and other presidents to protect unique landscapes and cultural resources.Sgamma said on social media she was honored to be nominated.She said she greatly respects the agency’s work to balance multiple uses for public lands – including energy, recreation, grazing and mining — with stewardship of the land. “I look forward to leading an agency that is key to the agenda of unleashing American energy while protecting the environment,” she wrote on LinkedIn.But environmentalists warned that Sgamma would elevate corporate interests over protections for public land. “Kathleen Sgamma would be an unmitigated disaster for our public lands,” said Taylor McKinnon at the Center for Biological Diversity, adding that Sgamma has “breathtaking disdain for environmental laws, endangered species, recreation, or anything other than industry profit”.The Wyoming governor, Mark Gordon, said Sgamma’s nomination was an “excellent choice”.“I know she is well-qualified and knowledgeable when it comes to Wyoming, the West, and multiple use of public lands,” Gordon, a Republican, said in a statement.Trump nominated Brian Nesvik to lead the US Fish and Wildlife Service, which also is under the interior department and helps recover imperiled species and protect their habitat.Nesvik until last year led the Wyoming game and fish department, where he pushed to remove federal protections for grizzly bears. That would open the door to public hunting for the first time in decades after the animals bounced back from near-extinction last century in the northern US Rocky Mountains.The Biden administration in its last days extended protections for more than 2,000 grizzly bears in and around Yellowstone and Glacier national parks, a move that was blasted by Republican officials in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana. More

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      Air traffic control to Sir Keir: turbulence ahead | Stewart Lee

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      To Elon Musk, I say this! To perform oneNazi salute at Donald Trump’s inauguration, while simultaneously offering full support to European neo-Nazis, might be considered a misfortune. To perform two Nazi salutes at Donald Trump’s inauguration, while simultaneously offering full support to European neo-Nazis, begins to look like carelessness.I didn’t write that joke. I have cannibalised it from one by the gay Irish Victorian Oscar Wilde, a typical diversity hire who would have achieved nothing had his work not been promoted by the famously woke 19th-century British establishment. Luckily, Wilde was dead long before he had the opportunity to emigrate to the US and take an air traffic controller job from a more deserving straight white male, where his gayness would have caused planes to crash.And dead also is Wilde’s contemporary Little Tich, the resilient dancing midget, whose spectacular gravity-defying boots can still be seen on display in Bloomsbury’s bijoux Museum of Comedy, alongside Tommy Cooper’s fez and a jar of thoughts John Cleese was forbidden from articulating owing to political correctness. But I dread to think of the havoc a capering music hall midget might have wrought on today’s international flight paths. It is a relief that Trump has targeted the diversity policies that could lead, directly up the gently sloping access ramp of woke inclusivity, to millions of appalling aviation disasters.Call me a textbook member of the tofu-munching north London wokerati, but I am proud to live in a world where people of shorter stature, while still entitled to dance in funny shoes if they so desire, can also be air traffic controllers. And call me a textbook member of the cinnamon latte-guzzling liberal elite, but it does seem wrong for the new president of the US to blame dwarf diversity hires and lazy amputees and those pesky epileptics for an air crash, without any evidence, especially when he’s reportedly just laid off loads of air traffic controllers.On a recent Friday in York, I had a lovely north African tapas lunch with a longstanding comedy promoter who, though still young, was old enough to remember working for a special bowling alley in Blackpool, where small people in crash helmets mounted on little trolleys were ricochetted down the aisles at speed towards clusters of vulnerable skittles by violently drunk stag parties. In the end, this massively popular seaside attraction – dwarf bowling – closed early, not because someone in Blackpool had a belated anxiety about whether it was ethical, but because of the injuries sustained by those being bowled down the lanes by the intoxicated revellers.In the 1920s, Blackpool’s midgets lived in their own Midget Town on top of the Blackpool Tower, where tourists paid to see them go about their daily business in suitably scaled-down settings. It was a living. But when Midget Town finally closed, the pre-PC future offered only pantomime, seasonal work and bowling. It’s a world Trump would like to return to.Ah, well! Meet our potential major trading partner, whose return, according to Boris Johnson, was to be celebrated as another welcome victory over the woke. Witnessing the adjudicated sex abuser and convicted felon’s inauguration, Johnson, perhaps scenting his own second chance in the offing, related in the Daily Mail how, as the “invisible pulse of power surged” from the battered bible into the hand of Trump: “I saw the moment the world’s wokerati had worked so hard to prevent.” I can’t even be bothered to write anything funny about a man who could pen something so cynical, stupid and self-serving. I wish Johnson, the wounded wild pig of world politics, wandering around the central reservation wailing, having been winged by a passing Winnebago, would just fuck off. For ever.Too many of our politicians and pundits seem willing to take a wait-and-see approach to the wild swings of Trump’s pendulous wrecking balls. We should stand strong against Trump alongside Canada, the harmless honey bear of international politics suddenly rearing up like an animatronic grizzly in an 80s B-movie. Keir Starmer is in danger of being on the wrong side of history, his only consolation being that, at the current rate of collapse, there may not be much history left. Like the natural world Starmer wishes to destroy, it seems history may be a finite resource.“Drill, baby, drill!” cries Trump, as Los Angeles burns and Greenland’s permafrost unfreezes to the point where the previously unexploitable country may actually be worth him invading. Meanwhile, Starmer’s cry is the same but more complex and no less stupid. “Build a third runway and drill in the Rosebank oilfield, baby, build a third runway and drill in the Rosebank oilfield! And while you’re at it, lock up peaceful environmental protesters too. Especially the elderly.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionStarmer can’t really criticise Trump’s planet-pulverising withdrawal from the Paris agreement, let alone his baseless hostility to a phalanx of imaginary disabled air traffic incompetents, when he too has decided to throw all life on Earth under the bus, despite having once been an idealistic teenager who left his “village and went to the city of Leeds” and “discovered a whole new world of indie bands – like Orange Juice and the Wedding Present”. Bless!I began this supposedly funny column on Monday morning, when the US president was still saying Starmer was “very nice” and there’d be no UK tariffs. Then I travelled to Oxford to do a show, and one takeaway coffee and a homemade sausage sandwich later, the UK seemed to have drifted back into Trump’s target zone, depending on which interpretation of his last mouth-fart of vengeful gobbledy-vomit you chose to believe. There’s no point trying to make plans around the whims of Trump. Starmer may as well throw cake at a hippo or try to cajole a box jellyfish. Go to Brussels on bended knee and beg for brotherhood.

      Stewart Lee tours Stewart Lee vs the Man-Wulf this year, with a Royal Festival Hall run in July

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