In this week's show Mark fielded questions and comments from Mark Steyn Club members on a variety of topics including Hungary, Iran, Quebec and, of course, the United Kingdom which has just banned Steyn Show favourite Eva Vlaardingerbroek from entering its well-protected borders.
Unfortunately, there was an issue with the quality of the recording, so we are making the action replay available in transcript form below. We apologize for any discombobulation this may cause.
[Rough Transcript - Clubland Q&A - January 14, 2026]
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The SteynOnline Clubland Q and A begins right now. And now, here's Mark:
Hey. Welcome along. January 14, 2026, our second show of the new year. It is 12 noon, North American, Pacific Time, 1pm Mountain Time, 2pm Central Time. But no matter where you are across the fruited plain, there are massive outages at Verizon, T Mobile, US Cellular, AT & T, your lousy phone company here. So if you're afflicted, I do hope you're able to listen to us.
3pm in Washington, DC, where the administration has paused immigrant visa processing for 75 countries. That's now over a third of all the nations on Earth. It's because those immigrants are the ones particularly prone to launching daycare centers
4pm in Halifax Nova Scotia, where the Vimy branch of the Royal Canadian Legion has closed just a year short of its centenary, 99 years because it is no longer financially viable.
6pm in Nuuk, Greenland, where the Danish Ministry of Defense has landed additional troops for, quote, Arctic training.
8pm in London, where Lucy Connolly, who spent 10 months in jail for a tweet, is now facing a recall to prison for a retweet of a joke, a meme, as they say, about Donald Trump arresting Keir Starmer
9pm in Paris, where the government has banned 10 quote, far right activists from the UK from entering France. They're members of the Eaise the Xolors campaign, which has been hoisting union flags and St George's crosses all over England. They don't want any of that in Brittany and Normandy.
10pm in- I can't do it- Kiev. It's Kiev now, 10pm in Kiev, it's amazing. Just adding vowel sounds, just elongating vowel sounds isn't actually much help when you're fighting a war. In Kiev, it's minus 14 Celsius. That's six degrees Fahrenheit, and much of the capital city remains without power. Quote from Alina, a resident of Kiev:
"I live in a new building on the 17th floor, but we have no elevator, no electricity and no water supply."
It will be down to zero fahrenheit by dawn walking up and down 17 flights of stairs to and from your flat is one way to keep warm in such conditions, aside from frostbite. 2025 was the deadliest year for civilian fatalities since the war started four years ago.
11pm at The Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar, from where US military personnel are being withdrawn as a quote precaution.
11:30pm in Tehran, where Ayatollah telly has broadcast an image of the Trump assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, accompanied by the caption: "this time, the bullet won't miss."
1:45am in Kathmandu, for all you Iranian Ayatollahs, overcome by a sudden urge to move to Nepal to check out the quarter hour time zone,
3am in Sikhio district in Thailand's Nakhon Ratchasima Province where at least 32 people are dead and another 66 injured after a construction crane fell on a passenger train. The crane was there building the country's first high speed rail line, a joint Thai- Chinese project.
5am in Nara Japan, where President Lee Jae Myung of South Korea and Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi concluded their summit by drumming out a medley of K-Pop hits and matching K-Pop outfits. In other news of South Korean presidents, this is your one stop shop for all your South Korean presidential news, but prosecutors are calling for the death penalty for President Lee's predecessor, President Yoon Suk Yeol, after his attempt to impose martial law just a year ago. It is not yet known whether they will also seek the death penalty for what President Lee concedes was his quote clumsy drumming.
6:30am in South Australia, where one of the country's biggest arts jamboree is the Adelaide Festival has all but disintegrated following the slaughter of Jews On Bondi Beach. The Adelaide organizers withdrew an invitation to its writers week to Dr Randa Abdel Fattah, a quote vocal critic of Israel. In response, 180 other authors pulled out, starting with that acclaimed New Zealand word Smith, Dame Jacinda Ardern
9am in Dame Jacindas, Auckland.
9:45am in the Chatham Islands, my current favorite quarter hour time zone, and an even more civilized hour for the kippers and kedgeree in His Majesty's Dominions eastward across the Pacific.
Today, January the 14th is the Feast of the Ass. Nothing to do with Sir Keir Starmer splashing out on the two twink special at his favorite Ukrainian rent boy agency in Mayfair. It's the medieval Christian feast marking the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt after Jesus's birth to escape Herod's slaughter of the innocent. I feel sad just having to give an explanation of that.
We have breaking news from Quebec, the premier Francois Legault has just announced his resignation.
We also have more significant breaking news from a favorite Steyn show guest on Friday, Eva Vlaardingerbroek tweeted about quote the evil, despicable Keir Starmer.
That's what Eva said. I'd probably have said every Pakistani Muslim gang rapist's best pal, but she was tweeting about Sir Keir and his plans to ban X under the pretext of protecting women. This in a country that lets in savages every day of the week to assault and rape women and girls. That's on you, Starmer. Well, it's on Boris Johnson and all the other bleep wits of the uni-party.
Just five days after Eva's tweet, the British Home Office - an institution hollowed out by Islam, run by Islam under a Muslim Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmoud - the British Home Office has revoked Eva's Electronic Travel Authorization and is thus preventing her from traveling to the United Kingdom on the grounds that her presence in the country would not be, quote, conducive to the public good.
And like all those Afghan and Somali rapists Sir Keir admits or that Egyptian guy who wants to kill all white people. Starmer, one notices, does not deny entry to all those fetching Ukrainian rent boys. Quite the opposite, a country that will not admit Eva Vlaardingerbroek within its borders is not a free country.
That joke AI video Lucy Connolly posted of Trump busting into Downing Street and seizing Starmer. Do it for real, Mr. President. Okay, let us get to your questions...
Chris Davies writes, by the way, if you like Chris's questions, you should see his answers, because he's a regular on our pal Dan Wootton's show, or which you can see, I think it's every day at what is it? Five? Five o'clock London time. So that's noon, North American Eastern. But you can see Chris as a regular on Dan's superstar panel. Very good.
Chris says:
Mark, I hope you are well,
No. But then he says:
Eva Vlaardingerbroek has been barred from entering the UK on the grounds that her presence is not considered to be conducive to the public good. They're just bleeping with us now, aren't they?
Says Chris, well, who is conducive to the public good is this bastard ass from Egypt whom the useless Tory Party decided they were going to make a so called British citizen. He's not in the least bit British, but he was in jail in Egypt. He was in jail in Egypt. I don't know what he was jailed in Egypt for but he should be in jail in the UK. He wants to kill an awful lot of people. And I don't know..he might just be the sort of little bit of light entertainment, a touch of Egyptian stand up comedy. We don't know. But on the other hand, we know that when Eva called Sir Queer evil and what was the other what was the other word, she said evil and despicable, that that was enough to get her banned. So why isn't threatening to kill white people enough to get this guy down?
You know it's happening fast now. Has Fagarge got anything to say about this? Oh, no, says Richard Tice. We don't have anything to do with that lot. Eva has more courage in her little finger than those reform UK guys have in their entire flabby bodies. Eva is fearless. I'll admit this because you know...
Well, I'll tell you first about how it ended, when I had my, whatever it was, the first and second heart attacks, and then I was in the ICU in France, and we've been planning for the following week. So that would be the week, I think that would be the week beginning December the seventh, something like that second week of December,
We'd been planning on having sort of co-hosts with me the following week, and the two we'd selected because they were like two of our most popular regulars were Leilani and Eva.
So Eva was all set, had cleared her calendar to fly into London. So this would have been a big problem then, because if Starmer had banned my co-host, I'd have had to crank myself up and do a full 60 minutes of work each day, which wasn't such a great shape for but instead, a wanker, not just soft c**k, a lot of soft c**k flop a lot...the GB News Chief Executive, but the guy who has to book the mini cabs, Mick Booker. That's why I remember the name, because he's Mick the mini cab Booker. That's how they know him.
Mick Booker, the first thing they did when I was in the ICU. So, I mean, they're all telling me, as they still do, my delightful Provencal nurses, that I have to not have stress. The first thing I'd heard was that they'd scuttled that plan and given it to lame ass in house guys to host the show. So they screwed over Eva, they screwed over Leilani. They're revolting people, those guys, but it's because they never draw... Imagine if they had let her do that. Now, Eva is incredibly popular. She rates very highly, mainly because some people think that she's rather better looking than I am. I don't know. I don't know why. I mean, yeah, I'm a couple of years older than but I look fabulous, I always thought. But anyway, Eva and Leilani always rated well.
And imagine then, if Starmer had, actually, if so, she's like a regular on GB news, and she's a guest host on on GB news, and Starmer had, then, you know, said to his Ukrainian twink, okay, can you wrap it up now? Because I got to go and ban Eva Vlaardingerbroek from entering the United Kingdom. Everything has got worse in the three years since I parted company with GB news. It's got, it's gotten, it's getting, I don't mean for me, and I don't mean, you know, for these mediocrities in the political parties, it's hardly worth. I mean, nobody is enthused about electing the 2022 Tory cabinet, which is what Farage's plan is, apparently.
But the idea that I loved it when, when Eva used to fly in and do the show live with me in the studio, I loved it because we used to go for dinner in Jermyn street afterwards. And she and Raisa, her friend, always very, very good company, and, she I think, was one of the very best at explaining what's going on. For example, she said, which I think is true, band it's a symptom of the high tech world we live in that their presumption is that everyone is guilty, so they treat you as a criminal. She didn't like it when she landed at Heathrow and she had to have her photograph taken. They took. They take a photograph of Eva every time she landed at Heathrow before she could pass on through to the GB News studios.
As I said, I think earlier, did I say this? Maybe I meant to say it just now, but a country that will not admit -will not admit - Eva Vlaardingerbroek within its borders, is not a free country.
Keir Starmer, you know, I keep joking about the Ukrainian rent boys, Keir Starmer is living some pretty cosmic sized lies, and he's got a pretty sweet deal whereby, under under English law, nobody can write about it in the newspapers, nobody can talk about it on the BBC. This is in conjunction with, I think it's three or four Ukrainian quote, unquote male models being charged with fire bombing, Sir Keir's car, Sir Keir's rental property and some other address of which Sir Keir lives in. All these...the Ukrainian male model community seems to know an awful lot about where Sir Keir lives. There's no mention of it in Fleet Street. There's no mention of it on the BBC. He controls almost everything, and so the one thing he doesn't control, which is Twitter he's determined to shut down the the descent into darkness is accelerating. Where is Nigel Far... and you can't appeal this decision, by the way. If you go and look at Eva's Twitter feed, she's got the letter from the Home Office, then it just says at the bottom, this decision cannot be appealed. Oh, that's great, isn't it? Oh, very nice.
So it's not like when you decide to deport an Afghan rapist and that guy can appeal it for the next 30 sod bollocking years.
This is the descent into darkness.
It's not just, Oh, nothing works anymore. I have to wait so long. I can't get an appointment with the GP. I can't afford a flat. I can't do this. It's got that's what Nadine Zahawi was talking about, Farage and that...God, awful pri**. It's way beyond that. This is a totalitarian state.
This is a totalitarian state.
James Olsen said
with Eva Vlaardingerbroek now banned from travel to the UK, how long will it be until a nobody such as myself will have to consider self censoring online post to assure my summer golf trip to the UK isn't a casualty of Keir Starmer's totalitarian lurchings.
Your point is very well taken. James, I take it. You know, you're not a UK citizen.
But basically, there's no reason why, if you've got some tweet, like Eva's tweet is out there, there's no reason why you couldn't be detained at Heathrow.
What's interesting about the what's his name, The Father Ted guy, Graham Linehan, when he was arrested at Heathrow, is that the US, if you want to know what other countries should do about this. Here's what. Graham Linehan when he was arrested upon landing at Heathrow.
Now he's they can't deny him entering with you, James, if you're not a UK or Irish citizen, If you're American, or whatever they can, they can probably deny you entry, and you'd find as you went to check in for the flight that you weren't being allowed to get on the plane.
But the interesting thing with Graham is that as he was going through he turned up to get on the flight to London, and he, you know, he booked his seat, whatever it was, and they said, Oh no, no, no, where we can't, we can't give you seat and assignment at this point, it was only when he got through, which is always sort of slightly annoying. It was only when he'd got for at the very last minute that they gave him his gave him his seat. This is because they had to put him in the preferred seat of the police, like at Heathrow, so that when they board the plane, it's easiest for them just to keep him in there or to take him off first. So in other words, just to be clear on this, it was the United States government that cooperated with the police at Heathrow in making it easier for the police at Heathrow to arrest Graham. That's got to stop.
That's got to stop. Britain is departing the civilized world. I'm in favor of violent revolution. I think those Iranians have got the right idea.
Because sometimes that's... this is increasingly not a reformable state. The fact is, the number of people willing to go along with this, you know, all the institutions are hollowed up that people's the sort of cultural image you have. So people thinking about the home office, because everything's out of date. Their image of British Civil Servants is like, you know, John Cleese's Ministry of Silly Wars because they're two generations out of date in the cultural lab, it's not their hard core, Islamic supremacists who run the UK Home Office and and Sarah Rogers, I think her name is the deputy assistant Under Secretary of State at the State Department who tweets up a storm about this stuff. One thing that Sarah needs to mention to Marco Rubio, and Marco Rubio needs to mention to whoever the transportation secretary is, is that the Department of Homeland Security should not be cooperating with the UK police in arresting Graham Linehan or anybody else they should not that's all got to stop either you're serious about this. I don't know about this list of 75 countries that are now ineligible for visas to visit the US, but the United Kingdom ought to be on there. It's departed the ranks of civilized nations.
Norman Fenton says
Mark, I'm sure you've seen that starmer's out of control. Government has today banned our friend Eva villating A Brook from entering the UK. She seems to think it was because she complained about Starmer three days ago. I suspect it's more to do with the fact that she spoke at the massive Tommy Robinson rally in September, and Tommy is planning another one on 16th of man. Interested to know your view
Well, it could be either or could be both. It could be neither. It could be something else entirely. But Starmer is very thin skinned, so if you if you say that he is despicable and evil, which you ought to be able to say about your political leadership in a free society.
He's thin skinned enough for that He's thin skinned enough to do it for that reason, as I recall when she spoke at the Tommy Robinson rally in September, there were quite a lot of people there from across Europe and other places. And I'd be interested to know whether all this the non UK residents, have now been banned from they're also now regarded as conducive, not conducive to the public good. By the way, when Eva, Eva made a good point. You know, almost nobody Britain admits these days is conducive to the public good, but yet, Eva is the only one who who gets banned. That again, this, this, whether the whether Britain is full blown totalitarian.
This particular,for example, when you want to deport an Afghan rapist or Somali rapist, we have it explained to us that, because of the European Convention on Human Rights, this can't be done. That can't be done. They bribed the guy, the one guy who he'd been in Britain a week and he'd sexually assaulted two minors, and then they accidentally let him out of prison. For some reason they released, they imprisoned him, and then they so called, accidentally release him from prison. So he's just like wandering around London like Peter Sellers. And being there, he doesn't know why they've let him out or why where he's going, he goes and buys a fancy tote bag. And so when they decide, okay, this is embarrassing for us, and they find people are photographing him, but people are saying, people are posting on social, oh, I just saw him at East Finchley tube station, or whatever it was there.
And they sort of find the wanker coppers, like always two tube stops behind and catching up. But eventually they get him and whichever Ukrainian rent boy, Sir Queer has delegated that to particular government job to decides they want him just out of the country, back in his benighted part of East Africa, super quickly. So they actually pay him they give him 500 pounds not to appeal, because they know if he appeals, he'll be in the country for another sod marking 20 years. So they give him 500 pounds, which is the equivalent of a year's salary in Ethiopia, and he goes back to Ethiopia richer than any of his friends have ever been. That's how they do it because of, oh, well, that's because of the European Convention and human rights and the European Court of Human Rights. Oh, I see so Eva, who is European Dutch, the European Convention and the European Court doesn't apply to Europeans. This is an this is.. I don't know quite what to do about this, but taken in tandem with the 10 far right extremists, so called the ones putting up the flag of England in England, which apparently marks you out as an extremist, banned from France. This is the way it's going to be. And never mind your 15 minute cities. It's going to be 15 minute countries.
This is... this is the future. The future has shown up.
Brian Bennett says
hello from North Texas, where the former neighborhood of JR Ewing is rapidly being overtaken by the Islamic community. I joined the club this week.
Oh, well, great to have you with us, Brian, I'm glad about something I knew of. Brian Bennett, this is decades ago. Was he in the I see a guitarist? Was he in the shadows?
I joined this week before I finally came to my senses and determined that The Mark Steyn Club is a far better value than my heavily discounted please don't cancel us rate for National Review subscription the happy warriors departure began a decline in both the humor and the subscription price. That continues unabated. I always started on the back page, and I decided it's time to get the full expression of Steyn again. My question is, did the crack secret service team ever determine who imported the cocaine into the West Wing during the Biden debacle, no fingerprints found on the plastic baggie, no video surveillance evidence we're going on three years since the cocaine was discovered, and the owner has never been found. Hmmm
P.S. I keep having to buy new copies of America Alone, because when I loan them out, they never come back.
I have I've never had any regard for the United States Secret Service, to be honest, ever since I saw them in action in New Hampshire a few years ago. They're, they're too big, they're too bloated. It's, it's, you can't have the idea that, if you have, you know, we've all seen the, I was going to say the 40 car motorcade, but I think it's up to, like 50 or 75 cars, or whatever it is now. When you've got that many guys in the reflector shades with the telephone cords dangling out of the ear, how many, the likely the men, the bigger you make the team.
This is relevant to the guy we were talking about earlier at SteynOnline, this guy who's just been exposed by James O'Keefe in a classic honey trap, they just find some bird who starts chit chatting with him, and in order to big himself up in front of the bird, he starts he's on JD Vance's security detail. He tells her that, and then he starts blabbing various operational details of what it's like being on JD Vance's security detail. This is a year and a half after some some bird brain supposed, managed to put a bullet in the guy who was then the 45th president of the United States, has anything changed? No. And this guy, this guy, they've suspended that James O'Keefe has on video blabbing secrets of JD Vance's security to the honey trap.
This guy isn't gonna face any serious punishment. None of them ever do...that's - I can't stand that. I wrote a column two days after 9/11 wondering why the big shots who did all these jobs that totally failed, like the, whatever it is, the what's it called, the FAA, the Federal air craft administration, or whatever it's called, why they will still in their jobs? Do you remember that guy, the Mohammed Atta, the guy who flew the plane into the first building, or whatever it was, six months, almost exactly six months. So the spring of 2002 he's approved. He's the most famous terrorist in the world. His cold, dead eyes won the front page of every sod-bollocking newspaper in the world. And six months afterwards, some wanker at US Citizenship and Immigration, or whatever it was called, that week, approves the renewal of Mohammed Atta's visa, right?
That's how crap that guy...could you at least we understand there's millions of people walking into the country, but at least the famous terrorists, could you try not approving their visas? But no, he goes, Hey, because, apart from anything else, the address he's given big hole in the ground, lower Manhattan, New York, New York. That seemed that we can't seem to get a reliable zip code for them. You would have thought something like that might have caught the wanker bureaucrats attention. But no, and all the Bush administration did was move that guy, quote, unquote, sideways, right? There is no accountability for anything in this disgusting and depraved system.
And when it comes to the Secret Service. You know, we all know how that way. I used to mock that when with the Caragena hookers. So you know, the guys doing the advance work for whoever it was back then, was it Clinton or Obama or whoever it was, they fly them in to Cartagena weeks in advance, they've got nothing to do. So all they do is the hookers who are pretty pricey there. The only one I liked was the guy who'd been all night with the most expensive hooker in Cartagena, and he pays her in the corridor, which, this is a project, guys, it's not usually a good idea to be best to keep the hooker in the room until you pay, rather than taking her out into the HOST corridor.
So the most expensive hooker in Cartagena says, that'll be, you know, 1500 bucks or whatever. And this guy goes through his pockets and says, and he's got, like, 17 bucks and 47 cents. So he says, That's what I'll give you. So she starts screaming, I'll tell you what, by the way, that guy is a lousy Secret Service agent, but he should be in charge of the Office of Federal budget management, and what's it called, OMB, whatever Office of Management. That guy should be the guy who says, I don't have 1500 bucks here. I'll give you 1717 bucks, 83 in the pool that quits. That guy should be doing the Office of Management and Budget, if you're listening, Mr. President, and what did they do in response? That's when you know, by the way, that the secret that they're not going to take a bullet for you. They when you want them to take a bullet for you, they'll be with the Cartagena hooker. They'll be firing totally different kinds of...
What was the response of the United States government was to pass a law making it illegal for Secret Service agents to have foreign nationals in their rooms. Oh, okay, so it's not a hooker problem, it's a foreign national problem. There'd be, there'd be no problem if they had had hookers from Cleveland. Oh, by golly, that's one of the jobs we can Americans can do, yeah, charging 1500 bucks for half an hour with a Secret Service agent that we can do. Yeah, so the problem isn't the hookers. The problem is foreign that sometimes, as I said, I maybe said it back then a society becomes too stupid to survive.
Kathy Shadle, whom we've been remembering the last few days, because it's the fifth anniversary of her death, always said that the point to remember is that the police are bureaucrats with guns so they can do more damage to you than a clerk at The DMV can. But in in the end, you know, because they can, they can perforate you, but in the end, they think, like a lot of bureaucrats, and this is I would not if I were, people occasionally ask me, why don't you run for president, because, you know, if Obama is eligible, why not me? I was in the next ward at the coastal Hospital in Mombasa.
Anyway, the thing is if I were to entertain that fault seriously, I wouldn't want to mortgage my life to the guys who did Butler Pennsylvania, or the guy who's on camera talking to James O'keefe's honey trap about what's all the secrets of JD Vance's security? Would you?
We know that the left is panting to put a bullet in people. I mean, the blood lust is in their nostrils, and yet you can't, you can't find a security detail willing to keep its own secrets. This is...This is just terrible, the corruption and the and the unseriousness of institutions like the US Secret Service and after what happened. Why is there no accountability for Butler?
There's no accountability for this guy, either he's been suspended, so he'll be like Lois Lerner at the IRS, you know, he'll spend a few weeks at home, and then they'll transition him to retirement on a full pension. Nobody pays a price for the wanker. So that's why it's wankers all the way down.
Kelly Harbeson says
so a Biden appointee, SS agent that openly hates Trump, leaks info about the Vice President's itinerary to the press. I suppose that's better than taking it to Iranian assassins.
Well, don't be so sure that those Iranian assassins aren't getting heads up on these things.
But what consequences will he face asks Kelly, loss of job, loss of pension, or just loss of his place on the advancement roster. Only when consequences are certain and significant, will these people notice.
Bingo.
But in the meantime, if I were Trump and if I were JD Vance, I would have my own private security on the premises, so at least there'll be a sporting chance instead of being assassinated, you'll just be shot in the crossfire between competing groups of security.
Scott Schertzer writes:
Dear Mark, can you please explain why Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the rest of the Gulf states, don't want the mullahs in Iran to fall? Is it merely the old adage, Better the devil you know than the devil you don't know, or is it something deeper? What do you think of the odds of someone or something worse, supplanting the current regime Scott Schertzer in Miami Beach.
I don't I think it would be very difficult to come up with something worse. I mean, the options you know, there's the Shah's son, the Crown Prince, has been able to call out a lot of people onto the streets, and there seem to be, in these protests, a lot of people who are keen to see a restoration of the Iranian monarchy.
I don't know. There's actually a lot of...when you factor in the Kurds and the bollocks.
I'm not being rude about the Iranians. I'm talking about the....when you factor in the Kurds and the Wallace and whatnot, there's an awful lot of different ethnic factions in Persia, and to find some. And, you know me, I think actually, monarchy can sometimes do quite a good job of presiding over various factions like that. But I don't I, I don't know in this case, and then you have the solution.
I suggested a few days ago, the whatever they call, the Revolutionary Guards, the IRGC, the igrc, whatever they call, they decide to shift Khomeni aside, and they put some, you know, weakling, loser, sock puppet, some Joe Biden type in as the not so supreme, supreme leader. And life goes on or but what the Saudis and the Emirates don't want chaos. They're all about... all these guys prioritize stability above all else. I mean, this may seem difficult to imagine in, say, a an England where The English are going to become a minority in England, a demographic minority by, say, 2040, same in Austria, same in Sweden, a few years later. But they prioritize stability. They like normal rules. They prioritize stability. So they don't want chaos.
And if you look at it from their point of view, the supreme leader and the nutso Mullahs are stability. That's to say the Iranian Revolution was what 1979 - So the mullahs have been running Iran for as long as the house of Saud had been running Saudi Arabia in 1979. That's stability, or indeed, you know, when the Trucial States in the early 70s were Britain ended the protectorate, and they became the United Arab Emirates. So the United Arab Emirates, look at it, say, Well, these guys have been basically around as long as we've been the Emirates. So the trouble if you just have a revolution and destroy the revolution is that it risks giving people in the Emirates and Saudi Arabia, oh, well, maybe the same thing might be doable here, and they don't like they don't like that. And the thing here is that you can have an accommodation with certain types of regimes. The problem for the world with the Iranian regime is that it claims global jurisdiction, so it goes and blows up a Jewish Community Center in Argentina. That's a long way from the Middle East Argentina, you know these that's the point, and that's what happened within months of the Iranian hostage, no one had to worry about, say, the Soviet Union when it came to power, sending its goons to seize people in the US Embassy or whatever, in Moscow.
That was, that was one of the most elemental basic norms you could rely on. And Iran disregarded that because it claims the right claims global jurisdiction, but it is, but it's weakened now. Its proxies are weakened, its ambitions are weakened. and the Saudis are figuring, you know, well, this thing's in terminal decline. No one really likes it. It'll transition into something other maybe.
Suzanne Reny says
it appears Francois Legault the Quebec premieres resigned. Didn't see that one coming. Any thoughts on this development? I'd much rather hear your thoughts on the situation in Iran.
Well, he discredited himself. Monsieur Legault, this is the guy who - his whole thing...I won't try the patience of non Quebec listeners too much on this, but I will say that if you were on the 2018 Mark Steyn Cruise, just after he'd been elected, and I had a talk with Jacques. I remember one night, I was having a chit chat with some of our Quebec cruisers, and they liked this guy, because he wasn't either. He sort of seemed to have cracked them all, so he wasn't bothering with all the secessionist talk about having, you know, a new referendum on Quebec seceding because it's a phony secession movement anyway. You know, you complain about the Iranians, but they're hardcore about it. They kill you. They're prepared to slaughter you in large numbers to pull off their Islamic revolution. The collectors don't want to do that, so it's just a racket to shake down Anglo Canada. And so first with Legault, everyone was kind of quite excited about him for the early part of his term.
And then covid hit and he and he brought in things like the lockdown, the curfew in Quebec, because my kids were under it at one point, from 6pm in the evening Until 6am the following morning. So it was a longer curfew than occupied France under the Nazis. And, my kids, they'd sort of look out the window and they detect, determine when it was, when it was safe to fly the coop from their... old student flat, and then, and then we'd all, you know, go downstairs, and they'd be sneaking. They knew all the alleys, and they were sneaking here and sneaking there, but it was a tyrannous regime, and he gradually abandoned everything.
What covid did worldwide was show you what the instincts of the Western leadership class, with the exception of Swedes, and I don't know whether Belarus, if you want to count that as a Western nation. But other than that, I think Sweden, Belarus and Florida, that was about it for freedom in place.
If you do want to hear my thoughts on Iran, all we need to pull this off. You need to have regime abandonment by important elements of the existing regime, and we're not really seeing that in Iran now that they're just shooting the they're just like shooting 23 year old female students in the streets. Then policemen or soldiers or whatever, who might have been thinking about going over to the other side us suddenly think maybe the Supreme Leader is serious about not letting this thing go anywhere.
If you compare it, for example, the comparison is with Romania 1989 about a week before Christmas. So this would be December. Remember the December the 16th in Timișoara Romania, one town. So not like Iran, where it's this town, that town. It's religious towns, it's secular towns, it's Persian towns, it's Persian Kurdish towns, it's total bollocks towns. It's not widespread like that. Just one town, Timisoara, and they were not Romanians. They were the Hungarian minority, and they started protesting, that was if I've got my dates correct, but I'll only be a day or two round December the 16th. So nine days before Christmas. On Christmas day, they put the Chauchescus up against the wall and shot. nine days, for the state to unravel.
Nine days, soup to nuts, the whole thing. Some Hungarians protesting in Timosoara on December 16, Ceausescu with a bullet in his head on Christmas Day, nine days. That's how that's that's how quickly the whole thing unraveled. And we know that that was just things like the second and third tier politicians and generals deciding that Ceausescu was a loser and they weren't going to go down with him. But it's not clear yet how many powerful Iranians have figured that that's the situation that Khamenei is here.
Oh, look at this. Oh, this is completely ridiculous. It's eight minutes to the hour I've talked and I've just been yakking, yakking yak in a way, I'm in a very I feel. I'll tell you why I've overrun. I mean, I overrun all the time, but I really barely have because I feel very sorry for Eva. Eva is 29 years old, and as I said, she's got more courage in her little finger than Farage and Richard Tice and Nadhim Zahawi have in their entire she wants to save her country. She's just had a beautiful little baby. Well, not just the baby's born the exact same day Iranian revolution started, but many decades later, but the baby's just turned one.
So she's thinking, what is the European continent going to be like when this kid in 29 years time, and this 28 years time, and this kid is my age, and that's why she's got courage. And by the way, if you're Eva's generation, or even if you're Farage's generation, if you're or if you're Richard tice's generation, oh, I'll be long Oh yeah, by the time Anglo Celts become a minority in the British half. I'll be long gone. So what do I get? Oh, great. That's really a reason to make you Deputy Prime Minister, then, isn't it?
We're in the last 15 years of the Western world. So if we don't, it's, we can't say, oh, well, let's give it a we'll, we'll do okay this next election cycle. And then, you know, if you don't have that time, if you can't act now, then when? Eva gets that. And Eva, as she says, which is quite true, that we have completely inverted the basic assumption of free societies, the presumption of innocence. We now have the presumption of guilt.
You have to be monitored in every aspect of your life. So when I hear so called Tea Party types or people quoting Revolutionary era slogans, if they're able, for example, if George the Third is sitting in Buckingham Palace and you're having your tea party, and you infer all the chests of tea in Boston Harbor, and he can just sit in Buckingham Palace watch you in real time and press a button on his laptop freezing all your bank accounts. Is it possible to the longer you leave it, the less likely revolution becomes. We'll be, as I said, if we don't act soon, it'll be 1000 years of darkness.
Anyway, I've gone on way too long. It's five to the hour now. This is Steynonlines Clubland Q&A Live Around the Planet, and this is the favorite bit of the show, because, as you know, we canceled all the music on the show so we could focus on the important stuff about who's two points up in Minneapolis, but and so the the only 30 seconds of the show that anyone really likes, the bit where Mark Steyn pops in to tell you what's coming up on his weekend music show. But sometimes, like today, he showed up early because he was thinking I'd go to him at the scheduled time, but he doesn't like waiting around, so you could just have flounced off in a big Queenie Huff, and he won't be here when I throw to him to do his thing, because he's such a prima donna, nobody can work with him. Ask, ask Mark Levin. But, oh, we're in luck. We're in luck. I didn't think we would be, but here he is now, so all together now. Go Mark.
Hey, this is Mark Steyn on the town this week, songs across the century, songs around the world, plus we'll inaugurate our classical corner celebrate a slow burn classic its composer detested, and take a deep dive into a bona fide Sinatra masterpiece on the town Saturday at five on serenade radio, and Saturday at five London, time is 6pm in Western Europe, or 12 midday North American Eastern
Mark Steyn didn't mention that, what I think might be my favorite show, we're going to remember upon the occasion of her centenary, the great dancer, Moira Shearer. Every little girl has seen that wonderful film The Red Shoes. Matter of fact, it's a Hans Christian Anderson story. Because one of my kids was doing something about Hans Christian Anderson, they wound up watching that over Christmas. But it's marvelous. It's a marvelous film that and I had the opportunity to meet Moira Shearer, many, many years ago. I'll be talking a little bit about that and playing some music from The Red Shoes.
I know, I know you're probably sitting there talking about ballet for you big nancy boy, why don't you talk about something Butch like NASCAR or Chick fil A or country music. Well, because they've all been hollowed out by woke the wokesters have moved on from the poofter stuff like ballet, so they're all over NASCAR now. Remember that noose business a couple of years ago? So because they're all turning, they're they're all nancying up NASCAR and Chick fil A and country music, the Butch boys doing all the ballet talk. Take it from me.
Ah, this is what am I talking about now, Mark Steyn, live around the planet. It's just like one minute to four in the aforementioned eastern time zone where they don't have any telephone service. That's one minute to nine. Greenwich Mean Time - a little behind, a lot ahead, according to where you chance to be on this turbulent Earth.
Toby Pilling says
Can any Western Muslim politician deal with the issue?
Sorry, I've got some breathing difficulties. Don't all turn off if there's like a long pause and assume the breathing difficulties have accelerated. It's just a temporary thing.
Toby Pilling says
Can any Western Muslim politician deal with the issues around Islam in our countries? Is it just harder for them or simply impossible?
The phrase Western Muslim should not exist - not at all.
And so if you look to quote, unquote, Western Muslim politicians to deal with the issues around Islam you're not going to get anywhere. Yeah, I don't know who you have in mind. Toby, do you mean Zoran Mamdani in New York? Do you mean Sadiq Khan in London?
No, these that isn't going to get you that. There's a reason why people want to believe that's true. There was a nice French lady, Muslim French lady who I think was in the cabinet, one of Macron's 37 Prime Ministers.
But it's not if you want to say, I don't know where you're writing from. If you want to save America, you need Americans. If you want to save Canada, you need Canadians. If you want to save Ireland, you need Irishmen. If you want to save Sweden, you need Swedes.
But everyone gets terribly excited, like with Layla Cunningham, oh yes, she's a Muslim, so that means she's electable. That's the problem too. So they say, Oh yes, she's, she's Muslim, but she's, she's very concerned about all the gang rape. this is not gonna save you. This is a delusion.
The fact is that, as the Muslim, Muslims were so called, Western Muslims, to use your phrase Toby - with their most integrated, I was going to say 50 years ago. But in fact, it's more like 60 years ago now, when when there were far fewer. So you didn't have a Muslim community. It was just a Muslim here and a Muslim there, and you know, a couple of Muslims three towns away and at that point, there as is, and you can see it when you look at the birth rate, because people said to me about America Alone. I don't want to keep talking about how I said all this 20 years ago, because I know it's obnoxious, but I'm honestly at the end of my after the banning of Eva today, I'm at the end of my tether. I do think if I had my life to live over again, instead of starting writing when I left school, I would instead have started a paramilitary organization...
I think this is a tragedy for Eva's generation, and she shouldn't have to bear this burden, as Ayaan Hirsi Ali said 20 soul bollocking years ago, at the time of the Danish cartoons, the least we can do, the least the most pathetic little squish eunuch...do is agree to share the risk instead of this old liar. You're doing a fabulous job. That's true. Some of you, your friend got killed, but you look great just standing alone out there. So defiant.
We need to share the risk. The Western Muslim thing is a complete distraction. In Yorkshire, which is now heavily, irredeemably Muslim. But when the Muslim popular people said to me at time of America Alone, this demographic stuff is just bollards. Because, yeah, sure, they the Muslims, have lots of kids, but you wait the next generation, they'll just be having no kids, like some English and Scotsman. Well, it didn't happen that way in Yorkshire. In Yorkshire what they said initially happened likeso 60 years ago, the fertility rate among Muslims in Pakistani Muslims in Yorkshire went down, and then as Yorkshire became more and more Pakistan, it went back up again, because the more Muslims they are, the more they more Muslim they are, the more they can live in a Muslim society.
So however, you might have one or two so called Muslim moderates around now, Mamdani, Sadiq Khan, Layla Cunningham, Zia Yusuf, I'm sure they're all very moderate right now, but the more Muslim those societies get, the more they will default to the general attitude of Muslims. Because right now, you know, Layla Cunningham can say, oh, yeah, I don't really think we ought to have Sharia in England, because England isn't quite Muslim. That becomes a much more unlikely thing to say, the more and more Muslim your societies get. I don't want to...
If the English aren't prepared to save England themselves, screw em.
If the Irish who bored all about the English for hundreds of years finally get rid of the hated English and then say, Oh yeah, now the English are gone. Let's move in the Sudanese clitoridectomists. Yeah, that's a great plan. You Irish nationalist genius, right there. Well, if Ireland.. If the Irish don't want to save Ireland, who gives a crap?
If the Swedes don't want to save Sweden, if the Austrians don't want to save Austria, you can't say, oh, yeah, the situation in Austria, you know, where the majority of whatever it is grade one or kindergarten kids in Viennese schools is now foreign born doesn't speak German at home. Oh, yeah.
Oh, but maybe there'll be one of them that sufficiently has absorbed enough this is, like the values thing we're basically saying that, Oh, one of these quote, unquote, Western Muslim politicians, he looks so absorbed, it'd be like what's he called .... Zahawi, he'll have absorbed so many of these fantastic values that you imbibe simply by landing at Vienna airport, that he'll be the one to save us. If Austrians don't want to save Austria to hell with...
I'll regret that. I'll regret that. But at some point Western population here, you've got to be like Eva. You know, as I said, I mean, it is huge. I probably shouldn't have done the show today, because I'm so furious about this. I'm furious about it because I've known at times in the last 20 sod, marking years, the loneliness I've felt when people particularly liked at the time when I made America alone. I used to get these. I've talked about this before. I used to get these emails from big shot, Hollywood stars. Not the total a listers. It's not Tom Cruise and Tom Hanks or whoever it was back then, but the but the a minus star, oh yeah, I read that book. It's fascinating, and it makes so much sense, but don't mention my name, and it was the same thing. Then the following year, when I got sued for hate speech and I was facing a lifetime ban on being able to write about Islam.
And for the first year, or whatever it was of that battle, I had all these prominent people who said, I am completely disgusted but don't mention my name. And I think about Eva right now, and she, she'll be getting that from all the people you know all this WhatsApp they should never have done. Oh, but I'd love to tweet something about it, but, you know, I disagree completely.
What was it Voltaire said? I disagree completely with what you say, but I would give my life to your right to be able to no one's asking you to do. A mildly supportive tweet, or actually never mind the tweets, because she's got that lot sewn up, but actually, Dutch politicians in the Dutch parliament should be raising this. European politicians in the European Parliament should be raising this. British politicians and the British Parliament should be saying this. And and the US State Department should ban anybody from the home office in London, setting foot in the United States. It's, as I said, it's really lonely.
You know, Ayaan Hirsi Alis knows where of she speaks when she said, we have to share the risk. It's so bloody miserable. Oh, yes. Oh, don't mention my name.
Phil Whittington writes
you will have seen, hope you're recovering.
Well, actually, I should have done the show today. I'm really I'm in a cold fury. You never know when you set off, as I've seen, because, you know, some of you have met, like Conrad Black on The Mark Steyn Cruise. Conrad was prohibited from flying to the United States because he was a convicted criminal, until Trump pardoned him, and that ended so in theory, he thought he could now fly around, because the danger is and but you know, you're depending on a totally incompetent bureaucracy there. So when he turned up at Toronto Airport to fly, so he wasn't allowed to board the plane. It was like incredibly difficult. We had to fly him to Jamaica to board the cruise in Jamaica a day later, because now that's the thing.
You're dealing with wankers when you're dealing with bureaucrats. Now, not making an anti American point here, making an anti American, anti Canadian, anti UK, anti Dutch, anti Belgian, anti every sod-bollocking country. When you're dealing with bureaucrats, they're incompetent. So you so the thing with this ban in the UK is that Eva - you know, you can board a flight, say, at Schiphol that's flying to JFK, and then it develops engine trouble, and it has to come down in London. And as Eva has said, you know, she's got a little baby, and she doesn't want to be parted from that baby because they're detaining her at Heathrow.
This, this, these societies are evil. Anyway...
Phil was saying
you will have seen that Keir Starmer has executed U turn number 383,497 and said that the digital ID that he proposed last Autumn
yeah, when Kemi was mocking Sir Keir in the House of Commons at Question Time for all the U turns he had a line he had written for him. So I think that's a highly paid position now in His Majesty's government, the joke writer for a man who can't deliver jokes. And he said that Kemi, that the the Tories in the last 14 years have had more positions than the Kama Sutra. I don't actually want to hear the words Karma Sutra. I don't want to hear the word positions in the context of Keir Starmer and his Ukrainian rent boys, it's just a bit too vivid, but he thought it would be a good joke. He said, no wonder they're knackered, that it's the country that got screwed. Can you save your Ukrainian two twink special gags for when you when you're making eyes at them in the privacy of your own burning house. You great arse, ah i can't stand that guy
I'm sad - says Phil- that this back tack on digital ID that so many on the right have hailed this as victory in the last day or so, it seems clear to me that it will be like the covid passports, voluntary and nor but compulsory for what at first is a small set of activities, then bit by bit, it will be needed to get an internet connection. It all seems of a piece with the possible ban on x by certain things or Not travel outside your 15 minutes sitting never completely compulsory. The de facto compulsory if you want to do anything, say anything or go anywhere, wishing you all the best for a healthy 2026
Well, you know, Phil, in large part, it's already like that when I flew in to London in October. Basically my laptop didn't work as it works in three countries, you know. So I just pull up, open up my laptop, go to a website that I look in on, you know, once a day.
Only this time it would require me to go through various checks before I could access it. So basically, for whatever it was, the three or four days I was in London, I didn't bother. Lola, our producer, many of you met on cruises, was there, and so I, if I'd forgotten, like, the name of something, I'd say, oh, Lola, can you just Google that or whatever? Because my I basically stopped using the laptop while I was in London, because it was everything I did on it was suddenly suspicious. Didn't work normally, as it should. They're gonna do this. They're already doing this. they basically found the most perfect tools for panopticon state like your telephone is the equivalent of an electronic ankle bracelet or whatever they give the prisoners they let out on parole to decapitate French priests. These are the tools of your bondage, and that's why my jokes about doing the show by facts or the last photocopier in the woods, are not jokes.
You know, as I said, you talk about the Boston Tea Party, talk about the French Resistance to all that. Anything you want to talk about, is it possible in an electronic surveillance society?
Anyway, that's our cheery closing thought for today. I'm not in a cheery mood today the business with Eva has clobbered me in a way I hope, but that wasn't too audible for you.
That's going to do it for today. Don't forget Laura's Links tomorrow our sinister in house Jewess will round up the internet as nobody else can. If you're still toying with the pros and cons of the Mark Steyn Club, well, we're in our ninth year, and we're looking ahead to many more. So do come on in the water's Fine. Stay safe. Stay free.
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