by Geoff Vasil

Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese began this spectacle Thursday with a rare address to the nation. According to accounts even in the friendly media, he didn’t really say anything about rising fuel prices. “It might not be easy,” Albanese said, strangely paraphrasing the election slogan the Liberals (=Conservatives down under) used against him in the last election, “It won’t be easy under Albanese.”

British prime minister Keir Starmer was next, again saying almost nothing, but seeming to posture in a New Labour kind of way, like Tony Blair’s famous “I have no reverse gear,” saying the UK would not be drawn into America and Israel’s war in Iran because it wasn’t in the interest of the British people. On rising fuel costs, Starmer parroted Albanese’s line, saying: “It won’t be easy.”

Donald Trump was next, delivering a speech late Thursday East Coast time, again saying nothing. Trump in fact read excerpts of his own posts made earlier on his social media outlet, Truth Social.

What’s going on here? It looks like Trump raised expectations to a fever pitch throughout the Anglosphere in the run-up to his dud of an address by talking about ending NATO, ending the war with Iran and leaving the liberation of Hormuz to parties with a vital national interest in Middle Eastern oil. Albanese and Starmer apparently thought they had to get in the first word before whatever Trump was about to say. Trump’s failure to deliver any shocks at all seems to have been a calculated troll of his erstwhile allies, to provoke a response before he spoke. The fact Albo and Starmer said nothing at all but felt compelled to speak anyway shows the troll worked, but without any dramatic results. Trump is testing the waters for a major change in the status quo, whether that’s the end of NATO, a withdrawal of support from Ukraine or a new phase in the Iran war.

The opinions express here are solely those of the author.