The Old Men in charge have failed

A flare-up of bloodshed and horrifyingly cruel violence between Israelis and Palestinians is something which comes round with the sad inevitability of an unloved season. The onlooker who has no dog in this fight is reduced to wondering whether, and how, the cycle can ever stop.

It is not my intention to re-litigate all the old arguments about the creation of Israel, the outcome of its founding war in the late 1940s, or of the wars of the 1960s and 1970s which resulted in the occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and the Golan Heights. I assume my readers will have some awareness of these issues, and their own points of view, and I do not seek to persuade, because this is a trap. These old arguments about Zionism, the ownership of the land, how it came to be in Israeli hands, the legal status of Palestinians, the continued building of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and so on, go round and round in various echo chambers, and it does no good to rehearse them. You will not persuade either group to change their minds.

The situation in Gaza, today and for many years past, is that this small, crowded ghetto, containing over 2.2m people, resembles an open prison whose occupants live in poverty and squalor behind a guarded wall which puts the old Iron Curtain in the shade.

When a population, especially one which is so very young, is kettled behind a massive wall, they are bound to be resentful. It is not surprising if some of them turn violent against their oppressors. That doesn’t make it right, but as I say, I’m not here to discuss it in right-and-wrong terms. You already have your views on that. We might compare the situation with Northern Ireland. A few of those in the minority Republican/Catholic community, subjected over many years to restrictions, disempowerment, discrimination, and occasional violence, and with a sense of historical grievance, turned to killing, but the blood they shed does not wash away the respectable arguments for a united Ireland.

The laws of war are based on the concept of uniformed armies lined up against each other, like at the battle of Waterloo. They could kill each other all day long, with hardly any civilian casualties. They could be chivalrous and even gentlemanly to the enemy, and treat prisoners humanely. This model works in a more-or-less even fight, but in an asymmetric conflict between coloniser and colonised, oppressor and oppressed, the underdog cannot compete in that way. Therefore they hide among a background population, carry out sneak attacks and sabotage, using whatever weapons are to hand. Necessarily, they will tend to aim at the softest targets; they lack the capability to attack the well defended ones. It is always the side with the superior force which dictates the terms of the fight and how nasty it gets. The underdog tends to mirror the level of cruelty and atrocity used against them.

When France was occupied by the Germans in 1940, most French decided to keep their heads down and make the best of it. A few organised as the Resistance. When they carried out some action, the typical German response was a mass shooting or similar atrocity; it was quick and simple to carry out – with no requirement to identify the individuals responsible – and collective punishment undermined popular support for the Resistance (who were, of course, referred to by the Germans as terrorists).

Similar dynamics can be found in any asymmetrical conflict, which takes in almost every war of decolonisation (including, to some extent, the conflict in British mandate Palestine with the early founders of Israel, who were, of course, referred to as terrorists). The conflict we call the Indian Mutiny of 1857 (the Indians, of course, see it in a different light) ended with the rebels put down, with many of them executed by being tied across the muzzle of a cannon. The Mau Mau war saw an awful level of savagery and cruelty. In each case, the outcome was not determined by the language used (terrorist/freedom fighter), the level of cruelty and atrocity, or indeed by who was right or wrong. As the saying goes, wars do not determine who is right, only who is left.

Whenever there is a flare-up, the Israeli response tends to be an over-reaction, to ensure that substantially more Palestinians than Israelis die. It is about to happen again; indeed, at the time of writing, more Palestinian children (never mind adults) have already died than the 1400 Israelis killed on 7^th October. Perhaps, in a triumph of hope over experience, the Israelis believe that eventually, the Palestinians will learn that they always lose and always suffer greater losses, and give up the struggle. History suggests otherwise. Hamas, on the other hand, are not seeking a negotiated peace or a two-state solution; they want to destroy Israel completely, but lack the ability to do any more than the occasional massacre. Perhaps they aim to provoke a war involving all of Israel’s enemies; Hezbollah and Iran for a start. If so, it’s a monstrous aim.

I’ve never been quite sure what the Israelis actually want, or expect, the Palestinians to do. Go away, perhaps? But where? Into the Sinai desert? As if Egypt wants 2m refugees on its territory. Or are they supposed to just live perpetually in poverty and subjugation? Who would? There is absolutely no pretence, in any of this, that Palestinian lives might be worth as much as Israeli or Anglo-American lives; indeed, many Israelis deny the very concept of a Palestinian people.

The current position taken by Israel (and for many years) seems like that of an abusive husband, beating his wife and then saying “Look what you made me do now!” or “you brought it on yourself!”. They blame the victim and claim victimhood for themselves. They oppress the Palestinians until some of them lash out – whether in a suicide bombing or a mass rocket attack – then call them “animals” and proceed to slaughter them all, like animals. But, of course, they are not animals, but people who live in an unbearable situation.

While Western politicians race to condemn the cruelty and bloodshed of Hamas and to express their support for Israel, in a display of mass virtue-signalling, once again they are behind the people. I’ve not spoken to anyone who doesn’t see this in shades of grey rather than the black-and-white it is shown in Western media; that there is right and wrong on both sides and that eventually the underlying situation has to be fixed in a way everyone can live with.

Israel may assume that, because they have the overwhelming upper hand, they can always stay on top. Israel has nuclear weapons; the Palestinians in the street, sticks and stones. Israel has F16s; Hamas has powered paragliders. Israel has billions in aid from the US and plenty of tanks and artillery; Hamas has whatever it can smuggle in from Iran or Ukraine (yes, that deeply corrupt country into which we have poured weapons with no accountability). But, America spent 20 years and trillions of dollars, in Afghanistan, and still lost to the Taliban. A war doesn’t even determine which side has the most expensive weaponry.

If the West (US and Europe) really wanted peace in the Middle East, we could begin by stopping the flood of weapons into the region. We could take responsibility for our post-colonial mess, undertake to support Gaza, removing it from the clutches of both Israel and Hamas, and give the people who live there a life and a future. If Gaza can be put on a sustainable footing, so could the West Bank. Once the principal sources of long-running grievance are addressed, a new mindset might take hold of the region. Is any of this likely? Sadly, it seems no external powers are particularly interested in peace. The US remains resolutely one-sided in its view.

We now have two regional wars going on which could easily escalate into something bigger. In each case, external powers are pulling the strings and supplying the war materiel. If China sees its chance to grab Taiwan, there will be three wars with the US backing one side in each. They will struggle to fight in three regions, even via proxies; if China takes its chance, the US will have to make a difficult choice as to which war it gives priority. 

The rest of the world now faces a higher risk of escalation to a direct, hot war between nuclear armed powers than at any time since the Cold War. The US backs Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. It was struggling when the fighting was limited to just Ukraine; it would not win if three such wars happened at once. You might think the US would show just a little more interest in promoting peace. The US-led West is supporting Israel; the global south and the rest of the Muslim world is more or less uniformly sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. Did we really need to deepen this new division of the world?

There is a spectacular effort going on in the US and Europe to manufacture a consensus in favour of Israel, and in favour of an overwhelming and brutal response. From tactics as crude as projecting the Israeli flag onto public buildings at night; to the stampede of politicians to express support for the Israeli side, in terms which effectively green-light any level of bloodshed and revenge the Israelis choose to inflict; to the prohibition of public expressions of support for the Palestinians. These measures go even further than the measures to drum up support for the war in Ukraine. Once again, the Guardian has led its online coverage with a “what we know on day 10” kind of header; as if the conflict between Israel and Hamas only just began, and nothing that happened before 7^th October is relevant. We are being gaslit into thinking that nothing that occurred before this month, matters.

By cutting off vital supplies to Gaza (including water), and kettling the population, while dropping bombs on them, Israel is committing major crimes. This is nothing new; Israel has long enjoyed a free pass from the rules of both war and peace. What is striking is the degree to which the world of politics and the media are so one-sided, while ordinary people show much greater understanding of the situation and the history. Our political leaders appear constrained to follow the pro-Israeli line and no leading figure dares to express the widespread sympathy which exists for the Palestinian predicament. The official narrative equates any such sympathy as support for the violence of Hamas – which is plainly ridiculous – and excuses any kind of revenge by Israel as rightful self-defence, which is equally ridiculous. Some of our politicians cover their backs by suggesting that Israel’s response should be in line with international law, but they know very well that it will not be.

Our public figures line up to urge Israel on when it sends in its army to purge Gaza of Palestinians. Yet, the public are way ahead and do not support a frenzy of mass killing and mass expulsion. It is a timeless situation; ordinary people do not ask for, or want, war, but leaders and the interests they serve, make war anyway. Our government (and ruling class) always claim to act in the national interest, but make no attempt to explain how we benefit from siding exclusively with Israel. Many of us believe our national interests lie in peace, with whatever justice is possible, in the Middle East. Also, we are much too familiar with the consequences of going to war without a long-term plan. If Israel flattens Gaza, what then?

Despite the pretence that the attack by Hamas came out of the blue, people know this isn’t the case. The attack must have been a long time in preparation, but it was immediately preceded by two provocative events. Last month, Netanyahu showed, to a UN General Assembly meeting, a map of the Middle East without Gaza, the West Bank, or East Jerusalem. The impression was clear that Israel’s right-wing government seeks to wipe the concept of Palestine and the Palestinians, literally, off the map. (One can only imagine the reaction if someone were to display such a map without Israel).

Secondly, hundreds of Israeli settlers entered the Al-Aqsa mosque on 5^th October, beating Muslim pilgrims and offering the clearest insult to the Arab and Muslim world, while Israeli police did nothing to restrain them.

Perhaps it was with these events in mind that Hamas launched its planned attack shortly after, with such ferocity and cruelty. I don’t claim to know what they thought, or expected to result. Hamas is no more able to destroy the state of Israel than the IRA could have invaded and conquered Britain. But they have shown an ability to create havoc on the grand scale.

Underlying the Western response is a fundamental dishonesty. Over the decades, various attempts have been made to create a “peace process” leading to a two state solution. The problem is – they never really meant it. No meaningful progress has been made toward a Palestinian state. It is just like the dishonest Minsk agreement which should have settled the issues in Ukraine without war: one side meant it, but the other, did not. The nuclear non-proliferation treaty is based on the idea that nuclear-armed nations will move in good faith toward nuclear disarmament. Of course, they don’t mean it. International diplomacy is based on too much of this kind of dishonesty. Normal, ordinary people would not work this way. We never consciously vote for that kind of thing. We know that, unless there is an honest commitment to resolving the long-standing issues between Israel and the Palestinians, the cycle of bloodshed will only go on and on. Many Israelis recognise that their own long term security depends on addressing this issue and reaching a solution. The 1978 Camp David agreement with Egypt promised self-government in the occupied territories, and the 1993 Oslo accords with the PLO promised resolution (assumed to be a two state solution) of the issues by the end of the last century. These two agreements offer what is still likely to be the only viable basis for peace, but moderates allowed hard-liners (on both sides) to derail the process. That is the role Hamas play on the Palestinian side. On the Israeli side, Yitzhak Rabin, who signed the Oslo accords, was murdered and Netanyahu came to power, who never believed in the Oslo process. And so, it failed; and the rest of the world – including the sponsors of both sides – allowed it to fail. We all share some responsibility.

Our politicians should remember, as the public do, where dishonesty leads. We remember the disastrous military adventures which followed 9/11. The Iraq war was the result of the notorious lies about WMD and the false claim that Saddam Hussein was linked to 9/11. Our involvement in Syria, Afghanistan, and Libya has been calamitous. People aren’t stupid; we’ve been led by liars into too many wars which only made things worse. But the democracies have a common problem; there is nobody we can vote for who will change anything. Too much of the world is led by a generation of old men. Vladimir Putin (71), Xi Jinping (70), Joe Biden (80), Benjamin Netanyahu (74), Mahmoud Abbas (87), Ayatollah Khamenei (Iran, 84), Narendra Modi (India, 73), Arif Alvi (Pakistani, 74), Recep Erdogan (Turkey, 69). All of them are well past the normal retirement age; none will give up power. It is long past time for the torches to be passed to a younger generation, and perhaps it’s time that one or two women might get a look in? The old men have failed; how long must we wait for them to go?

Will Brexit have a Russell Brand moment?

In the last couple of weeks, Russell Brand has been accused of flashing, sexual assault, and rape, by a number of women, via the Times and on Channel 4. So far, he has not actually been charged with anything, let alone convicted, so it’s necessary to say that these are unproven allegations and that he denies them. However, in the court of public opinion, it seems the jury is back already, and has found him guilty. Why is this? We’ve waited years for these allegations to be made in public; couldn’t we wait a little longer until a formal and fair process had been completed?

But the aforementioned court of public opinion does not do fair trials in which the prosecution and the defence get equal time and the evidence has its tyres kicked. We come to this with a good deal of prejudice; anyone familiar with Brand’s output and public image at the height of his fame (a decade starting around 20 years ago) will be well aware that he regarded, and treated, women as sex objects both in person and in his standup routines. The Sun named him “Shagger of the Year” four times (this was during the Page 3 years) which confirmed his carefully created image. He was showered with attention and money, confirming the old double standard that promiscuous men are seen as studs, while women who enjoy sex are slut-shamed as whores, slags, tramps and worse. The court of public opinion doesn’t only do prosecutions; you can go up as well as down. Often, it elevates people to pedestals before pulling them down again, and Brand clearly enjoyed his turn on that pedestal.

Misogyny ran through his act; his sexual exploits were mined for material and jokes, in which women were the butt of the humour, leading up to the notorious 2008 Radio 2 show in which he bragged about sleeping with Andrew Sachs’ grand-daughter. At that point there was a sudden reaction. A penny dropped about the toxicity of the lad-culture which applauded this, fawned over him, and found it funny, and there was a lot of pearl-clutching because the BBC was enabling all this. Brand thrived because that lad-culture needed such a figure to put on its pedestal. But lad-culture is fading. We’re not exactly perfect today, but his shtick doesn’t go down so well any more. Magazines like “Nuts” and “Zoo” have folded; the Sun gave up printing topless girls on Page 3; it doesn’t give Shagger awards any more, and MeToo has brought the scale of sexual abuse in the entertainment industry to our attention. Weinstein, Epstein, and Prince Andrew are not accorded Shagger status, but are despised as creepy abusers. So, we are primed and ready to believe the allegations made this week. Indeed, Brand’s response is not so much a denial that these things happened, but a claim that it was all consensual. Legally, he will rely on the difficulty any woman faces in proving that, despite going out with a man, she didn’t consent to whatever kind of sex he demanded, whenever he demanded it. In the court of public opinion, though, what he admits is bad enough, and whether or not it was actually illegal is hardly relevant. We, the massed jury of that court, are not obliged to treat anyone as innocent until proved guilty; the legal system has to follow that principle, but not us. We don’t, after all, have the power to imprison him. Knowing, as we do, that the legal system is very seldom effective in sexual cases, with most rapists never being charged let alone convicted, the court of public opinion is probably the only one Brand will actually face.

What interests me is the fact that public opinion can be capricious, and can turn suddenly. Personally I wasn’t a fan of Brand’s act back when he was all over the TV, but you couldn’t easily miss him, or the fact of his wide popularity. At the time, I didn’t have a detailed feminist critique of his act, I just didn’t find it funny. In the same way, I knew, even as a six year old, I knew there was something not quite OK about the Black and White Minstrel Show with its 20 million strong audience, but couldn’t have given a detailed critique of it in the terms it is described with today.

I’m not saying this in the sense of “See, I was right all along”, because I wasn’t. I have to admit to joining in with toxic lad-culture on occasions, when the desire to be part of a laddish group overcame the feeling that it wasn’t really OK. It’s far too late to apologise now, so all I can do is learn from it and be less of a dickhead in future.

So, I’m not a paragon of virtue, and nor are the rest of the public. Nor do we have to be consistent; we can, collectively, excuse someone’s behaviour one day, and condemn it another day. It’s happened to Brand and to others; he was far from being the only comedian with sexist jokes or rape-humour. And it’s the same in politics: we can support a policy one day and turn against it another day, changing our minds on a sixpence while the supertanker of national politics turns far more slowly. We (collectively) tolerated Boris Johnson’s misbehaviour – until suddenly, we didn’t. There were plenty of possible reasons for the switch, and it was unpredictable that it should be the lockdown parties which proved to be the catalyst for that. Once again, I wasn’t a fan of Johnson’s shtick in the first place, but public opinion is always a majority verdict. 17 million people voted for the ill-defined concept of leaving the EU, but there’s been a sea-change against it now that the consequences are there in plain sight. Our political class change differently; if some of the prominent Leavers have quietly changed their minds in the face of reality, they cannot say so, because you can’t admit to being wrong on something so crucial. You can’t say, “I was wrong about the biggest decision of my lifetime and have done irreversible harm to our country. But I’m over it now, so please vote for me again”. Those who took a public position on Brexit are stuck with it; there’s no going back. This is why they tend to blame the implementation rather than the basic concept, like old communists. But ordinary people are less invested. We can say, “I voted Leave, but look at the mess it’s become, and where’s all that money they promised for the NHS? It’s a disaster”. And so, public opinion can make a complete U-turn without any embarrassment. The secret ballot is a wonderful thing; you don’t even have to admit that you voted for Brexit, or Johnson, or whatever. Most people are not obsessed with politics and regard it as a spectator sport which they aren’t watching most of the time. We have our own things to do and bills to pay. It cuts both ways; millions of people who can see our country falling apart and know perfectly well who has been in charge for the last 13 years, will still go out and vote Tory at the next election. It’s maddening, but it’s human nature and nobody said it was perfect.

This is why the Brexiters are not getting traction with their narrative of victimhood and betrayal. We don’t hear much about the “will of the people” any more, because that will (such an intangible and slippery thing) has clearly changed. Constant complaints that any softening of Brexit is a betrayal, just don’t cut through. The public never took an oath of loyalty to Brexit, however defined. We are required to be loyal to our country, whether by fighting its wars, paying its taxes, or obeying its laws. Spying for other countries is betrayal; but changing your mind about a policy? Spare me. I never wanted Brexit, I voted against it, and I’ll go on arguing against it until we dump it as the failed, stupid load of bollocks it always was. That’s not a betrayal of anything. And, while the public as a collective body are becoming increasingly disillusioned with Brexit, the parties, stuck with their old positions, find it hard to play catch-up. They are afraid of telling Leave voters that they were wrong; but many Leave voters already know this and will not be offended. It is not the former Leave voters who now feel buyers’ remorse who are in the wrong; only those who are pig-headedly clinging to Brexit despite everything; we should not allow this shrinking band to hold the country to its greatest error.

The older demographic which largely supported Brexit, are dying off and are relentlessly being replaced by the younger demographic who are pro-European and pro-realism. But, will there be a Russell Brand moment? Will there be a sudden, unpredictable turning point at which a penny drops and we stop indulging the ravings of the Brexit fanatics? I’d like to think so, as it would save time.

Keir Starmer has refused to frame the next election as a re-run of the Brexit argument, precisely because the Tories would love nothing more than to keep fighting an old battle which is already won. Labour is looking forward, not talking about everything in terms of the dead issue of Leave/Remain. Like it or not, we’ve left. Remaining is a dead concept and re-joining is a very slow burning one, something which certainly could not be accomplished in the next Parliament – so why pretend that it could?

The only sensible approach is to move on from 2016 and start rolling the pitch for the move back to sanity. Many decisions have yet to be made, and will have a big impact. For example, the Tories have delayed (for years) applying import controls on goods coming here from the EU, because it will further deaden trade and increase prices. However, they can’t simply state that we will never implement them; the pretence has to be kept up, partly for political appearances, but mostly because the moment you say this, businesses will realise that making anything in the UK will put them at a permanent disadvantage. Goods made here will face controls on entry into the EU, and therefore costs; while goods made in the EU could be sold in the EU or the UK without such costs. They would be forced to relocate operations into the EU. The only way out of this is a customs union; the logic is ironclad. But only Labour can say that, and eventually, they will. Only Labour can conduct relations with Europe on a normal basis, the basis on which we relate to any other friendly countries. The De-Brexiting of our relationship with the EU is something only Labour can do, and is a precondition for any further progress. That is enough for Labour to say before the election.

The public are tired of hearing about Brexit. They know it isn’t “done” in any sense, but they know that an irrevocable step has been taken and the debate around it is over. The words Leave and Remain, both now dead concepts, must be dropped. The realisation that it was a disaster is the starting point for closer relations with our neighbours, and some kind of association which amounts to a customs union. The eventual path to rejoin, if we ultimately do that, will be a long one, and will probably require significant constitutional reform. At the least, one party of government will need to adopt it as policy and have it endorsed in a general election (please, no more referendums!). The EU will have to be convinced that if we rejoin, we will be back to stay. That probably means both parties of government coming round to it. As I say, it will be a long road.

Structural Failures

Two avoidable problems have occurred in the last couple of weeks, one slow burning and the other fast. The slow burning issue is the use of RAAC in public buildings (so far, mostly schools). Nobody has explained why a material known to have a useful life as short as 30 years was used in any building; presumably it was so cheap that people thought it would be OK to have to rebuild every 30 years. Only, of course, that didn’t happen. The problem has been known about for a long time, with increasingly strident warnings being given, but needless to say, our government had other priorities (building new “free” schools, for example).

The other problem, the more acute one, was the failure of the National Air Traffic Service (NATS) two weeks ago. NATS has produced a report https://publicapps.caa.co.uk/docs/33/NERL%20Major%20Incident%20Investigation%20Preliminary%20Report.pdf

on the failure which caused such huge disruption on August Bank Holiday and left airlines and passengers with substantial extra costs. It turns out that the IT systems got hung up on one particular flight plan, submitted from another country, describing the route to be followed by an aircraft passing through UK airspace. Air routes are described in terms of waypoints, and there are very many such waypoints around the world. A few of them have the same names. The problem arose because the route of this particular aircraft included two such waypoints, which the system could not process, and it responded by shutting itself down.

The system has been hastily modified so that it can handle duplicate waypoint names. Later, much later, and out of public sight, someone will ask why the system could not handle these in the first place; it does, on the face of it, appear to be a massive design flaw in a suite of safety-critical software, which makes you wonder, what other design flaws are in there? We may hope that the people responsible for these systems don’t imagine that just fixing the duplicate-names issue is an adequate response. We might also ask why the response to the hang-up was for the whole system to grind to a halt, rather than simply rejecting and flagging up the problem flight plan and continuing to process other information normally. This is not fail-safe behaviour, as NATS claim; blocking hundreds of flights is not a low-risk measure. We might further ask why the fallback system was hand-processing of flight plans, with a grossly inadequate capacity to handle traffic.

Beyond that, there is the human response. The head of NATS, on the day of the failure, is quoted as having said that the UK ATC service is “the envy of most of the world”. This fatuous phrase, delivered even as hundreds of flights were being cancelled, echoes Boris Johnson’s favourite expression “world-beating”, as if these things were entries in some kind of competition. It was stupid and insensitive to say this just as the system collapsed.

Secondly, even the report linked above (which is otherwise quite a good, quick response and initial failure analysis), claims that UK airspace was not closed, just that the volume of traffic was reduced. Well, it may not have been closed in the sense of all traffic being stopped, but if your flight was cancelled and you were shelling out inflated prices for a 14 hour bus ride, it probably felt pretty damn closed to you.

Thirdly, the manager of NATS, Martin Rolfe, told the BBC, “This was a one in 15 million chance. We’ve processed 15 million flight plans with this system up until this point and never seen this before”. This is a further ridiculous and self-serving comment which will be offensive to those who had their plans ruined by his incompetence. The implication he makes is that it was a random event comparable to being struck by a meteorite. Another way to look at it is that he had one chance to build a safety-critical piece of vital national infrastructure, and he screwed it up. That’s one failure in one event, not one in 15 million. Enough flight plans, and you are bound to get one which includes duplicated waypoint names. If your system can’t handle that, it’s a 100% failure rate. The “backup” system was a simple duplicate of the primary (running on different hardware) and applied the same faulty logic; it was no backup at all with regard to an error in the software. The automated systems then gave up and controllers relied on manual processing, with about 10% of the required capacity, and it was this which caused the flight cancellations. The real backup system, then, was grotesquely inadequate to the task.

If the managers and politicians in charge of public services spent less energy making excuses and devoted more to getting the job done right, perhaps this stuff wouldn’t happen. And, if the costs of screw-ups didn’t fall on the innocent parties but on the people who failed in their job, there would be sufficient incentive to provide a truly reliable system. Estimates of the costs to airlines are in the area of £100m; this would be sufficient to build a far more reliable system with a backup that had adequate capacity. And, in the event that a flight plan causes a problem, wouldn’t it be better to cancel that flight, rather than all the others?

Could this be a political turning point?

There are many reasons why the Tories have lost support since the last election. Lockdown parties; the failure of Brexit; the sharp rise in interest rates; high inflation; the disgusting Rwanda policy, and so on. However, another potential tectonic shift may be starting in the water industry.

Thames Water, Britain’s biggest water company, is in trouble. Loaded with £14bn of debt, it called on its shareholders to cough up £500m three months ago, but this may not be enough for it to keep going. The government are considering putting it into special administration. Thames Water itself says further equity funding would be needed to support its turnround plans; some analysts suggests it may take £10bn to keep the company going, even before paying interest on its debt (and not counting the smoking crater where a pension fund should be).

Meanwhile, leakage from its pipes is as high as ever, and it routinely dumps raw sewage into rivers.

The failure of the private ownership model is complete. An organisation like Thames Water cannot be allowed to fail, as it provides the most basic necessities of life to millions. The fact that it needs a “turnround” at all means that it has recognised its own failure, but this failure is entirely caused by it being a for-profit company. It has become ridiculously over-geared (too much debt), and paid out eye-watering amounts in dividends to the asset-strippers who owned it, while massively under-investing in infrastructure. Inevitably, customers and taxpayers will be saddled with the failure of this stupid right-wing idea, a concept so thoroughly and obviously failed that no other country has done the same.

CEO Sarah Bentley got a £3m golden hello three years ago and has scraped by on £2m a year since (plus bonuses). She ran away last week after admitting that her turnround plan isn’t working; no doubt she will fail upwards as usual. After she resigned suddenly, Thames is now run jointly by the CFO, together with the regulatory affairs director, Cathryn Ross, who is a former head of Ofwat. Ofwat is, of course, the regulator which should have held Thames accountable long before it got into this position; but the inherent corruption of revolving-door appointments such as this, meant that the regulator was captured by the water companies and has failed in its duty to protect the interests of water users.

The whole rotten structure needs to be swept away. It is as thoroughly proven as anything can be in politics or economics, that an organisation which is the monopoly supplier of something as basic as water and sewage, has to be run in the public interest, not on an extractive, for-profit model.

Thames Water should be nationalised. This does not mean buying it; the company has already failed and its value, counting both its debts and the accumulated obligations of the years of under-investment, is negative. In short, they owe us. It is important that the shareholders are left with nothing; only this will sufficiently discourage future re-privatisation.

The lenders who put in that £14bn should also, at the very least, take a severe haircut, and for the same reasons. The money lent to Thames, as for the water sector as a whole, corresponds uncomfortably closely to the amount extracted by the owners in dividends. The debt is odious and should be repudiated; it would be a whole new wrong for customers and taxpayers to be left holding the bag. Thames Water corporate bonds are already downrated by about half in the markets. If the debt is ever to be honoured, the money can only come from taxpayers and customers, and if that is the case, the £60bn of debt owed by the privatised water companies should be counted as part of the official national debt, and managed as such. The pretence that this was just normal corporate gearing was always a lie.

Once this is realised, the world will see that the public sector is potentially on the hook, not just for this £60bn but for the rest of the privatised companies which have left our infrastructure run down, bust and broken, drowning in debts. All this on top of the neglected infrastructure which is still in the public sector – schools, roads, hospitals etc. The capacity of the British economy to absorb these multi-decade losses will come into question, on top of the £400bn costs of the destructive lockdown policies during Covid. The government will probably try some kind of jiggery-pokery to hide the impending defaults until after the next election, but the markets will not be easily fooled; there will be implications for the bond markets and the pound, until someone who recognises the size of the problem can propose a solution of a corresponding scale. Hint: it’s not Starmer.

The situation bears comparison with 1945, when the country was exhausted from six years of war, the cities were littered with bomb sites, industry was on its knees, and the treasury was empty. The Attlee government worked a miracle to pull off a huge-scale reconstruction plan, create the NHS and the welfare state, build council houses and new towns, and grant independence to India, Pakistan, Ceylon and Burma. All this while hosting the Olympics and developing nuclear technology. Having been strip-mined since 1979, Britain is in a similarly desperate state and will need a government of similar radical ambition and ability; I don’t believe Keir Starmer will provide it.

I think it’s possible that the failure of Thames Water could be the catalyst for a great popular realisation of the sheer depth of the hole dug by successive right-wing governments since 1979 (including, I’m afraid, Blair’s). A realisation that we’ve been going in the wrong direction for so long that we are now up shit creek to the very source, and it will be a long and difficult haul to get back. It’s not just privatisation but the whole raft of policies which enriched the wealthy at the expense of the poor for the last forty years.

Polls and surveys suggest that most people agree with utility nationalisation, but who can we vote for that would end the pillage of privatisation? The Tories still think it can be made to work, and Labour won’t touch it because they are running scared of sounding even slightly radical.

I’m starting to think there may be room for a new party which would drag Labour into radicalism in the same way that UKIP dragged the Tories into Brexit; not by winning elections but by changing the conversation and by taking enough votes to be a threat. Policies might include:

•              Nationalise the natural monopoly utilities without compensation; the lenders to take a haircut. Wind up all PFI schemes on a similar basis. Put in place deep-seated laws to prevent future pillage of this kind

•              Fully fund the NHS to per-capita levels seen in France or Germany, and keep it totally in the public sector

•              Fully fund the education system (by the same definition) and end rejective schools

•              Reduce the “defence” budget to levels sufficient to actually defend UK territory against real threats, and close the nuclear weapons programme completely. No more wars of choice.

•              Institute a financial transactions tax; a land value tax; and change inheritance tax so that the rich actually pay it (these three moves can easily match all the spending policies)

•              Treat climate change as if it really matters; reduce travel, especially by air; insulate the housing stock and set net-zero standards for new build housing; improve public transport, especially outside London; reduce energy consumption, starting with wasteful and non-productive uses. Make recycling work and outlaw planned obsolescence

•              Rejoin the single market and customs union as a necessary precursor to renewed EU membership

•              Institute a PR voting system such that every citizens’ vote counts equally. Repeal all Tory voter-suppression laws and the suppression of the right to protest; embed civil rights and reform policing. End the surveillance state

•              Reform the House of Lords. Abolish all positions which are lifelong, abolish political patronage, abolish hereditary positions and titles, and the reserved seats for bishops. Make it a reasonably sized, democratically legitimate second chamber (as most other countries do)

•              Build genuinely affordable social housing where needed; end council house sales and rebuild the council stock; stop using housing as a “ladder” or an investment vehicle; end homelessness through a homes-first approach, with help for the problems which cause homelessness

•              Imprison far fewer people for non-violent offenses

•              Create safe and legal routes for migrants to enter the country

•              Recognise the abject failure of the prohibition approach to drugs. Legalise and regulate drugs so as to eliminate the illegal trade which supports crime, and address drugs as a public health issue, not a criminal one

•              Rebuild and strengthen the constitution after the right-wing assault of recent years, putting it in writing with a clear change mechanism which is suitably slow and difficult. Use citizens assemblies to define the constitution and abolish outdated bodies such as the Privy Council. Embed transparency in government and eliminate official secrecy except where strictly justified

•              Decentralise political power to the nations and regions.

It is only through the combination of the above policies that Britain will become a modern nation, able to earn its way in the world, with a vigorous private sector economy driven by genuine wealth creation rather than rent-seeking and extractive business models. Many of the policies above could be implemented rapidly by a government with the will and the mandate to do so; there will be quick wins.

Many of these things are a matter of recognising some of the 800lb gorillas in the room. Brexit is the most obvious example. It can’t be made to work. It doesn’t need tweaking or improving. It needs to be dumped as a failed idea, just like privately-owned, for-profit monopoly utilities. The Tories will never do either of these as they still think the ideas are basically sound. Labour shy away from doing these things as they are scared of being too ambitious for change. The difference is, most Labour activists and supporters do recognise the 800lb gorillas and do want to make these changes; it’s the leadership which holds them back.

Shipwrecks

In 1912, the Titanic sank with the loss of 1500 lives. It became the most famous shipwreck of all time and a major cultural reference point. Partly this was because it was a luxurious vessel built for the wealthy – the passengers included Guggenheim, Ismay and Astor, super-rich individuals of the time – while also carrying humble migrants in the more basic accommodation. Partly, it was because of the “unsinkable” claim which had, unwisely, been made for the vessel by the White Star Line, and the fact that it had lifeboat capacity for at most half those on board. Partly it was the perceived inequity of the fatality rates: 97% of the female first-class passengers survived, having been given priority in boarding the lifeboats, while just 8% of male, second-class passengers lived. Although this could be very largely accounted for by the women-and-children-first principle, rather than class discrimination, the optics were that it was largely the poorer passengers who died. And partly, it was the tragic drama of the story – the vessel which sank on its maiden voyage, victim of the hubris and stupidity of steaming at full speed into an ice field at night. We make movies about the heroic stories of courage that night, despite the fact that nobody needed to have died at all if the ship had only been driven sensibly; just as Tennyson wrote a poem celebrating the bravery of the Light Brigade at Balaclava, whose suicidal courage would not have been required if only the correct orders had been given.

The same theme echoes around other celebrated events. The deaths of Captain Scott’s team on returning from the South Pole, just a couple of weeks before the Titanic sailed, was another story of courage in facing the fatal consequences of the flawed planning and execution of that expedition. All these were soon overshadowed by the First World War, a similar tragic story, writ very large, with vast numbers of men ordered to make suicidal attacks against heavily defended positions, dying for a combination of misplaced national rivalry and bone-headed tactics.

The apparent loss of a small submarine this week, carrying tourists who had paid $250k to see the wreck of the Titanic, is at risk of being spun in a similar way. A group of millionaires in a poorly designed submarine became the targets of a huge, money-no-object search, while only a week before, a disaster almost on the scale of the actual Titanic sinking itself occurred in the Mediterranean, when a hugely overloaded boat full of poor migrants, sank with the loss of about 650 lives, many of them children. The symmetry and coincidence of these two nautical disasters is pure Greek tragedy; you couldn’t make it up, as they say.

I describe the submarine as poorly designed, because it was flawed in the same sense that the Titanic was poorly designed. If you’ve seen the film (is there anyone who has not seen it?), you will be aware of the Titanic’s design flaws; that the compartmentation only went up to a certain level, and that it didn’t turn well because the rudder was small. The mini submarine has its own obvious flaws; such as the fact that the hatch is a full diameter dome, bolted in place only from the outside, and which can’t be opened without the lifting frame being underneath it (or water would flood in), means that even if it is on the surface, the crew are helpless until that frame is brought to them. More importantly, it shares a flaw with Virgin’s Space Ship 2, which is that it is a novel design built by very clever people. Why is that a flaw? Well, they are so clever that they didn’t believe they needed an external design review, or to go through a normal submarine approval process, in which they would have been assessed against conventional design standards. The designer had said that he believed such regulations and standards only held back innovators like him. The novel composite materials in the pressure hull are very interesting, but not sufficiently well understood in their failure modes to be used in this way. Carbon fibre is very strong under tension and is used in airliners; but it is much less strong under compression. Each descent was a gamble, and now the gamblers appear to have lost. Of course, we don’t know whether the mini-sub is caught on something on the bottom; has undergone power failure, or a fire; or the pressure hull has failed under the stress of repeated loadings up to 6000psi (sea level pressure is just 14psi).

There is less head-scratching required over the loss of the migrants in the Med. Their boat was incredibly overloaded by the traffickers who set it on its way. While that is the immediate cause of the loss, we should also look at the rescue effort which does appear to have been no more than half-hearted, because those drowning were mostly Pakistani migrants. They were seen as a group, with a label, unwelcome at their intended destination, rather than as unique human beings with hopes, fears and a right to life. As with the Titanic, the optics are that it’s the poor that die; and that nobody needed to die if the boat had been operated within sensible limits, or better still, if there were a safe and legal way for people to migrate without the use of unseaworthy craft.

It was the hubris of Ismay and poor seamanship of Captain Smith which drove the Titanic to its doom. Ismay, owner of the White Star line, wanted to set a record for the Atlantic crossing, and dismissed fears of icebergs, recklessly gambling the lives of his passengers and crew. He put pressure on Smith to navigate the ship dangerously fast for commercial reasons. It was also a contempt for sensible standards and conventional wisdom which did for the submarine, leading its designers to gamble with the lives of their paying passengers. And, it is Europe’s fortress-like policy and the rhetoric of “invasion” by migrants who will “swamp” our first-world paradise if we let them in, which drove the overcrowded migrant boat. It is also the right wing politicians and press – here and elsewhere – telling lies and stoking hatred of refugees and asylum seekers. Over 25,000 dirt-poor people have died in the Mediterranean over the last decade because of this, and we have come to see it as normal. It’s only when a few millionaire thrill-seekers are lost at sea that it becomes headline news for several days, and prompts a massive rescue effort. Each of these tragedies is a story of right wing attitudes and business-driven decisions, costing the lives of others.

If the ethics of immigration policy leave us with some profound questions, there are also questions worth asking about the ethics of rich people seeking adventures. This is where it gets personal for me. On the whole, I’m in favour; I used to enjoy skydiving, scuba diving, motorcycling, and other exciting activities, and have done several such things using dodgy, home-made equipment, held together with duct tape and baler twine, which were significantly more hare-brained than Virgin’s space ship or the carbon fibre submarine. So, I’m not casting the first stone in that respect. However, I would point out that I wasn’t selling such activities as a fairground ride, however highly priced, and my adventurous career (now limited to the relatively sedate sport of paragliding) didn’t involve a rich white man flying a balloon over poor countries (a la Branson) or have a carbon footprint the size of Australia (space tourism). I have never left the dead behind (commonly done on Everest) nor assumed that a poor person’s homeland was my playground as of right. I haven’t planted any flags, nor would I speak of “conquering” a mountain if I climbed it. I don’t contrive artificial “records” by adding self-imposed constraints or over-claiming for my accomplishments (common among adventurers seeking sponsors). I don’t leave a Kleenex trail in otherwise pristine areas, nor ask others to risk themselves to haul my stupid fat out of the fire if I screw up. I wouldn’t claim discovery and naming rights to places which were perfectly well known to black or brown people who already lived in the region concerned. I buy insurance to cover the risks and don’t expect taxpayers to subsidise my fun. And, I don’t spend truly astronomical amounts of money just for kicks. I have to admit, I don’t know how much I would spend for kicks if I were a billionaire; but in a world where the super-rich are so very rich and the poor, so very poor, I think it indecent to spend $400k on a space-tourist flight, or $250k to see the Titanic (or, in the case of one of the missing men on the submarine, both). I do feel that self-indulgence should have limits; although, of course, I set that limit somewhere above my own self-indulgence budget – and, yes, I do recognise that this is morally convenient for me.

The wrong definition of Greatness

The crass  “Britain is Great” posters seen at our airports make me cringe. At first, I assumed it was just an innocent promotional campaign for our many visitor attractions, scenic areas and cultural highlights, but the campaign is more than that. There is a pathetic, emotionally needy tone to this campaign; as if we are desperate to big ourselves up by pretending the word “Great” in Great Britain means magnificent, mighty and respected (rather than being a geographical reference to the largest island in the British Isles). It reveals a yearning for a status which we clearly don’t merit, and is based on a definition of greatness founded on nostalgia and vanity, rather like the Brexiters’ “Global Britain” concept (of which we hear very little nowadays).

Anxious to cling on to the outdated concept of Great Power status, despite the lessons of Suez and decolonisation, Britain looked down its nose for too long on the nascent EU, instead of joining early. The Commonwealth, an informal version of the former empire, never had much purpose but to keep Britain’s self-image of global leadership going. It is a second-rate international organisation in the same way that the Commonwealth Games are a second-rate Olympics (“a bit shit” as Usain Bolt said). These are just two ways in which being too far up ourselves has resulted in tying the nation to the past and missing out on the future.

To maintain our delusions of grandeur, we spend too much on military hardware, believing our national myth of military prowess. Just as the US keeps getting its butt kicked by poor countries, Britain has involved itself in various failed military adventures. Forty years ago, we took back the Falkland islands by a whisker, but haven’t had any real military successes since, and two huge failures (which are not yet fully acknowledged as such). There’s no accountability for any of this. Our wildly expensive nuclear missile submarines cruise under the oceans, burning money as they prop up an outdated idea of superpower status, one based on the ability to inflict mass destruction.

Hence our collective vision of what Britain should aspire to be is a backward looking one; just as Trump says “make America great again” (an explicitly backward-looking sentiment), our own conservatives dream about Britain being great again in the way greatness used to be defined – through dominance, muscle, assumed superiority, and a macho, big-dog attitude. The element of empty bragging and deluded self-importance in the “Britain is Great” ad campaign (and its risible “Unicorn Kingdom” strapline) echoes the tired cliché “world beating” of which Johnson was so fond. It is performative patriotism, not the real thing. It is like someone who has inherited the title of baronet, thinking himself to be of high importance and worthy of deference, rather than a historical quirk.

The idea that the British Way is innately superior and makes us “world beating” is lazy thinking. Of course it’s positive when British people and companies succeed and do marvellous things. British inventors and creative artists have generated a terrific body of work; Britain has much to be proud of, and many fine things to show visitors. These successes owe much to a country which enables talented people to do well, through education for example, and a culture which encourages achievement. But it is not because British people are inherently better than others; we are not baronets in a world of peasants. There are too many British people with ability who do not succeed, because they aren’t recognised, encouraged, facilitated and enabled. The job of Government should be to provide the infrastructures which allow everyone to do what they do best, and trust that those with great talent will then shine – but because they are people, not because they are British. People with high potential are born everywhere and all the time; sadly, most do not have the chance to develop fully. The conservative nationalist who talks proudly of this being the country that produced Shakespeare and Austen, but closes libraries and cuts the resources for schools to give children poetry or perform plays; brags that this is the country that produced Banister and Beckham, but flogs off the school playing fields to property developers; who lauds the country of Purcell, Elgar, Lennon and McCartney, but who cuts back music teaching; who puts up posters at airports showing our scenic heritage, but makes a buck out of filling the rivers with sewage; how patriotic are they?

National greatness is not only reliant on the achievements of a few stellar individuals in each generation, but on the progress of millions of people, living ordinary but productive, fulfilling lives as part of a coherent society living up to its values. National greatness is not only measured in World Cups and Nobel Prizes, welcome though such things are. You don’t need a space program and nuclear weapons to be a great country. You do need a measure of equal opportunity and a sense of unity, not a ruthless machine to enrich the wealthy at the expense of the poor; nor a private sector which sees care homes as a cash business with property exposure.

Britain is, in fact, a second-rate power on the way to third-rate status, in many ways. We are not respected around the world for very much these days; Brexit delivered a shattering blow to whatever standing we previously had left, and the comically incompetent government still clinging to office seems determined to finish the job, with attention-seeking behaviour and arrogant bluster – continuing with the very qualities embodied by Johnson and Truss. The performative needling of Russia and China is typical but ludicrous. It is not “declinist” or “talking Britain down” to say this: it is realism. The declinists are those causing the decline, not those observing it.

Our dear friends in the EU do not despise or hate us for leaving, as the Brexiters would claim; but they are disappointed, exasperated, and probably surprised at our capacity for self-harm. Even our former imperial possessions and colonies don’t despise or hate modern Britain, despite the history of exploitation and slavery (which is only very slowly coming to be acknowledged in this country). However they probably don’t need any moral lectures or mischief-making military adventures such as Iraq, nor the self-indulgent posturing behind the categorisation of China as a threat and a potential enemy. After Brexit, having got up and left the rooms in which so many decisions are made, it is increasingly laughable for Britain to pretend that we are still at the centre. Acting the big shot doesn’t convince for long when you have withdrawn to the edges.

Britain needs a new vision to strive for. A cultural change is needed. A generation is coming into its prime, not raised on the old national myths of greatness (the empire!), of military prowess (Spitfires!), of always being right, of exceptionalism, genius, effortless (white) superiority, and the idea that London is the hub around which the rest of the world turns. This generation will have to replace the one which is still prone to all that nostalgia and vanity. We must learn some humility. Britain must free itself of the mechanisms which gather economic rent and concentrate the national wealth into ever fewer pockets, before the people can be empowered to do whatever they do, to the best of their ability. We must rebuild our constitution, have fair votes, consensual government, national institutions which embody our values, and services which work. We need an economy based on real production, not profiteering, rent-seeking and money laundering. We need a less confrontational politics, in which you don’t reach power and office by stirring up factional division or provoking culture wars, but by uniting people to work together. There is – just – enough left which still works, that we could build ourselves a new country, one which is at ease with not dominating others; comfortable with partnership and collaboration; which has sufficient specialisms we do well at, that we can earn our way in the world; a generous, welcoming country, with an economic model which is sustainable, non-exploitative, has a flourishing culture, and which offers a healthy and fulfilling life to all its citizens. A country which neither struts with false pride, nor cowers in slavish allegiance to the US, in a pitiable, deluded belief in a special relationship. A country which is confident to recover from many wasted years of bad government and decay. A country which rejects a warlike posture and maintains sufficient forces for genuine defence only. A country in which the rule of law and civil liberties are entrenched.

The Tories – and, sadly, too many leading figures in Labour – share the old vision of a Britain which principally serves business interests, home owners, retirees, the wealthy, and the south east; and a culture which is opposed to the necessary and natural, ethnic and demographic changes which, being necessary, continue with a certain inevitability anyway. The billionaire-owned media promote nativist, intolerant attitudes and stir up backward-looking culture-war nationalism. Labour is timidly trying to articulate a vision only very slightly different to that of the incumbent Tories, and doing a weak job of it. They are afraid of making big spending promises on the lines of “£350m a week for the NHS” because the economy they inherit will not provide for it, and they are afraid of being open about the need for taxation (such as an inheritance tax the rich actually pay, a Land Value tax, and taxing companies like Amazon on equal terms with high street shops) which would easily provide for fully funded public services. Most of all they are scared of reopening the Brexit wound, despite the accumulating harm. This is a pity; the mood of the country is ready for a change, and Labour has nobody with the powerful oratory to offer it. The Brexit wound will not heal over time; it will only be healed when Britain returns to its rightful place in Europe.

Labour’s timidity is becoming a real issue for many of its natural supporters. Take the sewage problem; after years of activism raising the issue, the issue of raw sewage discharges is high on the public agenda. Ordinary people can easily see that this is a direct consequence of privatisation. If the water company prioritises the bottom line, generous dividends, and senior managers’ pay, they will have to minimise investment in pipes, reservoirs and sewage plant. This extractive business model is not compatible with providing the service people want; these obvious facts are simple to explain and are widely understood. The solution is then obvious. However, Labour shrinks from offering it. It is similarly well known that the railways were a privatisation too far; even the Tories have felt the need to take some operations back into public hands. And then there’s the big one; Brexit. People have come to realise what a disaster it’s been, and even leave voters are now turning against it in large numbers. Yet, Labour will not offer the blindingly obvious solution. And if they don’t, eventually, someone else will.

I’m going to use the N word

Since the Tories abandoned almost all their old ideals and values in the process by which the hard right faction not only gained the upper hand, but drove out moderate, decent Tories from the party, it has been less obvious whether they had a coherent ideology to follow going forward. Sure, there were tracts from pamphlet-scribblers in the think tanks; Truss and Kwarteng had co-written a hotch-potch of right wing ideas which they tried, so disastrously, to turn into a program of government. There were frequent calls for low taxes and a small state, which they seem unable to deliver. But was there a clear statement or manifesto, around which they would rally?

We have begun to hear of one. There is something called “National Conservatism” which has published a statement of its principles, and which right wing politicians here and in the US are publicly backing. It is, inevitably, the offspring of American right-wing think tank policy wonks (the Edmund Burke Foundation). Given how much the Tories have imitated from the American Republicans, we should be concerned about this particular US body of thinking.

Firstly, it’s hard to believe that the name “National Conservatism” isn’t a deliberate echo of  “National Socialism”, the politics of the National Socialist German Workers Party, which, being rather a mouthful, was shortened to “Nazi” (in which process the usual meanings of the words “socialist” and “workers” were quietly forgotten). The people who came up with this name are not stupid; they will be aware of the similarity and of the reactions it will arouse; they are doing it deliberately.

The statement (found on https://nationalconservatism.org/national-conservatism-a-statement-of-principles) is couched in some odd language; some of it is archaic in style, some of it rather flowery, much of it repetitive. The opening few paragraphs are an extended throat-clearing which prepares us for some level of self-importance in what follows.

Then you move on to the list of principles itself. There is a firm authoritarian smack in the description of how government should work; they are in favour of federalism and freedom for regions, but quickly qualify that by saying “national government must intervene energetically to restore order” if “immorality and dissolution reign”, and that “unacceptable public disorder should be swiftly put to an end”. When imagining what this might look like, it is difficult not to picture the kind of “energetic intervention” practiced by men in black shirts some 90 years ago. What do they mean by immorality? There’s a clue in the part which says “the Bible has been our surest guide” and “public life should be rooted in Christianity”, although “Jews and other religious minorities” and “adult individuals should be protected from religious or ideological coercion in their private lives and in their homes”. Well, that’s a relief! A few non-Christians can be tolerated if they just do their thing quietly at home; but notice that these Conservatives don’t want to prevent “ideological coercion”, just protect us from it until we venture outside our houses. Similarly there’s a reference to a “lifelong bond between a man and a woman” to foster “congregational life and child raising”, so it’s not very hard to figure out their attitude to anyone who doesn’t fit this heterosexual, pronatalist picture, or anyone who is interested in any kind of “sexual license and experimentation”.

These kind of declarations always involve a combination of saying what you are against, as well as what you are for, so linking words like “but” or “however” come thick and fast. While being in favour of a moon-shot style program of military research, there’s a classic “on the other hand…” clause where they advocate de-funding universities which are insufficiently dedicated to conservative ideas. One paragraph starts by saying that immigration has made immense contributions to the strength and prosperity of Western nations, but ends up calling for a moratorium on immigration. They don’t actually use the words “great replacement”, but it’s hard to read this section without seeing that between the lines. They also believe that a declining birth rate is a “grave threat”. This combination of pronatalism with the emphasis on uniformity – of cultural conformity and political thought, as well as of the “linguistic and religious inheritance” which is so hard to distinguish from ethnicity  – suggests a desire to breed people with (conservatively determined) desirable characteristics – a concept which was also popular about 90 years ago. Why is it a threat if some group of people slow down their birth rate? Is it that their place will be taken by people of lesser value, people who are somehow inferior?

Given that this stuff is written from an expressly Western, Christian, Anglo-American perspective, and talks of “our civilisation” in ways that leave no doubt as to who might be included in the word “our”, that moratorium makes you wonder about their attitude towards people from outside that group. Well, at the end they finally get around to saying something about that: “No person’s worth or loyalties can be judged by the shape of his features, the color of his skin, or the results of a lab test”, after which they condemn “racialist” oppression and claim that they “respect… minority communities”. We can well imagine that this respect would wear rather thin if those minority communities were to become numerous enough, whether through immigration or through more energetic “child raising”, to assert themselves or to challenge the domination of the Conservatives, rather than trusting in their magnanimous toleration. The reference to “the shape of his features” and the use of the slightly archaic term “racialist” bring to mind (again, surely not by accident) the views and publications of certain, well, racialists, whose ideas were widespread in the, um, 1930s. After all, the only “religious minority” deemed worthy of a specific mention are Jews, not Muslims for example; another, presumably deliberate, echo of that time almost a century ago when Jews (and other minorities) were held to be sources of “weakness and instability”. Why is there this odd reference to discrimination based on the shape of someone’s features? This jarring phrase, stuck in front of “the color of his skin” as if it were the bigger problem, once again directs our attention in a particular direction. Are you starting to suspect that the writers of this document have some kind of thing about Jews?

Nor is there anything specific about the place of women in all this. The fact that they aren’t mentioned, and that the feminine is assumed to be included in the masculine wording, is suggestive, as is the fact that this document is written by men; but the heavy emphasis on child-raising and religion might call to mind the expression, “Kinder, Kirche, Kuche” even if kitchens aren’t actually mentioned.

In terms of world politics, there is a call for independent nation states, heavily armed, competing for their own interests. Collaborative bodies like the UN or the EU seem to have no place. They call for “our civilisation” to maintain its military effort lest the Chinese catch up, and to increase the Western birth rate. Economically, they believe in private property and enterprise, as long as they serve the conservative-defined national interest. In a classic example of the “but” word, they argue for national policy which should “promote free enterprise, but…” and demand that enterprise should bend to the will of the state in its fear of hostile powers. Always disregard everything before the word “but”!

The writers certainly know the power of repetition. There is constant reference to “us”, “we”, and “our”, establishing the idea of a dominant majority group described as “Western”, “traditional”, “Christian”, “Anglo-American”, and sharing a common cultural, constitutional, linguistic and religious inheritance. In short, they use every word they can think of to say “white”, except “white”. Anyone else is described as “other”; defined to be minorities of “diverse communities” who shall not be judged by the color of their skin – perish the thought! – but who are very clearly defined as others, as different; inhabitants of a virtual ghetto, whose best hope is to be protected from coercion by the benign, dominant Anglo-Americans, at least until they have been fully assimilated. This is white supremacy as described by someone with a thesaurus; a Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan would have said the same, only in cruder terms. How the dominant culture remains dominant is presumably underwritten by that “energetic intervention” previously mentioned.

In short, there’s naked prejudice on display here, plus a lot of very loud dog-whistling going on. If you can read this statement without, at any point, being reminded of the original National Socialists, then I have to assume you can hear the William Tell overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger. The mention of Jews; the bit about government intervening energetically against immorality; the anti-gay and anti-immigrant sentiment; the part which says that the declining (white) birth rate is a grave threat; the old fashioned and self-consciously flowery language directing us back to a more monocultural golden age; the dominant majority who get to define the national interest and common good; the othering of racial and religious minorities; and of course, the name “National Conservatism” with its unfortunate echo, all combine to create what I can only describe as a fascist manifesto. I use this particular f-word in a literal sense, not as a general insult. There’s nothing in it that Enoch Powell would not have agreed with, and I think probably Oswald Moseley would have been able to buy into most of it as well. And our Tory politicians are signing up to this: Suella Braverman, Michael Gove, Jacob Rees-Mogg and David Frost have all associated themselves with it by writing articles or attending its conferences.

So, if you hadn’t yet worked out where the Tories’ journey to the political right was leading, it’s pretty clear now. When fascism comes to Britain, it will not be wearing jackboots, but talking about cultural, linguistic and religious inheritance.

It’s a path that has been trodden before, and we all know what lies at the end of it. Really, why does anyone want to go there again?

How historical events hang over us

Wars can have long term consequences which continue to echo long after the issue which started them has been settled. The invasions of Russia launched by Sweden in 1708, Napoleon in 1812, and Hitler in 1941, plus the extreme antagonism of the Cold War years, left Russia with a long-term mindset that they were under threat from the West, and needed buffer territories. The deep scars left by the Nazi invasion, in particular, created a profound sense of insecurity. On the other hand, World war two left Britain and America with a sense of righteousness for having opposed a such a murderous enemy as the Nazis, and we have settled into a long term mindset that we are always right. Although our moral values evolve all the time, we have a moral certainty about ourselves, believing that democracy and capitalism (as implemented by us) are innately superior, to the point that we have a duty to impose them on other countries. Never mind that we were equally certain of our rectitude during the days of empire, colonialism, and economic protectionism; we always wear the white hat.

Another insidious hangover from WW2 is the idea that a righteous war must end with total victory and the surrender and subjugation of the losing side. The huge majority of conflicts end with a negotiated settlement, requiring both sides to compromise, but we have come to disregard that as a reasonable outcome.

Marxists also believed that their system was superior. They believed in the historical inevitability of communism, and like the West, had an urge to impose their system on others. With the end of the Soviet Union, the basis of this global struggle melted away, but old habits and mindsets die hard. NATO, founded to oppose Russia and her buffers/allies during the Cold War, was continued and expanded, rather than being scaled back or stood down. The expansion of NATO and the EU since 1990 has brought into the Western sphere, a raft of countries previously held in the iron grip of the USSR. For many of their people, that has been a good thing; they now enjoy greater personal and economic freedoms, and if the change in their political system took place with a push from the West, many will feel that the end justified the means. But, that doesn’t prove that regime-changing is a good thing to do. It didn’t work in Syria or Libya. Afghanistan has reverted to old ways, and Iraq remains chaotic and violent. The fact is, the military interventions and wars carried out by the US-led West seldom result in a free, stable, happy country with democratic government; the postwar establishment of democratic institutions in West Germany and Japan are the only examples I can think of, although WW2 cannot be characterised as a democratic intervention. More often, Western interventions leave a ruined nation in poverty and chaos.

All the same, the claim is still maintained, that the West is fighting a good fight for Ukraine as a bulwark of democracy, freedom, human rights, and a rules-based order. That the rules are America’s rules, is treated as a coincidence.  So, for example, America maintains a sphere of influence, and seeks to expand it, but does not recognize any other country as having a legitimate reason to do anything similar. Bringing Ukraine into the American sphere of influence serves no particular purpose other than undermining Russia. America had, and has, no genuine interests there; the replacement of the elected president Yanukovich in the 2014 coup which was ginned up, financed and engineered by the US, with a more biddable man, was just old-school geopolitical game-playing.

The Western narrative that Russia’s invasion is unprovoked, revolves around the definition of provocation. Consider my initial point that Russia feels threatened by the countries to its West, while the US, ever convinced that it is in the right, has maintained its Cold War enmity towards Russia and expanded NATO, whose only purpose has ever been to confront Russia, eastward to Russia’s borders.

We have long known that Russia regarded NATO expansion as a threat and a provocation; in that sense, the current war is very much provoked. Not justified – I don’t approve of any country attacking another, or otherwise starting an avoidable war – but provoked. The West merely pretends that NATO expansion was not provocative. If, by our definition, our actions were not provocative, then the Russian attack last year was unprovoked. But in any version of reality I can understand, if NATO forces and bases move ever further east and have an ever increasing border with Russia, the Russians are going to feel less secure. In their shoes, I would; but America has no interest in a European security policy which recognises Russian interests and fears.

Of course, the nations of eastern Europe should be free to align themselves however they see their interests – but that cuts both ways. We can’t meddle in Ukraine’s politics and then pretend to be defending their freedom to choose their own destiny. Also, no country has a right to join NATO on demand. Membership of NATO is a solemn commitment and obligation by the other members to offer defence to the country concerned – the Article 5 commitment – and nobody has a right to make us take on that obligation. It is our choice to decide who we will defend, not theirs. We put our lives on the line for fellow NATO allies. This is a commitment which should not be taken lightly.

Ukraine is being strongly encouraged to aim at retaking all the land inside its pre-2014 borders, including Crimea, which they could only accomplish with massive Western assistance, most likely including direct military intervention, and a blank cheque as to the costs. The US-led West would have to sign up to an escalated war against a nuclear armed opponent which regards this conflict as an existential one. This begs two questions: will (and should) the West give anyone a blank cheque, even if these were times of relative prosperity? And, is it really in our interests to confront Russia in a way which Russia views as an attempt to destroy it as a nation?

And so we have a new war in Europe which will have unintended, long-term consequences.

America’s overarching foreign policy objective is to prevent the emergence of a great Eurasian bloc which would pose a threat to America’s world dominance. To do this, they had no need to turn Ukraine round to face West. They did it, though, out of a desire to undermine Russia and to suppress the growth of closer economic ties between Western Europe and Russia. Hence, for example, the Nordstream false-flag black op, coupled with sanctions intended to curtail the economic relations of other countries with Russia. However, the effect has been to drive Russia and China closer together, in their shared fear and rejection of American world domination.

What is also notable is how much of the rest of the world has heard the Western narrative that this is a war of “democracy vs dictatorship” and don’t buy it. The emergence of the BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation has gained momentum because of this war, and the moves by Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia toward closer ties with China, have been given a push. These countries are working to free themselves of reliance on the US dollar, so as to reduce America’s power to dictate to them through economic sanctions. It is understandable in the case of Iran, which has every reason to fear that it is next on the regime change hit list; but particularly interesting in the case of Turkey, a NATO member which might be the first to peel off from the alliance if it sees its future in closer ties with China and, by extension, Russia.

These countries also look at the West’s claim to be defending international law and human rights, and contrast it with the actions of the West when those rights are claimed, for example, by refugees. As for international law, it’s apparently OK for Britain to break it in “specific and limited ways” when it suits us. Annoy the Americans, and they’ll murder you by drone – as they did to Iranian general Suleimani – without the slightest excuse in law. The pre-2022 Ukraine was notoriously corrupt and was in the habit of banning opposition parties and suppressing minority (Russian) language and culture – not a shining example of a democracy. Nobody has even begun to suggest how postwar Ukraine might become a better place in these regards.

Non-aligned nations conclude – and rightly – that we uphold legal principles and a rules-based order only when it suits us. Nowhere is this made clearer than in America’s refusal to back an International tribunal to prosecute national leaders for acts of aggression and other war crimes, as it would open the door to Americans being held to account too. They want a rules-based order only as long as they make the rules, and have a free pass for themselves. What’s going on now seems, from a distance (most of Africa, for example) like the playground bully whining because he got hit and it’s not fair.

Britain and the USA between them, have fought, or fought in; invaded; bombed; conquered; regime-changed; occupied; colonised; engineered revolutions or armed proxy factions in; maintained garrisons in; or otherwise exercised force, in all countries but Andorra, Bhutan and Liechtenstein. So when we complain that it’s against international law for Russia to invade Ukraine, other countries see the pot calling the kettle black. Many of those other countries are former colonies or imperial possessions; more than half of today’s nations have become independent only since 1945 (Britain doesn’t celebrate an Independence Day, but thanks to us, 65 other countries do). They may well feel that what goes around, comes around. Arguments of the “he started it” variety may be valid among 5 year olds but cut little ice in international affairs. America is basically telling Russia, “you can’t interfere in Ukraine; that’s our job”.

Once again, I find it necessary to point out that this does not amount to support for Russia, nor does it justify their war. What Russia is doing is wrong; it’s against international law, and is causing much avoidable bloodshed. But if it’s wrong when the Russians do it, it’s wrong when we do it. Law is meaningless unless it applies equally to all.

So, my conclusion is that the declared reasons for US and British involvement in Ukraine are not genuine. We aren’t there to defend democracy or sovereignty in Ukraine; there is no more hollow a cliché in the whole political vocabulary. We aren’t there to defend international law; we are among the worst offenders in that regard. Return the Chagos islands to their rightful owners, stop supporting Israel’s creeping annexation of the West Bank, and then you can talk to me about international law.

Other countries see this much more clearly than we see it ourselves. There are actually no good reasons for our involvement in Ukraine, only bad ones. The rest of the world sees that we are deliberately prolonging the war in pursuit of neocon strategic goals. The political masters of the West do not truly care about the ordinary Ukrainian people; Ukraine is simply the latest unfortunate battleground country. Much of the rest of the world looks with mounting disgust at the trail of destruction, misery and failed states left across North Africa, the Middle East and into central Asia, by America’s recent wars, and will increasingly react negatively to the Western agenda and methods.

The West is pouring weapons into Ukraine whose sole effect is to prolong the bloodshed. No good outcome will be obtained: the likely eventual negotiated outcome will resemble what was available one year ago and all the sacrifice since then will likely have been a complete waste. Once people realise this, there should be anger, but I fear that our thought-conditioning will prevent that.

Seek the peace which is obtainable, not the one that isn’t

The American-led West hasn’t won a war for decades; humiliating losses and failures in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and now Ukraine among others in this century alone, keep showing us, but we don’t get the message. There is a swathe of chaotic failed states stretching across North Africa and the Middle East, reaching to Afghanistan, left in the wake of those wars. Refugees continue to flee these areas. Now Ukraine is being added to the list.

Why are we fanning the flames of war in Ukraine? Why do our politicians keep talking as if we were a belligerent party rather than an arms supplier? Why are we relentlessly fed propaganda about it, rather than news? Some say that if “we” (the Ukrainians, armed by us) don’t kick the Russians out of Ukraine, it would send a message that aggression pays, as the invasion is “illegal”. So, “our” side are supporting international law, on principle. But principles are rather flexible, aren’t they? We do nothing to restrain Israel from its brutal occupation and creeping annexation of land it seized in the six day war (it has barely registered that the Israeli government has just “authorised” nine more illegal settlements in the West Bank). Britain actively supported America’s extraordinary rendition programme, under which thousands of people were systematically abducted and tortured. We hold onto the Chagos islands in defiance of the UN and international law. America occupies land in northeastern Syria, in Deir Ezzor province, including rich gas fields, without the slightest shred of legal right. We invaded Iraq on the basis of lies, and Afghanistan, although they hadn’t attacked us. We bombed Syria and Libya without any attempt at legal justification that I can recall. Regimes have been changed left and right in an attempt to bend the world to America’s will. Americans engineered the 2014 coup in Ukraine, and the West encouraged Kyiv to disregard their commitments under the Minsk agreements. Truth is, the US-led West has no respect for the principles of international law, and any pretence that the slaughter in Ukraine is a defence of such principles is disgraceful. It’s just the latest round of the “great game” that governments and nations stuck in an imperial mindset play to serve the egos of their leaders.

Britain joined the First World War, ostensibly because of a treaty obligation to protect the neutrality of Belgium; in fact, because the prominent powers in Europe had been arms-racing for years, spoiling for a fight to tip the balance of power their way. Four years later, with many millions dead and millions more impoverished, it stood revealed as a tragic waste for unworthy objectives. So it will be with the Ukraine war.

Western media still point at Russia’s invasion last February as if it were the unprovoked first blow which started the fight and which cannot go without punishment. To do so is to ignore the previous history of the region, the obvious interests of the countries concerned, the eight years of war in the area at a lower level, the huge expansion of NATO since the fall of the USSR, the West’s supplying of weapons to Ukraine since 2014, and indeed our own history of picking fights and striking the first blow at other countries.

Now President Zelenskiy is touring Western Europe asking for fighter planes. Given the time it would take to train pilots, and the support infrastructure that would be needed, a squadron or two of F16s would be of limited tactical value as weapons; they would amount to a demonstration of increased support rather than a real change in the balance of forces. The West has been giving Ukraine weapons which are more complex than the ones they were trained on; Abrams and Leopard tanks, for example, are effective only if used in close tactical co-ordination with artillery and infantry, and with air cover. Ukrainian soldiers, recently conscripted and hastily trained, will not be good at this, and their commanders will not be used to the tactics which exploit advanced military systems to maximum effect. America spent the best part of 20 years training the Iraqi and Afghan forces to fight in a co-ordinated way with modern equipment, and it was a failure. Another lesson not learned.

As I’ve said before, the most likely outcome of this war will be something like the Minsk agreement, with Ukraine ceding the Crimea (recognising the reality that they will never recover it) and losing control of the Donbass. Such an outcome could probably be obtained if they were to talk now, before the war steps up again in the Spring. However, Westerners continue to encourage Ukraine to fight for more than they had before; to aim to recover their pre-2014 territory, when even re-taking their pre-2022 territory is beyond them. Why are we encouraging this over-reach, at such cost in life, at such cost in other losses to Ukraine, and at such economic cost to ourselves? Sooner or later, the people of Ukraine will have had enough and demand the peace which is obtainable, rather than the one which isn’t.

The Ukraine war can go three ways, broadly speaking. There can be a negotiated peace in which Ukraine loses territory, as outlined above, perhaps with a demilitarised zone and the rump Ukraine able to rebuild, relying for a generation on Western aid. There can be a Russian military success in which they occupy and defend the annexed territory, remaining in a heavily armed standoff, Korean style, perhaps with occasional flare-ups. The third option is escalation to a major, possibly nuclear, war. I don’t believe in a fourth option – a Ukrainian victory, pushing the Russians completely out of the pre-2014 borders and with Russia accepting their defeat.

Yet, Western policy continues to promote the most unrealistic outcome – Ukrainian victory – as the only acceptable one, and to bet the whole house on that outcome. The politicians making this gamble, on our behalf, have yet to tell us just how long they will keep it up, and how much of our money they will waste on this effort. Will they go on for 20 years, as in Afghanistan? I don’t think so, because the Russians have considerable control of what happens next.

The fighting has been focused recently on Bakhmut, and for reasons that aren’t obvious, our media keep pushing the talking point that Bakhmut isn’t of any great strategic significance. This is obviously not a view shared by either side in the war, as the Russians have accepted heavy losses to take the city and the Ukrainians have taken heavy losses defending it. Bakhmut is important, and if the Russians take it, they will proceed to roll up Ukraine’s defensive line and drive them Westwards. We may then find out how far Russia wants to go; many Western commentators have assumed that Russia wants to conquer and occupy the whole of Ukraine, but occupation of a resentful country is a bad and very expensive business to be in. It’s up to Putin to define success on his own terms.

None of this means that I’m hoping for a Russian victory, justifying their invasion, or cheering on their war effort. I’m just looking at it without an agenda or rose-tinted glasses, which leads me to expect Russia to succeed militarily in the coming campaign and reach a position in which they can determine what follows. At that point it would make sense for them to de-escalate the war and offer to talk terms. Once they do so, if the West continues to encourage further fighting and bloodshed, I would hope that the pro-war politicians will finally face a public backlash. But, again, it doesn’t matter what I think it would make sense for Putin to do. As for the Western politicians, they have spent so much money, given so much equipment, and lent all their own credibility to an unrealistic outcome, so expecting them to act rationally is a stretch. They may be making the basic error of not leaving themselves a ladder to climb down. At present, it makes me a little uncomfortable that the loudest voices criticising the blank-cheque support for Ukraine are from right-wing, Trump-supporting Republicans in the US; where are the anti-war voices in Britain, or on the left? At the moment, all we hear is crowd-pleasing and attention-getting hawkish sounds, and of course, any critics of the pro-war policy are liable to be denounced as traitors, appeasers or cowards. It was always the way. Those who move swiftly on from the subject of Ukraine to push for a confrontational posture against China need stronger opposition. China is a competitor, a rival, to the US; arguably, America’s first peer competitor. But it is not yet an enemy to be fought, and need not become one.

Last week, veteran journalist Seymour Hersh published an account of how the US blew up the Nordstream pipelines. His article is short of evidence and essentially relies on the account of a single un-named source, but there’s plenty of detail on how it was done, who did it, and who knew, and I expect others will now seek to make the story stand up. At the moment, what the story has going for it is that it makes sense – everyone in it is acting in their own interest, while alternative explanations (such as the laughable one that Russia did it) rely on someone acting against their interests. If an insider has actually spoken out (albeit anonymously), others may follow with more puzzle-pieces, and there may be some physical evidence produced. But, suppose the story checked out and the thrust of it was admitted to be correct; would the Western public be allowed to care? As a direct act of war by the US against a Russian/German asset, it should be a big deal, but you will scour the UK press in vain for any discussion of it. The US is a rogue state, and the pipeline operation an act of state-sponsored terrorism. What are the chances of Joe Biden or Victoria Nuland standing trial for it? Don’t hold your breath. But a time of change is coming in Western politics and I believe these people – the neocons, empire-builders, warmongers and regime-changers – have largely had their day. Who replaces them is the question that will determine the path the world takes in the long term.

The Ukraine war

In Vietnam, many reporters who were independent of the US government, were allowed in to gather information, and were actively supported with co-operation and logistical help. Their reports often contradicted the lies being sent up the line by the Army, undermining public support for the war and the US Army’s narrative that they were winning. Eventually the warmongers ran out of road and the US withdrew, with some unconvincing window-dressing to cover their embarrassment at losing to a peasant army. Similar window-dressing has been used to cover the more recent losses of face in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the American-led western forces failed in their war aims. Despite the dire warnings that failure was “not an option” and would “send a message” that the bad guys could win, the world still turns.

There is another war going on today, and once again, armchair generals warn us that any outcome other than total Ukrainian victory would send a message that aggression might actually work. So, in order to send all these oh-so-important messages, a great deal of bloodshed is happening and an economic disaster is being created.

There are few independent reporters in Ukraine today. The reports we see tend to focus on personal victim-stories of Ukrainian civilians standing in the rubble of their homes, generating our sympathy, and supporting the Western narrative of a brave Ukraine successfully resisting Russian brutality. Meanwhile, the UK media have all lined up (including the supposedly neutral BBC, and the only mainstream paper normally critical of pro-war neocon narratives, the Guardian) to push the official line. This is despite the fact that this country is not a party to the war and we should be able to regard it with more objectivity. There was actually more objectivity in the reporting of the Iraq war, when Britain was a belligerent party, than in the current Ukraine war in which we are not.

You can tell that this is an exercise in virtue-signalling when every commentator feels compelled to refer to the conflict as “Putin’s illegal war…”. Of course, Russia’s attack on Ukraine last February was against international law, but then so were the Western attacks on Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia and a host of other countries which had never attacked us. How often do these commentators refer to “Britain’s illegal wars…” or “America’s illegal wars…”?

This doesn’t mean that the media should give equal time to Russia’s talking points, or present a false moral equivalence. It was wrong for Russia to invade last February. However, the simplistic narrative we are constantly fed contains many obvious lies and misdirections, and the quality of public debate is very low – as it is in other areas where we have been crudely told what to think. The Guardian, for example, constantly leads its coverage with a day-count, as if history began on February 24^th last year and no previous events are relevant. The Russian invasion last year was a major escalation of a conflict which had been going on for over 8 years, and which should have been settled (by the Minsk agreements) long ago. This history is relevant, but they don’t want us to look at it.

One thing they don’t do is give any real tactical information on things like military losses. And yet, each side in the war will know the extent of its own losses and will have a very good idea of the losses it has inflicted on the other side. Western governments will have this information from contacts in Ukraine, and from intelligence sources and satellite surveillance. So the information is not being withheld for tactical security reasons, but to keep the public in the dark (on both sides). I can take a wild guess as to which side is losing the grim contest of attrition, though.

The few sources available – which are often unguarded remarks by Ukrainian soldiers or Western politicians – suggest that Ukraine is outgunned in terms of artillery several times over. NATO has already replaced a lot of artillery pieces, and the recent Ramstein meeting ended up with agreement to provide many more, plus ammunition. NATO countries are dipping into their active forces and stockpiles elsewhere to provide all this, which they would not do unless it were an urgent need. It therefore seems likely that Ukraine has lost most of the artillery it had a year ago. In the current winter phase of largely static warfare, much of which is an artillery contest, the Russians have advantages of range, firepower and targeting.

The reluctant agreement this week to provide modern tanks further suggests that the Ukrainians have a similarly dire need in that area. However, even the tame Western media have realised that you can’t deliver these tanks straight to the battlefield; it will take months to train the crews, set up supply lines and maintenance facilities, and so on. These tanks will likely arrive too late. NATO’s refusal to provide Ukraine with an air force means Ukrainian ground forces will remain at a disadvantage; it’s asking for trouble to attack an enemy which has air cover when you have none. Even static defence is a costly business in such a situation. The narrative of Ukraine taking back Crimea and the Donbass is a fantasy if they don’t have an effective air force.

My conclusion is that, when the weather allows, Russia will move into the areas it has claimed and Ukraine will be unable to put up very much resistance; and having done so, Russia will be able to hold the territory it wants to hold. I think it likely that the current phase of war will reach this conclusion by early summer. We are constantly fed the story that Ukraine can win, and that recapturing all their pre-2014 territory is a desirable, achievable, necessary goal. I strongly suspect that this will be disproved within a few months. This is not defeatism; it’s not me that’s going to be defeated, I’m not a party to this. I can look at this war from an outside position. The battle is not always to the strong, nor the race to the swift; but that is the way to place your bets. I think it likely that Russia will reach its goals, if I’m right as to what those are, in the spring campaign, and it doesn’t matter whether I, or anyone else, thinks that is right or desirable. It is not necessary to be morally right to win a war. The brutal fascist and ally of Hitler, General Franco, won the Spanish war and remained in power for life, while Britons enjoyed sunshine holidays on his beaches. We didn’t seem concerned as to what message that sent.

If this outcome happens, it would present a natural stopping point in the conflict. Once Russia occupies the territory it intends to hold for the long term, it has no further need to conduct offensive operations, and Ukraine lacks the ability to do so. Whether or not you like this outcome, the bloodshed could stop. Western politicians say NATO must give wholehearted, whatever-it-takes support to Ukraine until a complete Ukrainian victory; this is unrealistic. Europe’s position will have to change; we’ve crippled ourselves with the sanctions and economic war, cutting ourselves off from resources we depend on, and putting immense strain on the European economy. If this military outcome were to happen, and the intensity of the fighting died down, it would be crazy to go on pouring in more weapons and ammunition, and egging on Ukraine to continue with pointless fighting.

Ukraine has already lost a lot in human terms, and in destruction of property. They have lost tens of thousands in combat, and possibly 5 million in outward migration. The eastern areas they have lost were some of the more urban, industrial and productive regions; the rump of Ukraine will emerge bankrupt, still profoundly corrupt, and find that its Western friends may be less willing and able to pay for reconstruction than they were to pay for the war. In this sense, Ukraine has already lost. Had they kept to the Minsk agreements, they could have avoided this situation. Eventually they will be forced to concede Crimea permanently and accept loss of control over the Donbass areas, which will remain Russian-dominated and possibly occupied. All the bloodshed could have been avoided; responsible leaders would stop it now. It’s possible the Western powers will carry on provoking Russia, perhaps by offering NATO membership to the rump Ukraine, or in other ways. If we have any sense, though, we’ll support a ceasefire and drop our warlike posturing.

Russia, along with the countries with which it trades, and which would also like to live in a world which is not completely American-dominated, have moved a long way from their former reliance on the US dollar. Much of the trade between Russia and countries such as India and China, is now settled in their own currencies. In this way, the sanctions and confiscations have diminished the US more than Russia. A substantial trading bloc built around the SCO nations and the BRICS, including Saudi Arabia, working outside the SWIFT system and no longer using the dollar as its foundation, could be the unintended result of the sanctions regime. The US dollar was the whole world’s reserve currency even during the Cold War; America may find it loses this privilege and the power that goes with it.

Pouring money and weapons into what was, already, acknowledged to be the most corrupt country in Europe, is also bound have unintended consequences. If the war stops tomorrow, Ukraine is a wreck, with unpayable debts, barely functional water, power, healthcare and transport systems, and shattered industry. We should be concerned that they will have little to sell but whatever armaments remain in working order when the rubble stops bouncing. Like Syria, it will be at third world level for a generation. All this, for the sake of sending messages. What message has actually been sent by this war? That you don’t want your country to be the venue of big-power confrontation.

None of the present NATO heads of government can be considered a great statesman, and few show any sign of understanding the forces moving the world, or of thinking ahead in any realistic fashion. I hesitate to describe power-hungry dictators like Putin or Xi Jinping as great statesmen either, but I think they do far more long-term thinking, and have a better grasp of strategy than their opposite numbers in the West. Look at Britain’s cabinet of dullards and non-entities; none of them will be more than the smallest footnote in the history of our times. Nobody has painted a credible picture of the West’s war objectives; meaning, the desired situation when the shooting finally stops. Already Ukraine lies in ruins; if the Russians gave up tomorrow and left, Ukraine is a basket case and the West will have limited available money to support the rebuilding. If, as some people fantasise, Putin is deposed and Russia itself falls apart, who would catch the pieces of this nuclear-armed country? And when Ukraine finally makes peace, conceding land, how will we deal with this failed, but heavily armed, state? Will we maintain the economic war on Russia, in perpetual enmity? In terms of possible outcomes, the alternatives range from bad to really bad, and the longer we go on pouring petrol on the fire, the worse the range of outcomes gets.