That is exactly where the government of Sir Keir Starmer finds itself. Despite a mammoth majority and a dramatically diminished Tory opposition, the Prime Minister acts like a man permanently besieged, his Labour Party seemingly less popular than Typhoid Mary. His inability to be unequivocal to questions of whether he will contest the next election suggest as much.

The same cannot be said about his enthusiasm for the sword and sabre. There are monsters out there to battle, and Sir Keir is rising to the plate. Sensing this, the military mandarins, most prominently General Sir Roland Walker, head of the Army, have been more than encouraging, seeing the need to ready the country for war by 2027. Given the military’s perennial love affair with astrology, that state of readiness could only be achieved with a doubling of the Army’s fighting power and tripling it by 2030.

Given that background, the UK Strategic Defence Review (SDR) was commissioned in July 2024. Led by former Labour Defence Secretary and NATO Secretary General Lord George Robertson, the freshly released report promises a fat boon for the military industrial complex. Like all efforts to encourage war, its narrative is that of supposedly making Britain safer.

Starmer’s introduction is almost grateful for the chance to out the blood lusting enemy. “In this new era for defence and security, when Russia is waging war on our continent and probing our defences at home, we must meet the danger head on.” The placing of noble Ukraine into the warming fraternity of Europe enables a civilisational twist to be made. The Russian military efforts in Ukraine are not specific to a murderous family affair and historical anxieties but directed against all Europeans. Therefore, all Europeans should militarise and join the ranks, acknowledging that “the very nature of warfare is being transformed” by that conflict.

In pursuing the guns over butter program, Starmer recapitulates the sad theme of previous eras that led to global conflict. As Europe began rearming in the 1930s, a prevalent argument was that people could have guns and butter. Greater inventories of weaponry would encourage greater prosperity. So, we find Starmer urging the forging of deeper ties between government and industry and “a radical reform of procurement”, one that could only be economically beneficial. This would be the “defence dividend”, another nonsense term the military industrial complex churns out with such disconcerting ease.

The foreword from the Defence Secretary, John Healey, outlines the objectives of the SDR. These include playing a leading role in NATO “with strengthened nuclear, new tech, and updated conventional capabilities”; moving the country to a state of “warfighting readiness”; nourishing the insatiable military industrial Moloch; learning the lessons of Ukraine (“harnessing drones, data and digital warfare”); and adopting a “whole-of-society approach”, a sly if clumsy way of enlisting the civilian populace into the military enterprise.

The review makes 62 recommendations, all accepted by the grateful government. Some £15 billion will go to the warhead programme, supporting 9,000 jobs, while £6 billion will be spent on munitions over the course of the current Parliament. A “New Hybrid Navy” is envisaged, one that will feature Dreadnought and the yet to be realised SSN-AUKUS submarines, alongside “support ships” and “autonomous vessels to patrol the North Atlantic and beyond.” Submarine production is given the most optimistic assessment: one completion every 18 months.

The Royal Air Force is not to miss out, with more F-35s, modernised Typhoons, and the next generation of jets acquired through the Global Combat Air Programme. To his splurge will be added autonomous fighters, enabling global reach.

Mindless assessments are abundant in the Review. The government promises a British army 10 times “more lethal to deter from the land, by combining more people and armoured capability with air defence, communications, AI, software, long-range weapons, and land drone swarms.” Some 7,000 new long-range weapons will be built and a New CyberEM Command established “to defend Britain from daily attacks in the grey zone.” Keeping those merchants of death happy will be a new Defence Exports Office located in the Ministry of Defence, one intended “to drive exports to our allies and growth at home.”

The fanfare of the report, festooned with fripperies for war, conceals the critical problems facing the British armed forces. The ranks are looking increasingly thinned. (In 2010, regular troop numbers stood at 110,000; the current target of 73,000 soldiers is being barely met.) Morale is ebbing. The state of equipment is embarrassingly poor. The UK’s celebrated submarine deterrent is somewhat less formidable in the deterrence department, with its personnel exhausted and subject to unpardonably lengthy stints at sea. The 204-day patrol by HMS Vanguard is a case in point.

Whether the SDR’s recommendations ever fructify remains the hovering question. It’s all very good to make promises about weapons programmes and boosting a country’s readiness to kill, but militaries can be tardy in delivery and faulty in execution. What saves the day may well be standard ineptitude rather than any firebrand conviction in war. To the unready go the spoils.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

Western capitals are still coordinating with Israel and the US on their ‘criticisms’ of the genocide – just as they earlier coordinated on their support for the slaughter

After 19 months of being presented with dissembling accounts of Gaza from their governments, western publics are now being served up a different – but equally deceitful – narrative.

With the finishing line in sight for Israel’s programme of genocidal ethnic cleansing, the West’s Gaza script is being hastily rewritten. But make no mistake: it is the same web of self-serving lies.

As if under the direction of a hidden conductor, Britain, France and Canada – key US allies – erupted this week into a chorus of condemnation of Israel.

They called Israel’s plans to level the last fragments of Gaza still standing “disproportionate”, while Israel’s intensification of its months-long starvation of more than two million Palestinian civilians was “intolerable”.

The change of tone was preceded, as I noted in these pages last week, by new, harsher language against Israel from the western press corps.

The establishment media’s narrative had to shift first, so that the sudden outpouring of moral and political concern at Gaza’s suffering from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney – after more than a year and a half of indifference – did not appear too abrupt, or too strange.

They are acting as if some corner has been turned in Israel’s genocide. But genocides don’t have corners. They just progress relentlessly until stopped.

The media and politicians are carefully managing any cognitive dissonance for their publics.

But the deeper reality is that western capitals are still coordinating with Israel and the US on their “criticisms” of Israel’s genocide in Gaza – just as they earlier coordinated their support for it.

As much was conceded by a senior Israeli official to Israel’s Haaretz newspaper. Referring to the sudden change of tone, he said: “The past 24 hours were all part of a planned ambush we knew about. This was a coordinated sequence of moves ahead of the EU meeting in Brussels, and thanks to joint efforts by our ambassadors and the foreign minister, we managed to moderate the outcome.”

The handwringing is just another bit of stagecraft, little different from the earlier mix of silence and talk about Israel’s “right to defend itself”. And it is to the same purpose: to buy Israel time to “finish the job” – that is, to complete its genocide and ethnic cleansing of Gaza.

The West is still promoting phoney “debates”, entirely confected by Israel, about whether Hamas is stealing aid, what constitutes sufficient aid, and how that aid should be delivered.

It is all meant as noise, to distract us from the only pertinent issue: that Israel is committing genocide by slaughtering and starving Gaza’s population, as the West has aided and abetted that genocide.

PR exercise

With stocks of food completely exhausted by Israel’s blockade, UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher told the BBC on Tuesday that some 14,000 babies could die in Gaza within 48 hours without immediate aid reaching them.

The longer-term prognosis is bleaker still.

On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to let in a trickle of aid, releasing five trucks, some containing baby formula, from the thousands of vehicles Israel has held up at entry points for nearly three months. That was less than one percent of the number of trucks experts say must enter daily just to keep deadly starvation at bay.

On Tuesday, as the clamour grew, the number of aid trucks allowed to enter Gaza reportedly climbed to nearly 100 – or less than a fifth of the bare minimum. None of the aid was reported to have reached the enclave’s population by the time of writing.

Netanyahu was clear to the Israeli public – most of whom appear enthusiastic for the engineered starvation to continue – that he was not doing this out of any humanitarian impulse.

This was purely a public relations exercise to hold western capitals in check, he said. The goal was to ease the demands on these leaders from their own publics to penalise Israel and stop the continuing slaughter of Gaza’s population.

Or as Netanyahu put it: “Our best friends worldwide, the most pro-Israel senators [in the US] … they tell us they’re providing all the aid, weapons, support and protection in the UN Security Council, but they can’t support images of mass hunger.”

Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, was even clearer: “On our way to destroying Hamas, we are destroying everything that’s left of the [Gaza] Strip.” He also spoke of “cleansing” the enclave.

‘Back to the Stone Age’

Western publics have been watching this destruction unfold for the past 19 months – or at least they’ve seen partial snapshots, when the West’s establishment media has bothered to report on the slaughter.

Israel has systematically eradicated everything necessary for the survival of Gaza’s people: their homes, hospitals, schools, universities, bakeries, water systems and community kitchens.

Israel has finally implemented what it had been threatening for 20 years to do to the Palestinian people if they refused to be ethnically cleansed from their homeland. It has sent them “back to the Stone Age”.

A survey of the world’s leading genocide scholars published last week by the Dutch newspaper NRC found that all conclusively agreed Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Most think the genocide has reached its final stages.

This week, Yair Golan, leader of Israel’s main centrist party and a former deputy head of the Israeli military, expressed the same sentiments in more graphic form. He accused the government of “killing babies as a hobby”. Predictably, Netanyahu accused Golan of “antisemitism”.

The joint statement from Starmer, Macron and Carney was far tamer, of course – and was greeted by Netanyahu with a relatively muted response that the three leaders were giving Hamas a “huge prize”.

Their statement noted: “The level of human suffering in Gaza is intolerable.” Presumably, until now, they have viewed the hellscape endured by Gaza’s Palestinians for a year and a half as “tolerable”.

David Lammy, Britain’s foreign secretary who in the midst of the genocide was happy to be photographed shaking hands with Netanyahu, opined in parliament this week that Gaza was facing a “dark new phase”.

That’s a convenient interpretation for him. In truth, it’s been midnight in Gaza for a very long time.

A senior European diplomatic source involved in the discussions between the three leaders told the BBC that their new tone reflected a “real sense of growing political anger at the humanitarian situation, of a line being crossed, and of this Israeli government appearing to act with impunity”.

This should serve as a reminder that until now, western capitals were fine with all the other lines crossed by Israel, including its destruction of most of Gaza’s homes; its eradication of Gaza’s hospitals and other essential humanitarian infrastructure; its herding of Palestinian civilians into “safe” zones, only to bomb them there; its slaughter and maiming of many tens of thousands of children; and its active starvation of a population of more than two million.

Played for fools

The three western leaders are now threatening to take “further concrete actions” against Israel, including what they term “targeted sanctions”.

If that sounds positive, think again. The European Union and Britain have dithered for decades about whether and how to label goods imported from Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. The existence of these ever-expanding settlements, built on stolen Palestinian territory and blocking the creation of a Palestinian state, is a war crime; no country should be aiding them.

In 2019, the European Court of Justice ruled that it must be made clear to European consumers which products come from Israel and which from the settlements.

In all that time, European officials never considered a ban on products from the settlements, let alone “targeted sanctions” on Israel, even though the illegality of the settlements is unambiguous. In fact, officials have readily smeared those calling for boycotts and sanctions against Israel as “Jew haters” and “antisemites”.

The truth is that western leaders and establishment media are playing us for fools once again, just as they have been for the past 19 months.

“Further concrete actions” suggest that there are already concrete actions imposed on Israel. That’s the same Israel that recently finished second in the Eurovision Song Contest. Protesters who call for Israel to be excluded from the competition – as Russia has been for invading Ukraine – are smeared and denounced.

When western leaders can’t even impose a meaningful symbolic penalty on Israel, why should we believe they are capable of taking substantive action against it?

No will for action

On Tuesday, it became clearer what the UK meant by “concrete actions”. The Israeli ambassador was called in for what we were told was a dressing down. She must be quaking.

And Britain suspended – that is, delayed – negotiations on a new free trade agreement, a proposed expansion of Britain’s already extensive trading ties with Israel. Those talks can doubtless wait a few months.

Meanwhile, 17 European Union members out of 27 voted to review the legal basis of the EU–Israel Association Agreement – providing Israel with special trading status – though a very unlikely consensus would be needed to actually revoke it.

Such a review to see if Israel is showing “respect for human rights and democratic principles” is simple time-wasting. Investigations last year showed it was committing widespread atrocities and crimes against humanity.

Speaking to the British parliament, Lammy said: “The Netanyahu government’s actions have made this necessary.”

There are plenty of far more serious “concrete actions” that Britain and other western capitals could take, and could have taken many months ago.

A flavour was provided by Britain and the EU on Tuesday when they announced sweeping additional sanctions on Russia – not for committing a genocide, but for hesitating over a ceasefire with Ukraine.

Ultimately, the West wants to punish Moscow for refusing to return the territories in Ukraine that it occupies – something western powers have never meaningfully required of Israel, even though Israel has been occupying the Palestinian territories for decades.

The new sanctions on Russia target entities supporting its military efforts and energy exports – on top of existing severe economic sanctions and an oil embargo. Nothing even vaguely comparable is being proposed for Israel.

The UK and Europe could have stopped providing Israel with the weapons to butcher Palestinian children in Gaza. Back in September, Starmer promised to cut arms sales to Israel by around eight percent – but his government actually sent more weapons to arm Israel’s genocide in the three months that followed than the Tories did in the entire period between 2020 and 2023.

Britain could also stop transporting other countries’ weapons and carrying out surveillance flights over Gaza on Israel’s behalf. Flight tracking information showed that on one night this week, the UK sent a military transport plane, which can carry weapons and soldiers, from a Royal Air Force base on Cyprus to Tel Aviv, and then dispatched a spy plane over Gaza to collect intelligence to assist Israel in its slaughter.

Britain could, of course, take the “concrete action” of recognising the state of Palestine, as Ireland and Spain have already done – and it could do so at a moment’s notice.

The UK could impose sanctions on Israeli government ministers. It could declare its readiness to enforce Netanyahu’s arrest for war crimes, in line with the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant, if he visits Britain. And it could deny Israel access to sporting events, turning it into a pariah state, as was done to Russia.

It could announce that any Britons returning from military service in Gaza risk arrest and prosecution for war crimes.

And of course, the UK could impose sweeping economic sanctions on Israel, again as was done to Russia.

All of these “concrete actions”, and more, could be easily implemented. The truth is there is no political will to do it. There is simply a desire for better public relations, for putting a better gloss on Britain’s complicity in a genocide that can no longer be hidden.

Wolf exposed

The problem for the West is that Israel now stands stripped of the lamb’s clothing in which it has been adorned by western capitals for decades.

Israel is all too evidently a predatory wolf. Its brutal, colonial behaviours towards the Palestinian people are fully on show. There is no hiding place.

This is why Netanyahu and western leaders are now engaged in an increasingly difficult tango. The colonial, apartheid, genocidal project of Israel – the West’s militarised client-bully in the oil-rich Middle East – needs to be protected.

Until now, that had involved western leaders like Starmer deflecting criticism of Israel’s crimes, as well as British complicity. It involved endlessly and mindlessly reciting Israel’s “right to defend itself”, and the need to “eliminate Hamas”.

But the endgame of Israel’s genocide involves starving two million people to death – or forcing them out of Gaza, whichever comes first. Neither is compatible with the goals western politicians have been selling us.

So the new narrative must accentuate Netanyahu’s personal responsibility for the carnage – as though the genocide is not the logical endpoint of everything Israel has been doing to the Palestinian people for many decades.

Most Israelis are on board, too, with the genocide. The only meaningful voices of dissent are from the families of the Israeli hostages – and then chiefly because of the danger posed to their loved ones by Israel’s assault.

The aim of Starmer, Macron and Carney is to craft a new narrative, in which they claim to have only belatedly realised that Netanyahu has “gone too far” and that he needs to be reined in. They can then gradually up the noise against the Israeli prime minister, lobby Israel to change tack, and, when it resists or demurs, be seen to press Washington for “concrete action”.

The new narrative, unlike the worn-thin old one, can be spun out for yet more weeks or months – which may be just long enough to get the genocidal ethnic cleansing of Gaza either over the finish line, or near enough as to make no difference.

That is the hope – yes, hope – in western capitals.

Blood on their hands

Starmer, Macron and Carney’s new make-believe narrative has several advantages. It washes Gaza’s blood from their hands. They were deceived. They were too charitable. Vital domestic struggles against antisemitism distracted them.

It lays the blame squarely at the feet of one man: Netanyahu.

Without him, a violent, highly militarised, apartheid state of Israel can continue as before, as though the genocide was an unfortunate misstep in Israel’s otherwise unblemished record.

New supposed “terror” threats – from Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran – can be hyped to draw us back into cheerleading narratives about a plucky western outpost of civilisation defending us from barbarians in the East.

The new narrative does not even require that Netanyahu face justice.

As news emerges of the true extent of the atrocities and death toll, a faux-remorseful Netanyahu can placate the West with revived talk of a two-state solution – a solution whose realisation has been avoided for decades and can continue to be avoided for decades more.

We will be subjected to yet more years of the Israel-Palestine “conflict” finally being about to turn a corner.

Even were a chastened Netanyahu forced to step down, he would pass the baton to one of the other Jewish supremacist, genocidal monsters waiting in the wings.

After Gaza’s destruction, the crushing of Palestinian life in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem will simply have to return to an earlier, slower pace – one that has allowed it to be kept off the western public’s radar for 58 years.

Will it really work out like this? Only in the imaginations of western elites. In truth, burying nearly two years of a genocide all too visible to large swaths of western publics will be a far trickier task.

Too many people in Europe and the US have had their eyes opened over the past 19 months. They cannot unsee what has been live-streamed to them, or ignore what it says about their own political and media classes.

Starmer and co will continue vigorously distancing themselves from the genocide in Gaza, but there will be no escape. Whatever they say or do, the trail of blood leads straight back to their door.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jonathan Cook.

Photograph Source: Prime Minister’s Office – OPL 3

The urge to throw more money at defence budgets across a number of countries has become infectious.  It was bound to happen with Donald Trump’s return to the White House, given his previous insistence that US allies do more to fatten their own armies rather than rely on the largesse of Washington’s power.  Spend, spend, spend is the theme, and the UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has shown himself willing to join this wasteful indulgence.

On February 25, just prior to his visit to Washington, Starmer announced that spending on defence would reach 2.5% of GDP from April 2027.  In the next parliament, it would rise to 3%.  “In recent years,” states a UK government press release, “the world has been reshaped by global instability, including Russian aggression in Ukraine, increasing threats from malign actors, rapid technological change, and the accelerating impacts of climate change.”

Almost predictably, the term “Cold War” makes its retro appearance, with the spending increase the largest since that conflict of wilful misunderstandings and calculated paranoia.  Russia figures prominently, as do “malign actors” who have burdened “the working people of Britain” with “increased energy bills, or threats to British interests and values.”

The governing Labour Party has also gone a bit gung-ho with the military-industrial establishment.  In an open letter reported by the Financial Times, over 100 Labour MPs and peers thought it wise that ethical rules restricting investment by banks and investment firms in defence companies be relaxed.  Financial institutions, the letter argues, should “rethink ESG [environmental, social and governance] mechanisms that often wrongly exclude all defence investment”.  It was also important to address the issue of those “unnecessary barriers” defence firms face when “doing business in the UK”.  Among such barriers are those irritating matters such as money laundering checks banks are obliged to conduct when considering the finance needs of defence and security firms, along with seeking assurances that they are not financing weapons banned under international law.

That these uncontroversial rules are now being seen as needless barriers to an industry that persists in shirking accountability is a sign of creeping moral flabbiness.  Across Europe, the defence and arms lobbyists, those great exploiters of fictional insecurity, are feeling more confident than they have in years.  They can rely on such figures as European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, who stated on March 4 that, “We are in an era of rearmament. And Europe is ready to massively boost its defence spending.”

To pursue such rearmament, Starmer has decided to take the axe to the aid budget, reducing it from its current level of 0.5% of gross national income to 0.3% in 2027.  It was, as the press release goes on to mention, a “difficult choice” and part of “the evolving nature of the threat and the strategic shift required to meet it”.  The Conservatives approved the measure, and the populist Reform UK would have little reason to object, seeing it had been its policy suggestion at the last election.

It was a decision that sufficiently troubled the international development minister, Anneliese Dodds, to quit the cabinet.  In a letter to the prime minister, Dodds remarked that, while Starmer wished “to continue support for Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine; for vaccination; for climate; and for rules-based systems”, doing so would “be impossible … given the depth of the cut”.

Making the Office of Overseas Development Assistance absorb such a reduction would also see Britain “pull-out from numerous African, Caribbean and Western Balkan nations – at a time when Russia has been aggressively increasing its global presence.”  It would be isolated from various multilateral bodies, see “a withdrawal from regional banks and a reduced commitment to the World Bank”.  Influence would also be lost at such international fora as the G7 and G20.

Defence establishment figures have also regarded the decision to reduce aid with some consternation.  General Lord Richards, former Chief of Defence Staff, saw the sense of an increase in military spending but not at the expense of the aid budget.  “The notion that we must weaken one to strengthen the other is not just misleading but dangerous,” opined Richards in The Telegraph.  “A lack of investment and development will only fuel greater instability, increase security threats and place a heavier burden on our Armed Forces.”

The aid budgets of wealthy states should never be seen as benevolent projects.  Behind the charitable endeavour is a calculation that speaks more to power (euphemised as “soft”) than kindness.  Aid keeps the natives of other countries clothed, fed and sufficiently sustained not to want to stray to other contenders.  The sentiment was expressed all too clearly by a disappointed Dodds: a smaller UK aid budget would embolden an already daring Russia to fill the vacuum.  How fascinating, then, that a daring Russia, its threatening posture inflated and exaggerated, is one of the primary reasons prompting an increase in Britain’s defence spending in the first place.

The post More Guns, Less Butter: Starmer’s Defence Spending Splash appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

On February 25, just prior to his visit to Washington, Starmer announced that spending on defence would reach 2.5% of GDP from April 2027. In the next parliament, it would rise to 3%. “In recent years,” states a UK government press release, “the world has been reshaped by global instability, including Russian aggression in Ukraine, increasing threats from malign actors, rapid technological change, and the accelerating impacts of climate change.”

Almost predictably, the term “Cold War” makes its retro appearance, with the spending increase the largest since that conflict of wilful misunderstandings and calculated paranoia. Russia figures prominently, as do “malign actors” who have burdened “the working people of Britain” with “increased energy bills, or threats to British interests and values.”

The governing Labour Party has also gone a bit gung-ho with the military-industrial establishment. In an open letter reported by the Financial Times, over 100 Labour MPs and peers thought it wise that ethical rules restricting investment by banks and investment firms in defence companies be relaxed. Financial institutions, the letter argues, should “rethink ESG [environmental, social and governance] mechanisms that often wrongly exclude all defence investment”. It was also important to address the issue of those “unnecessary barriers” defence firms face when “doing business in the UK”. Among such barriers are those irritating matters such as money laundering checks banks are obliged to conduct when considering the finance needs of defence and security firms, along with seeking assurances that they are not financing weapons banned under international law.

That these uncontroversial rules are now being seen as needless barriers to an industry that persists in shirking accountability is a sign of creeping moral flabbiness. Across Europe, the defence and arms lobbyists, those great exploiters of fictional insecurity, are feeling more confident than they have in years. They can rely on such figures as European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, who stated on March 4 that, “We are in an era of rearmament. And Europe is ready to massively boost its defence spending.”

To pursue such rearmament, Starmer has decided to take the axe to the aid budget, reducing it from its current level of 0.5% of gross national income to 0.3% in 2027. It was, as the press release goes on to mention, a “difficult choice” and part of “the evolving nature of the threat and the strategic shift required to meet it”. The Conservatives approved the measure, and the populist Reform UK would have little reason to object, seeing it had been its policy suggestion at the last election.

It was a decision that sufficiently troubled the international development minister, Anneliese Dodds, to quit the cabinet. In a letter to the prime minister, Dodds remarked that, while Starmer wished “to continue support for Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine; for vaccination; for climate; and for rules-based systems”, doing so would “be impossible … given the depth of the cut”.

Making the Office of Overseas Development Assistance absorb such a reduction would also see Britain “pull-out from numerous African, Caribbean and Western Balkan nations – at a time when Russia has been aggressively increasing its global presence.” It would be isolated from various multilateral bodies, see “a withdrawal from regional banks and a reduced commitment to the World Bank”. Influence would also be lost at such international fora as the G7 and G20.

Defence establishment figures have also regarded the decision to reduce aid with some consternation. General Lord Richards, former Chief of Defence Staff, saw the sense of an increase in military spending but not at the expense of the aid budget. “The notion that we must weaken one to strengthen the other is not just misleading but dangerous,” opined Richards in The Telegraph. “A lack of investment and development will only fuel greater instability, increase security threats and place a heavier burden on our Armed Forces.”

The aid budgets of wealthy states should never be seen as benevolent projects. Behind the charitable endeavour is a calculation that speaks more to power (euphemised as “soft”) than kindness. Aid keeps the natives of other countries clothed, fed and sufficiently sustained not to want to stray to other contenders. The sentiment was expressed all too clearly by a disappointed Dodds: a smaller UK aid budget would embolden an already daring Russia to fill the vacuum. How fascinating, then, that a daring Russia, its threatening posture inflated and exaggerated, is one of the primary reasons prompting an increase in Britain’s defence spending in the first place.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

Imagine this scene, if you can. For several days, violent mobs have massed in the centre of British cities and clashed with police in an attempt to reach synagogues to attack them.

Draped in England flags and Union Jacks, and armed with cricket bats and metal rods, the trouble-makers have dismantled garden walls to throw bricks.

Gangs have swept through residential areas where Jews are known to live, smashing windows and trying to break down doors. The rioters attacked and torched a hotel identified as housing Jewish asylum seekers, an act that could have burned alive the occupants.

For days, the media and politicians have chiefly referred to these events as far-right “thuggery” and spoken of the need to restore law and order.

In the midst of all this, a young Jewish MP is invited onto a major morning TV show to talk about the unfolding events. When she argues that these attacks need to be clearly identified as racist and antisemitic, one of the show’s presenters barracks and ridicules her.

Close by, two white men, a former cabinet minister and an executive at one of the UK’s largest newspapers, are seen openly laughing at her.

Oh, and if this isn’t all getting too fanciful, the TV presenter who mocks the young MP is the husband of the home secretary responsible for policing these events.

Look at how @edballs & @kategarraway treat @zarahsultana.

So hostile.

pic.twitter.com/BqwnM62owS

— James Foster (@JamesEFoster) August 5, 2024

The scenario is so hideously outrageous no one can conceive of it. But it is exactly what took place last week – except that the mob wasn’t targeting Jews, but Muslims; the young MP was not Jewish but Zarah Sultana, the country’s most high-profile Muslim MP; and her demand was not that the violence be identified as antisemitic but as Islamophobic.

It all sounds a lot more plausible now, I’m guessing. Welcome to a Britain that wears its Islamophobia proudly, and not just on the streets of Bolton, Bristol or Birmingham, but in a London TV studio.

‘Pro-British protests’

Islamophobia is so bipartisan in today’s Britain that BBC reporters on at least two occasions referred to the mobs chanting anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant slogans as “pro-British protesters“.

BBC reporter has just described rioters as "a pro-British march" pic.twitter.com/IR8695kGWF

— Ted Booth (@tedgbooth) August 4, 2024

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jonathan Cook.

Imagine this scene, if you can. For several days, violent mobs have massed in the centre of British cities and clashed with police in an attempt to reach synagogues to attack them.

Draped in England flags and Union Jacks, and armed with cricket bats and metal rods, the trouble-makers have dismantled garden walls to throw bricks.

Gangs have swept through residential areas where Jews are known to live, smashing windows and trying to break down doors. The rioters attacked and torched a hotel identified as housing Jewish asylum seekers, an act that could have burned alive the occupants.

For days, the media and politicians have chiefly referred to these events as far-right “thuggery” and spoken of the need to restore law and order.

In the midst of all this, a young Jewish MP is invited onto a major morning TV show to talk about the unfolding events. When she argues that these attacks need to be clearly identified as racist and antisemitic, one of the show’s presenters barracks and ridicules her.

Close by, two white men, a former cabinet minister and an executive at one of the UK’s largest newspapers, are seen openly laughing at her.

Oh, and if this isn’t all getting too fanciful, the TV presenter who mocks the young MP is the husband of the home secretary responsible for policing these events.

Look at how @edballs & @kategarraway treat @zarahsultana.

So hostile.

pic.twitter.com/BqwnM62owS

— James Foster (@JamesEFoster) August 5, 2024

The scenario is so hideously outrageous no one can conceive of it. But it is exactly what took place last week – except that the mob wasn’t targeting Jews, but Muslims; the young MP was not Jewish but Zarah Sultana, the country’s most high-profile Muslim MP; and her demand was not that the violence be identified as antisemitic but as Islamophobic.

It all sounds a lot more plausible now, I’m guessing. Welcome to a Britain that wears its Islamophobia proudly, and not just on the streets of Bolton, Bristol or Birmingham, but in a London TV studio.

‘Pro-British protests’

Islamophobia is so bipartisan in today’s Britain that BBC reporters on at least two occasions referred to the mobs chanting anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant slogans as “pro-British protesters“.

BBC reporter has just described rioters as "a pro-British march" pic.twitter.com/IR8695kGWF

— Ted Booth (@tedgbooth) August 4, 2024

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jonathan Cook.

Photograph Source: ukhouseoflords – CC BY 2.0

I have just returned after spending a week in London, attending the always engaging Historical Materialism conference, the pro-Palestine march which drew hundreds of thousands of protesters, and the major David Hockney exhibition, marking his 80^th birthday, at the National Portrait Gallery.

Both the Tory prime minister and the Labour leader of the opposition, Keir Starmer, have espoused Joe Biden’s line and called for “humanitarian pauses” instead of a ceasefire in Israel’s invasion of Gaza. The march was directed at both Labour and the Tories, but the open Tory civil war which broke out at the same time enabled Starmer to duck somewhat into the background (at least for a short time).

The focus of the Tory civil war was Sue Ellen Cassiana Fernandes (Braverman since 2018), a brown-skinned child of immigrants who cosplays a white racist. Suella, as she prefers to be called, published an article in The Times just before the march in which she labeled the demonstration calling for a Gaza ceasefire a “hate march” (this was not the first time she had used such language about pro-Palestine protests).

In the article Braverman attacked the police as being politically biased for refusing to ban the lawfully-organized march.

Since she was made Home Secretary by Rishi Sunak Braverman’s been involved in a series of rows, often irritating No 10 Downing Street with her comments.

Braverman floated the idea of banning charities from giving tents to homeless people, saying they were “occupied by people, many of them from abroad, living on the streets as a lifestyle choice”.

She had angered others by referring to the arrival of asylum seekers in small boats from across the Channel as “the invasion on our southern coast”.

At October’s Conservative party conference, Braverman made an over-blown populist speech attacking the “luxury beliefs” of liberal-leaning people, and prompted a Tory London assembly member who is gay to heckle her for making their party look “transphobic”. He was removed quickly from the conference hall by a couple of heavies.

Braverman was so bent on undermining Sunak’s authority that he had little choice but to show her the door. After all, he had only made her Home Secretary in order to secure his right flank from attacks by the Tory knuckle-dragger base during his campaign for the party leadership. Braverman alluded to this in a furious 3-page letter responding to her sacking, where she accused him of reneging on apparent undertakings he had given as a condition of her accepting the Home Secretaryship.

Sunak conducted an immediate cabinet reshuffle in which he appointed the then Foreign Secretary to be Braverman’s replacement as Home Secretary, and, to much surprise, brought back the tainted David Cameron, who had been prime minister from 2010 to 2016, to be Foreign Secretary. Cameron, who left parliament after he lost the Brexit referendum in 2016, now had to be appointed to the House of Lords as Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton before he could assume his position as Foreign Secretary.

Sunak had taken recently to referring himself as the “change” prime minister (though no one seemed to know what that meant, least of all Sunak himself), and the media was soon replete with delicious satire on how appointing a has-been politician to his cabinet could conceivably represent any kind of plausible “change”.

Compared to the Tories, Labour’s rank and file tend to be more pro-Palestinian, and this is now the underlying factor in challenges confronting its (self-declared Zionist) leader Keir Starmer,  who faces calls for a ceasefire, as opposed to short-term pauses, in Gaza’s catastrophe.

The Scottish National Party (SNP) called for a parliamentary vote on a resolution for a ceasefire, partly with the undeclared but obvious intention of embarrassing the pusillanimous Starmer.

Dozens of backbenchers, as well as 8 shadow ministers, defied Starmer to back the SNP resolution, which however was defeated when put to a vote. This was the biggest challenge to his authority since he became Labour leader in 2020, but Starmer was fortunate in two respects.

Firstly, the rebels seemed mindful that Labour is a government in waiting, and couched their opposition with a decorum far removed from the unbridled ferocity marking current conflicts in the Tory party.

Secondly, the rebels were not joined by major figures in Starmer’s shadow cabinet, the resignation of one or two of whom would have been a far bigger problem for him than what was now amounting to a rebellion very much from his party’s second tier.

Starmer stressed his anti-ceasefire position in his response to the Labour rebels, but his tone was somewhat low-key. Eschewing his usual tactic of threatening critics with expulsion from the party, he did leave himself open to the possibility of backing a ceasefire at some point in the future, saying, “My focus has always been on what will make a material difference on the ground”.

Given his repeated lying on this and other occasions, anyone who believes Starmer on Gaza’s catastrophe is likely to believe in the efficacy of magic potions.                                        

The post Eventful London: Suella’s Fall; Starmer’s Evasions appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Kenneth Surin.

Photograph Source: Chris McAndrew – CC BY 3.0

The Labour Party is once again in crisis over Israel, but not for usual reasons. Keir Starmer is facing a revolt from his own MPs and councilors over his support for Israel’s criminal conduct against the Palestinians.

Facing mounting pressure to call for a ceasefire, Starmer gave a speech at Chatham House to try and end the controversy over his position. But there would be no concessions to peaceniks. Instead, the Labour leader doubled down on his opposition to a ceasefire.

Starmer repeated Hillary Clinton’s incoherent argument that Hamas would be “emboldened” by a ceasefire. A ceasefire would just allow Hamas to regroup and strike back at Israel. This would rule out any ceasefire ever again.

However, Starmer tried to make it a more humane position by stressing his position would lead to an eventual ‘cessation’. He called for a ‘humanitarian pause’ and a two-state solution. For now, though the relentless bombing of Gaza must continue, according to Sir Keir.

This strange saga began with an interview on LBC radio during Labour’s party conference. Starmer was asked to comment on the crisis and he issued his condemnation, but presenter Nick Ferrari wanted more.

Perhaps sensing a trapdoor over claims of anti-Semitism, Sir Keir moved to outflank right-wing critics and take a hard line on Hamas. “I think Israel has the right to do everything it can to get those hostages back safe and sound,” he said.

Ferrari asked the Labour leader if Israel’s right to defense extends to cutting off power and water to the Gaza Strip. “I think Israel has that right,” Starmer said.

“Obviously, everything has to be done within international law,” he added hastily. “But I don’t want to step away from core principles.”

Of course, the ‘core principles’ in question are Israel’s absolute right to do anything it wants to the Palestinians in response to the terrible atrocities of October 7.  This clip soon went viral, provoking outrage from anyone who cares about human rights.

Skip forward to today, even some of the worst shadow cabinet members are worried that Starmer’s position appears “callous” to Muslim voters. The British Muslim vote is concentrated in urban areas, where many of these MPs rely on their faithful support.

Starmer has outdone himself this time. He has managed to enrage many Labour voters, trigger a rebellion among MPs and divide the shadow cabinet. Finally, the Labour leader’s disregard for minority voters has come back to bite him.

It’s a refreshing change from the days when Jeremy Corbyn was smeared as an anti-Semite for his support for Palestinian rights. But this is about much more than throw-away remarks in an interview. It’s about the kind of party Labour should be.

Headbangers for Labour

What we’ve seen since the LBC interview is around 30 resignations from Labour councilors across the country, while more than 250 Labour councilors have challenged Starmer to change his position. This was just the start.

A pro-Palestine demonstration was held outside Labour HQ with chants like “Keir Starmer, you can’t hide! You support war crimes!” But even inside Labour HQ there is reportedly discontent over Labour policy on the Gaza war.

Only real headbangers like NEC member Luke Akehurst, nicknamed ‘Luke the Nuke’ by left-wing activists, want total support for Israel’s war on the Palestinians, but they don’t have total support.

Around 60 Labour MPs have called for a ceasefire so far. They have been joined by London Mayor Sadiq Khan and Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham. Even the Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar, a member of the secretive British-American Project, has joined the chorus.

More than a dozen Labour frontbenchers are defying Starmer by supporting a ceasefire. It’s the first time Starmer has faced a major rebellion within Parliament. There could be more resignations if Starmer doesn’t change his position as Israel pummels Gaza.

One craven shadow minister Nicholas Thomas-Symonds has said a full ceasefire will get in the way of Israel defending itself. He seems to think this position is compatible with allowing aid to flow into the Gaza Strip. This isn’t even stupidity.

Just as former Blair adviser John McTernan said a ceasefire would mean Israel’s “surrender” to Hamas, but there should be a “humanitarian corridor” to help limit civilian casualties. This is a fantasy war zone, where carpet bombing can avoid killing women and children.

The unfortunate truth is that the Labour right in its support of pro-US imperialism and Israeli expansionism has a stronger claim on the party than the radical anti-war left. Labour has long been a party of the British state despite its institutional and organic ties to trade unionism.

The Labour Party has a conflict built into it between those who favor success on capitalist terms and those who favor radical change. As the late, great Tony Benn once put it: “The Labour Party has never been a socialist party, but it’s always had socialists in it.”

Nevertheless, the slew of Starmer loyalists backing uncritical support for Israel has started to dwindle. Journalist Paul Mason, who has sacrificed much of his dignity for Starmer, has called for the party to back a full ceasefire.

Meanwhile, Labour MP Andy McDonald has been suspended for giving a “deeply offensive” speech, which included the phrase “from the river to the sea”. This phrase has become taboo in British newspapers.

In his speech, McDonald said: “We will not rest until we have justice. Until all people, Israelis and Palestinians, between the river and the sea, can live in peaceful liberty.” You can see why Starmer’s goons went after McDonald.

Purges are no substitute for foreign policy though. Labour doesn’t have much of a foreign policy, except groveling before the United States and its allies. Even if this means supporting ethnic cleansing, the Starmerites think the price is worth it to get into office.

This is a brief opening for the ‘stay and fight’ crowd to show they can do more than just stay. It’s about time they showed they can fight for party democracy and force the Labour leadership to yield on Gaza.

Haunted by Blairism

Some journalists have drawn parallels with Tony Blair’s refusal to call for a ceasefire during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war. Blair’s support for Israel’s war machine helped create an opening for Gordon Brown’s acolytes to move against him.

The situation in Labour is quite different today. This crisis is not taking place in the last days of Blairism-Brownism after more than a decade in power. Starmer faces no rival having crushed the left and reconsolidated the centre ground in the party.

This is a political scandal that reaches into the ranks of the bureaucracy and Team Starmer itself. The reasons why his comments on Israel have been so divisive within the party machine are strictly electoral, not moral.

During the 2020 Labour leadership election, Starmer pledged to defend human rights and promote internationalism. This is why many Corbyn supporters ended up voting for Starmer. They thought he would deliver a softer, more electable Corbynism.

However, Starmer’s mandate was simply to win at any cost. He had already aligned himself with the right-wing elements of the party bureaucracy, which wanted to smash the left.

As soon as he won Starmer returned to the old Blairite strategy of triangulation. He set out to win over Tory voters by sacrificing every commitment he made to the membership. Worse still, Starmer has waged war on the left and purged Jeremy Corbyn himself.

The Starmer plan is to outflank the Conservative government, steal their voters, lure away their donors and fill their shoes in high office. Meanwhile, the traditional Labour vote of working-class people are being taken for granted.

People often talk about the base as if it’s the only people voting Labour for decades are white workers. Not at all. The Labour heartlands include London, where Afro-Caribbean and South Asian voters have long supported the party. But the Muslim vote is not Sir Keir’s priority.

The double-figure poll leads could narrow over the next several months and many Muslims may choose to stay at home in the 2024 general election. This combination could shrink Labour’s gains and even cost it some seats.

A Labour victory in 2024 still looks very likely, even if the Conservative Party recovers some of its losses in the campaign. The election is still Labour’s to lose, but it may take a ‘miracle’ for Sunak to rebuild his party’s fortunes.

Team Starmer is bound to be complacent with its huge poll lead over the Tories. However, the Labour Party will eventually face a reckoning for a strategy of triangulating human life for political capital. Just as New Labour did in 2010.

The post Starmer’s New Israel Problem appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Josh White.

Former U.K. Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn is expected to seek reelection as an independent next year after current Leader Keir Starmer and his establishment allies on Tuesday made good on their pledge to formally block the leftist member of Parliament from running under the party's banner.

After Starmer publicly declared last month that "Jeremy Corbyn will not stand as a Labour candidate at the next general election," the party's National Executive Committee (NEC) voted 22-12 on Starmer's motion to not endorse Corbyn's candidacy.

The Timesreported that Corbyn's allies say the MP has already decided to run as an independent, with one source telling the London newspaper: "It's become personal. There will be an announcement by the end of the week."

Our message is clear: We are not going anywhere. Neither is our determination to stand up for a better world.

Corbyn has represented the Greater London constituency Islington North for four decades and served as an independent MP since he was suspended from Labour in 2020 due to a battle over allegations of antisemitism in the party.

After news broke of Starmer's motion on Monday, Corbyn charged that the party leader "has broken his commitment to respect the rights of Labour members and denigrated the democratic foundation of the party."

Noting that Islington North voters have elected him as a Labour MP 10 consecutive times since 1983, Corbyn said that "I am proud to represent a community that supports vulnerable people, joins workers on the picket line, and fights for transformative change."

Also calling out the ruling Conservative Party, Corbyn continued:

This latest move represents a leadership increasingly unwilling to offer solutions that meet the scale of the crises facing us all. As the government plunges millions into poverty and demonizes refugees, Keir Starmer has focused his opposition on those demanding a more progressive and humane alternative.

I joined the Labour Party when I was 16 years old because, like millions of others, I believed in a redistribution of wealth and power. Our message is clear: We are not going anywhere. Neither is our determination to stand up for a better world.

Some other MPs, constituents, journalists, and leftists from around the world have, since Monday, blasted Starmer's "disgraceful" move and expressed solidarity with Corbyn.

Greek leftist MP Yanis Varoufakis warned that "Starmer's Labour Party is close to the point of no return. Blocking Jeremy Corbyn from standing as a Labour candidate is an affront to decency and a declaration of civil war within a party about to metamorphose from a broad church to a toxic sect."

Critics have highlighted that in February 2020, Starmer said: "The selections for Labour candidates needs to be more democratic and we should end NEC impositions of candidates. Local party members should select their candidates for every election."

In a joint statement Tuesday, officers from the Islington North Constituency Labour Party (CLP) denounced the move by Starmer and the NEC.

"We believe in the democratic right of all constituency parties to choose their prospective parliamentary candidate," the CLP leaders from Corbyn's area said. "Therefore, we reject the NEC's undue interference in Islington North, which undermines our goal of defeating the Conservatives and working with our communities for social justice."

Noting the CLP's statement in a series of tweets Tuesday, Guardian columnist Owen Jones, who identifies as a socialist and a longtime Labour voter, also took aim at Starmer:

While Starmer was seeking his leadership role, "I think he said a lot of things he didn't believe at all, because he thought that if he didn't, then he wouldn't be elected leader of the Labour Party. And he was absolutely right in that calculation," Jones asserted.

"A lot of Starmer's cheerleaders see themselves as upstanding liberals who believe in decency, honesty, and integrity in politics. They don't," he said. "They disregard the colossal deceit of Starmer because they hate the left, and they believe anything done to crush the left is a good thing."

"Anyway, I don't think it will end well for a Labour leadership which is founded on a load of lies, essentially believes in nothing, and is ahead in the polls solely because of Tory self-destruction," Jones added. "They'll win the election by default, then political reality will intrude."

The grassroots group Momentum, which has supported Corbyn since his successful 2015 campaign to lead the Labour Party, called Tuesday "a dark day for democracy."

While there was previously no appeals process for anyone blocked by the NEC, Sky Newsrevealed Tuesday as the party faces "accusations of fixing parliamentary selections for candidates who are preferred by the leadership," those "who wish to stand for Labour at the next election will be given the right to appeal if the party rejects their bid to become an MP."

According to the outlet, "Candidates will be provided with written feedback as to why they 'fell below the standards expected of a Westminster parliamentary candidate,' while an appeals panel will be convened to hear the claim."

Welcoming the development on Twitter, Momentum said that "socialists and trade unionists have been wrongly excluded in favor of those favored by a narrow London clique. The result has been a cohort of prospective MPs dominated by the professional political classes, making Labour less representative of the communities we seek to serve."

"This new process should mark an end to the Labour right's factional abuses of selections process," the group added. "In Islington North as everywhere else—let local members decide."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Dan Hind.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Adam Ramsay.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Caroline Molloy.