Speak The Truth

Ben Wildsmith

If you need any confirmation of the UK’s place in the world, consider David Lammy’s remarks last week about Donald Trump’s intentions regarding the Israeli war on Iran.

‘A window now exists to achieve a diplomatic solution, something the UK has called for since the start of this conflict.’

That was on Friday, so less of a window than an arrow slit, as it turned out.

Not that the UK is alone in its irrelevance. Lammy was joined by his French and German counterparts for talks with Iran on Friday. Trump’s response to that was to tell journalists, ‘Nah, they didn’t help, Iran doesn’t want to speak to Europe. They want to speak to us. Europe is not going to be able to help on this one.’

So, the two-week space for negotiations that Trump teased earlier in the day was a unilateral US deception that wasn’t shared with European allies.

As Keir Starmer scrabbled round Trump’s feet, picking up papers for a supposed trade deal, he was out of the loop and disregarded on the real matters of state.

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Bright side

On Sunday, after America had dropped six ‘bunker-buster’ bombs and 30 Tomahawk missiles on Iran’s nuclear facilities, the UK government was looking on the bright side. Business Secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, told the BBC, ‘I wanted a different way to obtain this, but I cannot pretend to you that the prevention of Iran having a nuclear weapon is anything other than [in] the interests of this country. This is very different to what we saw with the invasion of Iraq … I think stability for the region would come about through an agreement where Iran would acknowledge that, because of its behaviour, no country in that theatre or the wider world would be able to countenance it having nuclear weapons.’

It is interesting to note the reference to the Iraq War here. Those in the Labour government who were around in 2003 are experiencing painful déjà vu as events move around them that could lead to their undoing.

Reynolds found himself dancing on the head of a pin when questioned by LBC’s Lewis Goodall.

The UK, he confirmed, had sought de-escalation and a diplomatic solution but now that Iran had been bombed it welcomed that outcome.

UK forces had not been involved and he wouldn’t speculate on whether they would have been if America had requested them. Now, he was ‘very clear’ that missile attacks on Israel should stop so that there is no need for further ‘preventative action’.

The faction that has gained supremacy in the Labour Party has never really understood why people were so upset about the Iraq War.  The endless ‘third way’ doublespeak that facilitated the Blair government in entrenching Thatcherite economics at the expense of post-industrial Britain just didn’t work when it came to the wholescale slaughter of Iraqis and the wider mayhem that provoked.

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Restraint

The UK represented by our government is without moral content. Whilst the Blair version was at least content to own its role as the bully’s mate, Starmer’s administration seeks to present itself as a force for restraint and peace whilst failing to demand either from the nations that count.

Would it not be liberating and refreshing to live in a nation that could look at circumstances like these and give voice to the obvious facts that all of us can see? Israel is indisputably running a fully-functional secret nuclear programme which no international body is allowed to inspect. Israel is expanding its territory into the West Bank, Syria, and Lebanon. Israel assassinated eight Iranian officials in diplomatic premises in Damascus. Israel has fired first in each of the exchanges of missiles with Iran.

Iran is a sickeningly repressive regime, and it very clearly has hostile intent towards Israel. For our government, however, to behave as if it is the primary threat to humanity in the region, whilst ignoring all of the above, and the ongoing carnage in Gaza, is cruelly absurd.

Busted flush

The UK is a busted flush on the international stage. It does as it is told whilst clinging to a fantasy of influence that long ago evaporated. It is no longer even required to throw a veil of old-world respectability over American belligerence as it did over Iraq.

If Cymru is to signal its distinctness next year by electing a Plaid Cymru-led government, then we should find the independence of spirit that has characterised the Irish response to events in the Middle East.

We have no power, that is the bald truth of it. Instead, we should recapture our dignity and be a nation that speaks the truth.