Taking Down The Drones

In simple point of fact, Israel is not one of them in Britain's case. But there are numerous British and American allies in the Middle East. Most of them refused to have anything to do with last night's events. Jordan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia must be bastions of liberal democracy.

Not that any of those had taken part in the operation against the Houthis, which has failed miserably. It took 12 countries, including six of the G7 and two of the P5, to be defeated by the Houthis. Bahrain was the only Arab country on the list, because it was an Anglo-American naval service station. But the Saudis and the Emiratis had recently spent nine years losing a war to the Houthis, and everyone else in the region had watched them do it, so there was little enthusiasm for tagging along with the West's repetition of its 20-year defeat at the hands of the Taliban. Each of those missiles cost at least one million dollars, and some of them cost twice that. Against a drone. A drone!

Last night, we again saw some of the richest countries in the world spend eye-watering sums of money to take down drones. Joined by their faithful retainers. Now complete with a half-Anglo king, the Hashemites are going to be needing yet another kingdom. Bearing in mind that even his heir is a Palestinian, for so the world turns, where should Anglo-America give them this time, and why?

It is certainly not going to be Iran. Those who could not subdue Yemen delude themselves that they could take a country the capital of which exceeded London in population by more than half a million, and New York by more than a million. With the forty-eighth largest population and the one hundred and ninth highest Gross Domestic Product, the forty-ninth biggest country in the world, and not even the de jure government of that, has sent them home to lick their wounds. Yet they imagine that they would have better luck against the seventeenth biggest country, with the seventeenth largest population, with the nineteenth highest GDP, and with what it has just shown to be a very formidable ballistic capability indeed, able to hit the Israeli airbase at Ramon, from which its consulate in Damascus had been bombed.

We are governed by such fantasists, and they are Officially Opposed by more. But when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair's Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Keir Starmer would result in a hung Parliament.

I have no plan to join the Workers Party of Britain, although nor would I expect to stand against it. If, however, it did not contest North Durham, then I would. To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not. We have made a start.