On Manoeuvres

Presidential and Congressional elections were held during the American Civil War, and the British General Election of 1945 was held while the Second World War was still being fought, with votes cast all over the world. It would be comparatively easy to hold fresh elections in Ukraine, and elections were repeatedly held in Northern Ireland to determine mandates for participation in peace negotiations. His constitutional term of office having expired, Volodymyr Zelensky has no such mandate, so of course he is no such participant.

Would North Korean troops be acceptable as peacekeepers in Ukraine? The British Army has been training the Ukrainian Army, and the rest, so even if we had them to spare, then how could British troops possibly be so acceptable? Vladimir Putin may be wrong to want its Russian-speaking, historically Russian areas, but the fact that he does so, or even if he wanted the whole of it, does not mean that he might wish to march on to Land's End or to Lisbon if were able, which he is not.

Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Suella Braverman, Priti Patel and Nigel Farage all attended Donald Trump's inauguration last month. Zelensky had been close to a deal until Johnson had urged him to fight on and promised to support him if he did. How has that worked out? Yet Johnson was considered close enough to Trump to be invited to the private church service in the morning. Uncharacteristically, he is silent now. As is Truss. As is Braverman. And as is Patel, who is the Shadow Foreign Secretary. Meanwhile, Farage wants Ukraine to join NATO, as clear a break with Trump as it is possible to imagine.

Today, for the first time, Reform UK is in first place according to all polling. But with a Government majority of the present size, there is no reason why this should not be a full-term Parliament. Two impending events loom over both right-wing parties in Great Britain, but especially over Reform. One is the release of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, to do with whom Farage and Richard Tice want nothing, but whom much of their base and of their hitherto non-voting target electorate regard as the greatest living Englishman. The other is the official deployment of British boots on the ground in Ukraine. Yaxley-Lennonist and Trumpian candidates could take enough votes to deny Reform, and to an extent the Conservatives, hundreds of seats. Under First Past the Post, it would not matter if there were two or more such candidates in a constituency; indeed, that might even be beneficial. As to a figurehead, other than Yaxley-Lennon, Robert Jenrick has come out against Trump over his interference in the case of Andrew Tate. But Rupert Lowe is well and truly on manoeuvres.