The Threat We Face

If you want more wars, then you want an awful lot more both of physical disability and of lifelong mental illness. But the benefits for those go straight back into the real economy. Not so the money to the military-industrial complex, as President Eisenhower called it. For only the twenty-second highest population in the world, the sixth highest military spending is still not enough for those generous future employers, the arms companies. Therefore, with the resignation of Al Carns so soon after that of John Healey, and with Healey's job having had to go to Dan Jarvis, we are now in the throes of a military coup.

Still a Reserve Officer, nudge nudge wink wink, Carns was a Conservative-voting Colonel in the Special Forces, nudge nudge wink wink, until June 2024, when he resigned his commission and joined the Labour Party after the General Election had been called. He was then parachuted in a new sense, into the Birmingham Selly Oak seat that had been vacated at the last possible moment by Steve McCabe, Parliamentary Chair of Labour Friends of Israel. The General Election was on 4 July. On 9 July, Carns was made a Defence Minister.

But since last month, Labour has held only one council seat in Birmingham Selly Oak, the same number as the Conservatives. A ward of which a very small part was in that constituency returned two members of Reform UK, but every other councillor on Carns's patch is now a Green. Carns may be only 46, but time is not on his side.

The argument for military spending is conveniently easy to present as impossible to falsify, since if there never were an attack of the kind predicted, then that could be sold as successful deterrence. The arms companies are behind the political, civil and military top brass at the Ministry of Defence, and thus behind this putative putsch, but there are other forces at work. At seven o'clock on Tuesday evening, on the dot, there were 26 road closures in and around Belfast, and 70 demonstrations in Great Britain. The leaflet announcing the closures commanded: ALL BUSINESSES TO CLOSE AT 5:30 PM TONIGHT NO EXCUSES. Who says? Everyone knew. Or what? Likewise. Against that background, Kemi Badenoch offers something for each of Conservative, Reform, and Restore Britain supporters to chew over:

She already has a casual arrangement with Rupert Lowe, the leader of Restore Britain, who took a Tory seat on the public accounts committee. ‘Rupert Lowe wants to cut spending in a way that Nigel Farage doesn’t,’ she explains. ‘Reform has quite a lot of left-wing ideas. They want more benefits. They want more nationalisation. They want the big state. They just want to be in charge of it.’ Asked if she would accept Lowe as a Tory one day, she says: ‘I don’t think I would go that far.’ But she adds: ‘I respect the fact that he turns up for work, which Nigel Farage doesn’t do. He does policy. He doesn’t run away.’

Does Badenoch want to ban kosher slaughter? Does she consider the desire to do so to be within the bounds of acceptable opinion? The Green Party used to want to ban halal slaughter, until it was pointed out that that would have necessitated a ban on kosher as well. Now it wants to ban the medically unnecessary circumcision of children while permitting their castration. Are we to be treated in detail to the personal experience of Zack Polanski? By the way, that is his legal name, like Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. Still, at least the Greens are obviously not the Islamists of right-wing media hysteria. Does Rupert Lowe agree with them about circumcision? If not, why not? And if so, then does Badenoch? If not, why not? Nigeria is only half Muslim, but the infant male circumcision rate is as good as 100 per cent. Think on.