Play An Active Role?

"We must all, in this House, be clear that British and NATO troops should not, must not, play an active role in Ukraine," James Heappey, Minister for the Armed Forces, told the House of Commons yesterday. If had been a Labour MP, then he would have lost the whip for that.

To keep either the Labour or the Conservative whip, then you need to make the sorts of calls that are being made by Chris Bryant and Tom Tugendhat. Imagine that an MP were to call for British citizens who also happened to hold any other nationality than Russian to be banned from donating to political parties, or to be made to take some sort of loyalty oath? British Israelis, say?

As it is, you cannot acquire or retain Labour Party without the approval of Assaf Kaplan, who holds only Israeli nationality. Imagine that he were a Russian, and a Russian with a record comparable to Kaplan's at that. Then again, much of the hardware that Russia is deploying against Ukraine was made by the company that was recently paying £200,000 per year to Peter Mandelson, he of the close ties to Oleg Deripaska to match his close ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

Labour's policy is bought and paid for by Victor Pinchuk, a Ukrainian oligarch worth around $1.4 billion. The son-in-law of the amazingly corrupt and not inconsiderably oppressive former President Leonid Kuchma, Pinchuk bankrolls the Tony Blair Faith Foundation. Over on the other side, Britain's richest man is Alisher Usmanov. With a fortune in the region of $20 billion, he is one of Vladimir Putin's three closest advisers. Having played a key role in the suppression of independent media, he lives unsanctioned in Surrey. But at least he is a British citizen. Unlike Pinchuk.

This whole debate is shot through with racism. "A European city!", they exclaim as the bombs rain down on Kiev, having had no such scruples about Belgrade, and as if a non-European city would be less deserving of sympathy. It remains my firm policy to write "Kyiv" only once the BBC has agreed a pronunciation of it. Today, is it using "Keev" on television, but "Kiv" on the radio.

We all know what "European" means, and of course they do either cheer on, or pretend not to notice, the routine bombardment of Arab, African and other cities either by our own states or with their active connivance. How many people in Britain even know that this country is at war in Yemen?

Among the other perpetrators of that war is the United Arab Emirates, which abstained in the United Nations Security Council rather than condemn, as I most certainly do, the Russian invasion of Ukraine. India, supposedly crucial to any alternative alliance to Russia and China, also abstained. Oh, what fools you are, if you believe one word that you are being told.

The UAE owns Manchester City, which has expressed support for Ukraine, as Everton did at the same time, but Celtic was fined for expressing support for Palestine. Homemade Molotov cocktails to resist occupation are all right in Ukraine, but not in Palestine. The same is true of killing oneself by blowing up a bridge. Whatever might be the difference?