On The Frontlines

For all their many faults, imagine that either Joe Biden or Barack Obama had said anything remotely resembling Donald Trump’s remarks about Afghanistan. The British political and media Right would have gone berserk. A State Visit to the United States would have been unthinkable, as in any case it ought to be while Canada was under threat. There is no NATO without the United States, so for all practical purposes NATO no longer exists. No international body lasts forever.

Far from NATO’s having kept the peace, its expansion has directly caused the war in Ukraine. Membership of NATO subjects our military personnel to the command of officers who were ultimately answerable to Viktor Orbán, or to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, or indeed to Trump, on whose Board of Peace Orbán and Erdoğan now sit. Finland looks silly for having joined NATO, and Sweden looks downright irresponsible for having sacrificed for that its work and reputation in peacemaking and in aid. As a member both of the Board of Peace Executive Board and of its Gaza Executive Board, does Tony Blair retain a Labour Party membership card? If so, then why does anyone else?

The canonisation of NATO “because of Attlee” does not extend to the NHS, or to the public ownership of the utilities. That NATO was founded by Ernest Bevin on the principles of British trade unionism is a pious if self-regarding fiction that has a parallel in every original member state, including what was then Salazar’s Portugal. It is comical to assert that NATO was devised by Denis Healey, who was all of 31 when it was created, and who in any case went on to inflict monetarism on Britain, after he had perpetrated against the Chagossian people the evil that was later compounded by David Miliband of extraordinary rendition infamy. The Government has pulled Monday’s vote in the House of Lords on the Bill to give effect to the wretched Chagos deal that had been struck by the Conservatives. Its defeat must be only the start of reversing the crimes of previous Labour Governments.

Likewise, on the right to trial by jury, and to appeal from the Magistrates’ Court, there is talk of a review clause to be invoked if the Crown Court backlog fell below a certain level. But that is not good enough. Only full rejection will do. Sarah Sackman has told Parliament that this was ideological, and as such would have been pursued even there had been no backlog. Like digital ID, without which a ban on social media for under-16s would be impossible, it must be defeated in its entirety, setting of the repeal of, among very much else, the Trade Union Act, the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Act, the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Act, the Nationality and Borders Act, the Elections Act, the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act, the National Security Act, the Public Order Act, the Online Safety Act, the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act, and the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, replacing them with, among very much else, a real Hillsborough Law.

We need someone in the House of Commons who had the record, the profile and the style to fight for all of this. That would most certainly not be the old NHS privatiser Andy Burnham, hilarious though it is that the Labour Party takes it as read that if he were to win the Gorton and Denton by-election, then he would not only launch a Leadership challenge, but succeed in overthrowing Keir Starmer. That is the line from Starmer’s own camp, so to speak. In that vein, Burnham might self-identify as a woman for shortlisting purposes, and how would his Irish ancestry not make him BAME if necessary? Let the games begin.

The new MP for Gorton and Denton needs to be someone who flew the Union Flag and the Palestinian flag on either side of the Flag of Saint George, the Patron Saint of Palestine, with all three flown in honour of the memory of James Kirby, James Henderson and John Chapman. That MP needs to be someone whose election would move the Prime Minister to set up a lectern in Downing Street and announce a national emergency. There is talk of late February. Two years on.