Absolute Resolve

The King's State Visit to the United States should be under the flag of Canada, which Donald Trump ceased to seek to annex when he was made aware, in his second term, of who was its Head of State.

Trump's designs on Greenland seem to have gone by the by, so Javier Milei knows better than to rely on him to take the Falkland Islands for Argentina. But the fundamental principle of the American Republic is the expulsion of the British Empire from the Americas. Therefore, that Republic has only ever recognised de facto British administration of the Falklands, but never British sovereignty over them. The Reagan Administration was little or no help in 1982, when it was closely allied both to Margaret Thatcher and to General Galtieri, and the Trump Administration is closely allied to only one of Milei and Keir Starmer.

Oh, but I am laughing. Liz Truss said that she would have endorsed Milei as a candidate for Leader of the Conservative Party. His Argentina is the latest Promised Land of the British Right, which always needs a Fatherland somewhere away from the NHS. And that is before we get to Trump. Echoing Labour in the Blair years, Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage have both spent the Iran War insisting that Britain simply had to follow the Americans into any war that they happened to wage. What if Trump followed up his American-Israeli attack in Iran with an American-Argentine attack on the Falklands? 

Watch the betting markets. In late December, Master Sergeant Gannon Ken Van Dyke of United States Army Special Forces bet $33,000 that Nicolás Maduro would be removed by the end of January, netting him nearly $410,000 when that came to pass in an operation in which he himself participated. That operation was cheered to the rafters by everyone who had hailed the appointment of Peter Mandelson as Ambassador to Washington. We remember.

For all practical purposes, there is no NATO if the United States is not in it. If the Americans would no longer defend, say, Spain, then Spain is effectively no longer a member of NATO. But why is Spain being singled out when Britain is not? Did not our dear Prime Minister tell us that Iran was "not our war"? What more might there be to the matter? I did not hear any mention of opposition to Reform UK's line on Iran in that Labour election broadcast, into which a single syllable of post-watershed language had been slipped so that Labour could claim that the broadcasters had tried to censor it. Delivered by a youngish, middle-class woman in London who might otherwise vote Green.

The next shot against the Greens, the Left, and possibly even Rupert Lowe, will be the proscription of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organisation, challenging anyone to vote against it and unleash the Epstein Class media. No one should give Starmer the satisfaction. Nevertheless, the Terrorism Act was not designed to counter or deter the Armed Forces of other sovereign states, even if proscription is a lot cheaper than rebuilding the real means of doing so. But as the proscription of Palestine Action was an all-or-nothing measure that also banned the Russian Imperial Movement and the Maniacs Murder Cult (and how are the presumably urgent battles against those progressing?), so the proscription of the IRGC should be an all-or-nothing measure that also banned ICE and the IDF. Why not?