Posts

Boomeranger

Boomers have been getting a bad press of late but the time has come for us to stage a fightback. Lest the prospect of hordes of disgruntled pensioners of the 'Baby Boom' generation getting militant should cause alarm on the one hand or derision on the other let me make myself perfectly clear. I'm not suggesting for one moment that, collectively, we oldies should campaign for yet further concessions for ourselves, rather mobilise our political clout on behalf of those young, disabled and disadvantaged people who are facing yet more hardship as a result of punitive government policies. Our generation turns out to vote disproportionately, while others are either too apathetic or too disenchanted to make the effort. That gives us enormous political clout which, if harnessed to the common good rather than selfish ends, could be transformational. Losing our winter fuel payment (known by some as the wine allowance) was insulting for loyal Labour voters and, for many, caused anxiet...
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Plain English

JD Vance just let the cat out of the bag - to the Americans the 'special relationship' with the UK is not only not special, it's laughable. Many of us have long suspected this to be the case but it's helpful to have it finally confirmed for the avoidance of any doubt by someone at the heart of the US administration. Vance obviously believes his role as Vice President is to act as an  agent provocateur, sowing alarm and discord amongst former allies the better to wrong foot them. He demonstrated this in his castigation of the assembled delegates at the recent Munich Security Conference and again in the Oval Office last Friday at the car crash of a meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky.  Now, he's upset the US' two major European allies, Britain and France, by suggesting that they haven't had relevant battle experience in the last thirty or forty years to enable them to support Ukraine against Putin's aggression. When it was pointed out to him by aggrieved polit...
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How to spoil a good lunch

And it was all going so well... Volodymyr Zelensky's much-anticipated visit to the White House on Friday got off to a promising, if understandably tense, start but rapidly turned into a car crash following an intervention from the Vice-President, JD Vance. Whether this was a spontaneous eruption of frustration on Vance's part or a show of synthetic anger gamed in advance by him and Trump to blindside Zelensky is impossible to know. But, as the situation deteriorated into a major diplomatic fiasco, leaving the Ukrainian ambassadress head in hands in shocked disbelief, one had the distinct impression that Zelensky had walked into a trap. It was a most unedifying spectacle but threw into sharp focus the characters of the three men. Zelensky, nervous and ashen-faced, looking shaken by the sudden ugly turn of events; Vance, Trump's attack dog, going for the jugular and Trump delivering the coup de grace. It was clearly a case of bullying by two powerful men of a beleaguered supp...
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A Ramadan meditation

No, I haven't come over all religious suddenly but on the eve of the Muslim holy month I'm prompted to reflect on a couple of news items from the Islamic world, one somewhat encouraging, the other not at all so. To start with the (potentially) good news. Writing in the journal, Building Design , Emma Dent Coad, an architectural historian and former Labour MP for Kensington & Chelsea, charts Palestinian efforts already underway to reimagine the reconstruction of Gaza. These have nothing whatsoever to do with Donald Trump's crass vision for the Strip (more Vegas than Gaza) as promoted recently in a video posted on his Truth Social ( sic ) platform. It has to do with Gazans reclaiming and rebuilding their destroyed or damaged communities for themselves. We probably won't see this widely reflected in the mainstream Western press and media but, as reported by Coad, the reconstruction by Gaza municipality has officially commenced. Maher Salem, director of the planning and...
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Pain for our time

Ahead of his visit to Washington DC on Thursday Sir Keir Starmer has just made a statement on defence spending to the House of Commons. In it, he committed to increasing spending as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product  (GDP) from its current 2.3% per annum to 2.5% by 2027, with an aspiration to increase it to 3% in the next parliament (ie after July 2029). Labour's manifesto commitment was to increase spending to 2.5% - where it had been under the last Labour government - by 2030 so this is a significant policy gear-shift. It is no coincidence that this is precisely the direction of travel Donald Trump has stipulated (or is that demanded?) for NATO members. Offering up this gift will be Starmer's opening gambit at the White House on Thursday when he pays court, today's Commons statement being merely the preamble. Usually a bottle of whisky or embossed cufflinks suffices but this is a time for some serious diplomacy, hence a gift amounting to £13.4bn of additional spendin...
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The show must go on - think piece

You wouldn't want to be in Volodymyr Zelensky's shoes right now - or ever. Assailed as he is by a megalomaniac President on one side (and I don't mean Donald Trump - although, come to think of it...) and fairweather European 'friends' on the other, the beleaguered Ukrainian leader finds himself in an unenviable position. It must be at least three years since he started seriously questioning the wisdom of giving up the comedy circuit for politics. He and his country have had precious little to laugh about since Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and even less since the full-scale assault of 2022. His role now, in response to Trump's second presidency, seems to be to shadow American diplomacy, popping up unexpectedly firstly in Munich after the US delegation had departed the Security Conference, then tailing them to the UAE before swerving Saudi Arabia for a meeting with Türkiye's President Erdoğan. Like those other famous characters with names beginnin...
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All aboard

Starmer is in Paris to participate in Macron's hastily-convened gathering of European leaders, but he has a foot in another camp. Rightly or wrongly, he still clearly believes the UK enjoys a special relationship with Trump's America. How far that extends beyond warm words will become apparent when Starmer arrives at the White House next week. If they even get above room temperature it will be something. It has to be said that the rhetoric emerging from Washington DC has had a distinctly chilly edge to it since Trump's inauguration a month ago. One thing must be apparent to Starmer, even at his most upbeat: their Oval Office chat will be no reprise of Churchill and Roosevelt. Different times, different circumstances, very different personalities. After the stark, almost insulting, warning issued by JD Vance in Munich last Friday - an event that will go down in the annals as the St Valentine's Day Massacre of the post-war transatlantic entente cordial - US Secretary of S...
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