The rising risks of a Third World War
This is Iain Martin’s weekly newsletter, exclusively for Reaction subscribers.
In central London on Saturday, tens of thousands of demonstrators turned out, a week after the terrorist attack. They weren’t protesting about genocidal attacks killing more than 1200, or the killing of babies, rape of women and taking of hostages. No, they were protesting about Israel. In Glasgow, a demonstrator wrapped in a Palestinian flag was filmed shouting that “the Jews” should remember where they were in 1940. She sounded amused with her observation. Where the Jews were in 1940 was in the middle of the Holocaust.
That this stuff could be happening on the streets of Britain’s cities is shocking, only seven days after a pogrom, but not surprising.
Not when there is such widespread naivety about Hamas and what it stands for, and confusion (to be charitable) about the history and the absolute right of the state of Israel to exist. There’s an appalling strain of anti-semitism in parts of British society that is more prevalent than we like to acknowledge. It flared up under Jeremy Corbyn’s disgraceful leadership of the Labour party, and there it is again in the pro-Hamas demonstrations.
Ah, it’s not a demonstration for Hamas, it’s for peace and the Palestinians, respond some of those who were there. This is naive at best, contemptible at worst.
The chant among the demonstrators was “from the river to the sea”. There is no ambiguity about it. That is a genocidal chant. It is a slogan that advocates the destruction of the state of Israel, and the removal or death of the Jews. It’s not a peace slogan, it is a call to arms in a war against the Jews.
It is only a few weeks since Britain’s home Secretary Suella Braverman criticised multiculturalism. I’m no Braverman fan. There was an argument about definitions after she said it, and it is fair to say any nuance was lost in the ensuing row. Although Britain to its great credit has a highly successful multi-ethnic society, she is right that the ethos of multiculturalism (traced back to its 1980s post-modern roots, meaning no or too little overarching common culture or commitment) leaves us exposed. Especially now, when the ripples from the Middle East are harbingers of increased tension and, history shows us, sadly, terrorism.
In the region the situation is moving so fast that I won’t attempt a full length essay here. Below this are several items on other matters – including party conference season, the bond markets and Covid.
On the war in Israel and Palestine, I’ll instead provide a short series of observations about risks and what to look out for as it unfolds.
In the Sunday Times, Niall Ferguson put it well: “I increasingly fear we may be re-running the 1930s. If Israel finds it cannot contend with a three-front war in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, and turns to the United States for military help against Iran, we shall have reached one of history’s hinges. The future of the world will turn on it.”
Iran’s foreign minister today warned Iran may intervene: “If stopping the aggression against Gaza does not succeed, the expansion of the war fronts is not excluded and its possibility increases every hour. Iran cannot remain a spectator.”
In that vein…
Third World War escalation risk
The danger, as Niall Ferguson implies, is that Israel, a small democratic state surrounded by autocracies, is forced to fight on two or three fronts with Iran funding and fuelling its enemies. If it over commits forces trying to clear Hamas from Gaza, and gets bogged down, killing tens of thousands in the war, then it becomes militarily stretched and vulnerable on its other borders. Israel has long taken comfort from having supposedly unbeatable military and foreign and domestic intelligence services. Doubt is now introduced.
If Israel looks even remotely like losing, the US will be sucked straight in to prevent it. Already the US is deploying, presumably to deter Iran and Russia, also friends of Hamas, but also to be ready in case.
Israel would then be tempted to hit Iran, the sponsors of Hamas and other groups dedicated to the death of the Jews. The root of so much of this disaster lies way back in the Islamist revolution in Iran in 1979.
Netanyahu’s leadership looks doomed
The relatives of the hostages have already begun demonstrating against the Israeli Prime Minister and calling on him to resign. As several correspondents have noted, usually families wait a while before publicly venting their justified grievances. This time there is so much fury about Netanyahu’s apparent failures on intelligence and military deployments (why was the border with Gaza so thinly defended?) that a campaign for change is building.
An opinion poll conducted by the Dialog Center in Israel found an overwhelming majority – some 86% of respondents – said the attack from Gaza is a failure of the nation’s leadership. Netanyahu’s government would be crushed in an election, the poll also suggested. For all his rhetoric, there is nothing in Netanyahu’s record that suggests skill as a wartime leader. Pressure will only grow.
An end to Iran illusions
The Western policy of rapprochement with Iran has been a disaster, akin to German appeasement of Putin and the addiction to Russian gas before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Iran is a theocratic state with leaders hell-bent on the destruction of Israel. Many Iranians disagree, as the response of the country’s opposition demonstrates. On social media this week there has been evidence of popular anger at the regime’s support for Hamas, perhaps because it now risks dragging ordinary Iranians into a wider conflict. This tension – the regime’s determination to pursue Israel and the bubbling internal opposition to the regime – makes one of the main combatants highly unstable, unpredictable and dangerous, perhaps even vulnerable to collapse.
The world needs a strong United States
Next year was already going to be politically testing. Donald Trump is the front-runner for the Republican nomination and President Biden is only one slip in the bathroom or on stage from disaster. The US goes into this election contending with the Russian war in Ukraine, Chinese pressure on Taiwan and now a war in the Middle East.
If anyone in the US, from either party, has any ideas on who might be the Harry Truman or Ronald Reagan figure who can take command at this perilous moment, your friends in Europe and beyond would love to hear.
Energy security is vital and difficult
From the moment Russia launched its full scale invasion of Ukraine, it has been clear that Western countries such as the UK needed a “war era” energy policy. I was among those saying it, repeatedly. That is there needed to be an honest reckoning on the more fantastical net zero rhetoric, and a levelling on what is required to keep the lights on and energy affordable for industry and production.
The Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has nudged a little in that direction, watering down some net zero provisions. Not much, though.
It is all about to become even more complicated. With winter coming, watch Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Qatar – which has ties to Hamas – is Europe’s second largest supplier of liquefied natural gas. The Saudis, who hate Iran, are also major energy suppliers. Saudi Arabia was deep in discussions with Israel to build economic ties before the attack. A desire to halt any such progress was presumably behind Iran’s backing of the Hamas attack on Israel, if that is what happened. This is happening in a region that is “energy central”.
Let’s hope for another mild winter.
Powerless Europe
Matt Karnitschnig of Politico is one of the best in the business. If you haven’t read his latest on the fragmentation of the EU, and Europe’s abject powerlessness in the face of this crisis, I cannot recommend it highly enough. Read How the Israel-Hamas war exposed the EU’s irrelevance on Politico.
On Reaction this week we’ll continue our coverage of the crisis. If you haven’t had a chance to listen to the latest episode of the Reaction podcast – hosted by me – it features our columnist and leading geopolitical expert Tim Marshall.
Why did Starmer try to make Corbyn Prime Minister?
The Labour conference in Liverpool that concluded a few days ago was the most successful gathering held by the party in perhaps twenty years, certainly since the end of Tony Blair’s premiership in 2007. Sir Keir Starmer has complete control over his party. The far left has been vanquished. Labour is up to twenty points ahead in the polls and stands on the brink of power. The leader’s speech delivered by Starmer on Tuesday was coherent and aimed at the middle ground of British opinion. The Tories had a terrible party conference and are in all sorts of trouble.
And yet…
As Dan Hodges observed wisely in the Mail on Sunday, there is an awkward question that will not go away.
As Dan says, when Beth Rigby of Sky News asked it of Starmer in an interview during conference she punctured the bubble.
“When you told voters in 2017 and 2019 that Jeremy Corbyn – a man who called Hamas friends – should be Prime Minister, did you say that because you had to, or did you actually believe it?”
In reply, there was just flannel and waffle from Starmer. He is going to need a much better answer, because journalists, his Tory opponents and some of the voters will keep asking.
Was he pretending? Did he really not want Corbyn to become Prime Minister? Just saying it to be loyal to the party? Perhaps it was a question of him going along with it but hoping Corbyn would be defeated. That’s a very big risk to take with the country, but perhaps it works as an excuse.
Maybe the calculation was that post-defeat – as has often been the case in the party’s history – it is much easier to win the Labour leadership coming from the left and then move to the centre. Perhaps that was the man’s plan. If so this was ruthlessness that worked.
Or Starmer could say he was relatively new to politics (he was) and made a mistake between 2017 and 2019 in backing Corbyn. That would be refreshing to hear.
Some brave souls who would not tolerate Corbynism were hounded out of Labour by the fanatics. Other moderates resolved to stay, and did, on the perfectly reasonable basis that if sensible people were driven out of the Labour party then one of the two main parties in Britain would be lost permanently to the hard left, de facto Communists and friends of terrorists. They stayed in as a moderating influence and to be ready to win back control when the moment came. There is honour in that.
Which was it for Starmer? What was the rationale and moral calculus of the man who, if the polls are right, is going to become Britain’s Prime Minister?
Some of us would like to know
Bond bubble trouble
Autumn party conference season in Britain seemed at times to be happening on a different planet, or in a parallel universe remote from what was going on in the global financial markets.
While the parties talked about their plans for the future, the bond markets (debt markets) were sending deeply worrying distress signals.
The cost of debt is rising as interest rates have risen to combat inflation. For governments running large deficits, or with large debt to GDP ratios, or with reckless or incompetent leaders, this is very bad news indeed. Market participants are adjusting to the reality of higher rates and suggesting the party is over.
There was some respite last week, when a coordinated effort was made by US central bankers and officials to reassure investors that interest rates might not need to stay quite as high for quite as long. But financial crises usually take a long time to unfold, until they speed up suddenly at the denouement, and always feature moments of respite, when investors who have bet on a particular outcome can take their gain. Plus among investors there’s an inbuilt human tendency to hope it will all be okay and latch on to any optimistic sign.
In the worst case scenario, if American political dysfunction worsens, there is a financial crisis coming – involving a run on governments, who will then have little option other than to slash government spending to reassure investors they have it under control. The knock to economic confidence that would produce is obvious, to say nothing of whether the social compact in the US and here in Europe could stand it.
The central banks find themselves trapped. They need to keep rates high-ish with inflation still a risk (consider oil, in the context of the war in the Middle East). Yet they know it stresses governments and individuals and could lead to a recession.
If the central bank’s respond to a worsening of the bond markets crisis by in a panic at some point going back to zero rates and money-printing to keep the show on the road, then they risk inflating new asset price bubbles as happened last time, maybe even bigger this time. In the worst case scenario we’re talking about a risk of hyper inflation.
Even if we are lucky enough to avoid a cataclysm, the new financial reality will still be painful and shape and dictate the course of politics for years to come.
In part it is our – the voters – own fault. We were – or some were – screaming for subsidy and spending and deficits and debt during the pandemic and lockdown. And still it goes on in British public sector strikes with impossible demands made by well paid doctors for massive pay rises.
I don’t pretend for a second that the answers are simple or obvious. Even if the politicians knew – and some of them obviously do – they are hardly likely to broadcast such troubling realities about the bond market to the electorate a year before an election.
Starmer might – might – have been hinting at it in his statement in his speech on Tuesday when he spoke of how tough it could get. It may even have been a factor in the HS2 cancellation calculation made by Sunak, to prevent further cost over runs needing even more borrowing.
HS2 is a drop in the ocean when the big annual spend is in welfare, pensions, benefits and health care.
At some point there will have to be an honest conversation – government to public.
Australia’s Brexit moment
More strangeness on the BBC. On the lunchtime bulletin on Radio 4 on Saturday, the news that the government in Australia had been defeated in a referendum was announced in funereal tones. It had set back reconciliation, it was stated as though this is a fact. The referendum had been defeated, said a correspondent. No, the referendum was held and the “Yes” campaign and the government’s proposals were defeated, heavily.
The “Voice” proposal was for the establishment of an indigenous people’s body to be part of a rewritten constitution. Proponents said it would right historical wrongs. Opponents countered that it was dangerous because it rested on a race based carve out in the constitution, diluting the idea of equality under the law.
It became obvious several months ago that the Australian government was likely to lose. I know this only because a pollster friend, and a few others, started flagging a potential “Brexit moment” in Australia. By which they meant that as with Brexit, the establishment – much of the Australian media, elite opinion, high social status institutions – had got this call very badly wrong. The more voters heard about the Voice, the less they liked a race-based rewrite of the constitution. Indigenous groups were divided too, and many rejected the proposal. The result was a landslide “No.”
The response on social media since the Voice failed has been instructive, revealing and at times amusing in its sanctimonious intensity. There is fury and sadness. In Britain on the progressive left the result was greeted as though Australia had voted for apartheid, rather than rejected a deeply flawed proposal.
I saw numerous folk on Twitter asking almost tearfully: How could this have happened, how could anyone have voted against the Voice? In part it was because the identitarian left, high on critical race theory, collided with the voters, but also because many middle ground voters (as with Brexit) like bopping elite opinion on the nose.
Carrie Johnson gets the blame for Covid chaos – how convenient
I’m making a pledge to pay more attention to what is going on in Britain’s Covid inquiry. It’s getting very little coverage yet it is revealing the inner workings of the British state and providing invaluable clues on why the UK over did it on lockdown, pursuing idiotic policies such as preventing people being outside and controlling movements long after the nature of the disease was clear, while effectively imprisoning students who were at no risk and wrecking the economy instead of focussing on sheltering the vulnerable.
This week at the enquiry there was a fascinating set of exchanges on flaws in the modelling. A modeller in his statement said he had asked who was modelling the impact of the measures on young people and on health and mental health. It was always assumed someone else, in another room, in another part of Whitehall, was doing this. Nope. It just wasn’t being done.
The decision to close schools for more than a few weeks was one of the worst pieces of public policy since the Second World War. Such was the groupthink that it seems no-one in the system – not the Prime Minister, the cabinet, senior officials – said: “Hold on, we’re going to strand children half way up tower blocks and in tough neighbourhoods, denying them escape, education, social contact, and we – a bunch of entitled middle class twits with nice houses and gardens – are going to do this not for a few weeks but indefinitely, for month after month? Are you mad?”
Outside government, those of us in our nice houses went along with it. I did, for too long. Our excuse is that we were fed a rich diet of taxpayer-funded propaganda and could get Waitrose and the Wine Society to deliver. It’s not much of an excuse, and I’ll admit to feeling increasingly ashamed I complied.
Remember how hard the “Zero Covid” crowd and the teaching unions fought any attempt at normalisation. And remember the canonisation of Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand and Nicola Sturgeon in Scotland. They were hailed as exemplars of responsible leadership. Both are now out of office, with Sturgeon waiting to hear if she will be charged as a result of a a police investigation into the finances of the SNP. Ardern resigned a while back and her party was defeated in New Zealand’s elections a few days ago.
The other revealing snippet from the inquiry last week involved the WhatsApp messages to colleagues from the cabinet secretary Simon Case. He and colleagues complained about the influence of Carrie Johnson, the then Prime Minister’s wife. The heavy implication was that the chaos and poor decision-making could be attributed to the outsize influence Carrie had on Boris Johnson. They dubbed her husband “the shopping trolley”.
Well, what do you know? It turns out it was the woman’s fault. How very convenient.
All those men in high positions, with the apparatus of the state at their command and hundreds of billions of pounds of our money at their disposal, were blaming the PM’s wife and moaning rather than confronting the man-child Johnson properly or resigning en masse and revealing the truth that their dysfunctional boss was in terms of practical governance about as much use as a chocolate fireguard.
It is pathetic. If there was disorder at the heart of Number 10 and government it was the fault of one person, the man paid to be in charge, the Prime Minister. Not his wife.
What I’m reading
I’ve returned to Peter Brown’s Journeys of the Mind – A Life in History. It’s the immersive story of his Irish upbringing and extraordinary career spent in academia studying late antiquity. It’s a welcome escape from the news and in its assessment of the broad sweep of history puts our current troubles in perspective. Or as the lead singer says in the spoof rockumentary Spinal Tap: “Too much perspective, too much ****ing perspective.”
What I’m watching
The rugby world cup quarter finals, mainly. And the Beckham documentary on Netflix. The first two episodes are gripping television, especially when it comes to his relationship with Sir Alex Ferguson, mentor and Manchester United manager. Victoria Beckham emerges in a new and very positive light. She was clearly a reserved person uncomfortable with fame, dropped into the 1990s equivalent of Beatlemania when the media was at its most horrible. It’s engrossing. And then David leaves Real Madrid. He drifts away from the England team, and the documentary series goes down hill. He becomes just Beckham the media brand with too many tattoos and a series of franchises – whisky, money, US soccer. Good luck to him but it’s boring. I’ve still got one part to watch and will persist in the hope they conclude with a round up of his goals, which are always cheering to watch.
Iain Martin,
Publisher and CEO,
Reaction
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