They spin smooth talk, speak with forked tongues. Badenoch shoots from the hip. On Sky News on Sunday, she told Trevor Phillips that Israel in Gaza was fighting a “proxy war on behalf of the UK” which aligns with “Britain’s national interest”.
A brilliant book by the British historian Stuart Laycock, All the Countries We’ve Ever Invaded, starts with these electrifying words: “What if I told you that we have invaded, had some control over or fought conflicts in the territory of something like 171 out of 193 UN member states in the world today (and maybe more)?”
Our warrior leaders once claimed regime changes in Iraq and Libya were essential to keep us safe. Iraq remains volatile. Libya is a failed state from which migrant boats to Europe set sail. How was that in our national interests? I said this last week at a small dinner of movers and shakers in an old gentlemen’s club and felt the air go cold.
Western leaders profess to be the good guys, upholders of international law and the post-war “civilised” world order. These claims have turned out to be bogus, humbug. Witness them now, defying international covenants at will.
This month a YouGov poll found that only 18 per cent of Britons think continued Israeli military operations in Gaza are justified. The same poll found that in Germany, France, Denmark, Italy and Spain, net favourability toward Israel was at its lowest level since the pollster started tracking it in 2016.
square YASMIN ALIBHAI-BROWN The questions the BBC must answer on impartiality
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Meanwhile, something else is happening too. Young Britons are becoming ever more sceptical of politicians and politics. A survey of 2,039 people aged 16 to 29 carried out in February found 63 percent believed democracy was “in trouble”.
A female medic I spoke to is one of them. “The police and uni top management want us to stop,” she said. “They will make us stop. But I can’t stop. I live in a democracy. What is going on is wrong.” The majority of those I spoke to are now anti-EU, unlike 10 years ago when most students were passionately pro.
A Palestinian doing a masters degree in international politics is thinking of giving up, because “so much of what is written and said is untrue, just propaganda.
This unequal, unbalanced conflict has exposed the underbelly of the much-extolled post-war consensus, and the fragility of painstakingly worked-out protocols and treaties. Trump, with his obliging allies – Starmer, Badenoch, EU president Ursula von der Leyen and various European leaders – will carry on backing the Israeli regime.
God knows where that will take us. Or how the young will ever find faith in democracy and ethical governance again.
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