'In treading this delicate middle ground, Lammy’s proposed doctrine fails to divine a practical course forward for British foreign policy.' (OLIVER MARSDEN/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)
There is a fundamental problem with David Lammy’s concept of Progressive Realism, the mooted foreign policy doctrine according to which our coming Labour government will manage Britain’s most dangerous strategic environment since the Second World War. Reading through its mixed litany of practical suggestions, fragile hopes and groundless assertions, that which is progressive is not realistic, while that which is solidly Realist casts doubt on progressive assumptions. This tension is perhaps unavoidable: as the essay, overseen by the writer Ben Judah and channelling the balanced Realism of E.H. Carr, observes: “Progressive policy without realism is empty idealism. Realism without a sense of progress can become cynical and tactical.” Yet in treading this delicate middle ground, Lammy’s proposed doctrine fails to divine a practical course forward for British foreign policy.
The fundamental challenges facing Britain were written in the last century. To secure victory in the Second World War, Britain obtained, after much desperate pleading, an alliance with the United States swiftly shown to be indistinguishable from subordination. From an equal partner in 1942, Britain found itself, to the shock and regret of its leadership, forced to divest itself of its own empire while absorbing itself into that of Washington’s. Now that America’s empire is itself undergoing its phase of terminal decline, bogged down across the globe in conflicts waged against its client states by its Eurasian rivals, Britain finds itself exposed and vulnerable. As our own imperial clients learned last century, as an overstretched and under-armed Britain fell back under the weight of its own challengers, it is a hard state of affairs to be a threatened outpost of someone else’s empire. In the world at war in which we live, the vultures are already tearing at the carcass.
Lammy’s essay is commendably frank about this historic shift in global power, more so than the Conservative Party has publicly allowed itself to be. “The global order is messy and multipolar,” it notes, as “the rise of China — which now has the world’s largest economy by purchasing power parity — has ended the era of US hegemony”. When Labour was last in power, “American dominance was so striking that some people saw the spread of the liberal democratic model as inevitable”, but now we see that “the broad consensus that economic globalisation would inevitably breed liberal democratic values proved false. Instead, democracies have become more economically dependent on authoritarian states.”
If progressive assumptions have proved illusory, we wonder, of what value is progressivism in shaping British foreign policy? If democracies are outcompeted by autocracies, are there any lessons to be drawn? Lammy sidesteps these questions, yet it is a measure of how rapidly the world order has already changed that such analysis, which just five years ago would have been written off as doom-laden post-liberal prognosticating, is now the guiding principle of the next government’s strategic worldview. But if the diagnosis is faultless, the suggested prescription is inadequate.
As Europeans, committed to a confrontation against Russia on our home continent which is not going well, we ought to take the essay’s analysis of the war in Ukraine as the primary example. While managing the outcome of the Ukraine war is the greatest immediate challenge the incoming foreign secretary will face, we are given only Johnsonian boilerplate. “The British government must leave the Kremlin with no doubt that it will support Kyiv for as long as it takes to achieve victory,” it notes. “Once Ukraine has prevailed, the United Kingdom should play a leading role in securing Ukraine’s place in Nato.” These are fine words, indistinguishable from current British strategy, which unfortunately for us and for Ukraine do not match the increasingly the increasingly likely outcome of the war. As Ukraine buckles beneath a Russian army larger and more powerful than at the beginning of the war, buttressed by a Russian economy outcompeting the Western states which had hoped to sanction it towards collapse, a frank assessment of the conflict would observe that the current approach is failing. Instead of cashing in the profits of an increasingly unlikely victory, the question facing Britain is surely how to manage the looming danger of a Ukrainian defeat, in a situation where America’s capacity and desire to defend Europe are are increasingly in question.
Indeed, “Americans increasingly need convincing that Europeans do enough to protect their own continent’s security,” the essay breezily notes. They are correct to: European rhetorical hawkishness has not been matched by action worthy of the Russian challenge, leaving Ukraine — much like us — dependent for its survival on America’s goodwill. Yet an impartial observer would have deduced from following the course of the Ukraine war that America’s goodwill, like the iron-clad support its politicians initially promised, has a short expiry date. All the historicising myth-making seen in recent months about Russia’s almost mystical capacity to absorb pain and suffering in pursuit of victory is downstream of the basic observation that America no longer possesses the political focus or industrial capacity to steer a major conflict towards victory for longer than two years. Even America’s most sacred client, Israel, now finds itself, for the first time, a dividing line in America’s political faction war. Lammy laments that “democracy is on the back foot” while avoiding the obvious conclusion that America’s turbulent democracy is itself the greatest strategic risk for its allies. No US ally can now reasonably expect that, at its time of greatest trial, American military support will not be subsumed into Washington’s domestic conflict, their survival a weapon cynically wielded by one faction against the other in their struggle for power.
The logical conclusion, then, would be to hedge against dependence on a distracted, declining, internally divided patron. Yet Lammy’s essay, no doubt driven as much by a desire to distinguish itself from Corbyn’s sixth-form Third Worldism as by the Atlantic Council worldview with which it is imbued, strenuously avoids such an obvious deduction. If only his commitment to Nato was shared by America’s likely next president, it would be permissible to gloss over such a glaring risk, but it is not. Yet even still, the essay observes that in our new multipolar world, it is the self-interested middle powers, “striking bargains and setting their own agendas” that are faring best: : “to maximize their autonomy, they strike deals with all the great powers,” winning concessions from the rival empires competing to court them. Could Britain, the archetypal middle power, follow such an evidently successful path? The very idea, evidently taboo, is not even broached. Transactional self-interest, even if it is successful, is not a good look.
Instead, Lammy declares that British foreign policy “will always be founded on the country’s relations with the United States and Europe”, as the “two powers are the rocks on which the United Kingdom builds its security”. Yet he also observes, in passing, that when “the United States, and the EU built competing green industrial policies to claim the industries of the future, the British government failed to follow suit”.
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SubscribeThe day that the UK becomes dependant on someone like Lammy to define its strategic direction then it’s time to pack up and leave. He’s an idiot; a man who thinks Henry VIII’s son was Henry VII and that the blue veined cheese traditionally served with port is Red Leicester. But by all means let’s consider his razor sharp analysis of and insights into the achingly complex current geopolitical situation – that the UK should defend democracy, fight climate change and stand up for the rule of law. So where do Labour stand on Brexit, Nuclear Power and the Gaza protests and rise of antisemitism? Ah right, er, move along please l, nothing to see here . . .
Reading your cheap shot diatribe against Brother Lammy it’s clear to observers from across the big pond that the Problem with England is every asshole has an opinion and every opinion has an asshole to promote it. What you need to do is to jump into the political arena and trenches and show Lammy how its done. When one is a Black man the cheap shots from Caucazoid Neanderthals seems to flow with extra contempt and bile. Cheap shots from the cheap seats are to be expected but they come a time when Critics must also put there Manifesto on the table for proper analysis and evaluation. Black men like Lammy who against all odds has navigated the unavigatable to reach the position he has must be respected. Come correct when you are criticizing him. You can disagree with him without being contemptuous and disrespectful. The Black Intelligentsia will surely put you in your place if you get out of line old chap. Cheerio!
So much race drivel.
And very badly written.
Parody or Lammy himself- can’t quite tell
The latter.
It would have been much better if he’d got Ben Judah to write it for him.
That’s a diatribe which is irrelevant to the substance of the previous comment. David Lammy has consistently shown himself to be inadequate for the roles he has been given, just as as Kemi Badenoch has excelled in her various posts. Both are black – one is competent, one isn’t.
The problem with David Lammy is not that he is Black but that he is David Lammy.
Give me a break. Have you never even heard of ‘positive discrimination’?
Never seen a person of colour recruited to fill a quota?
What kind of threat is that?
keep out of our business, American. This has nothing to do with you and take your racism with you.
At no point did the OP mention Lammy’s race, and that he did not know who Henry VIIIs son was is a matter of public record as it was televised.
The UK has its own issues and its own history of race relations, it does not want nor need your cultural colonialism of critical race theory.
You worry about your problems and let us worry about ours.
I’m no fan of David Lammy but the article highlighted some interesting fundamental points. But as it points out they are not resolved and that is crucial. I don’t see any of our political leaders providing clarity on foreign policy or the other points you mention either, they don’t seem to spend the time thinking. But that’s the general populations fault for absorbing sound bites. Who can we vote for? It’s not a job I would do.
LOL..based on the kind of people who inhabit this habitat. Just Vote for anybody but the Black Guy.
I see I got canceled by Plantation owners. That’s the kind of canceling White Folks like. They like the Darkies that don’t challenge them or contradict them. LOL ..I am sorry I interrupted your regular Whites only community masturbation sessions. Ta Tar!
You haven’t been cancelled, you’ve just been mocked for writing nonsense. Your comment is still sitting there for everyone else to have a good laugh at. The more you bleat about race, the more noticeable your lack of substance becomes, because then we realise you have nothing to say except “race, race race”. It’s fallacious logic. Yawn.
They look it down Einstein and I guess they decided to bring it back. Arrogant Caucazouds has been laughing at Black folks for past 2500 years as they invaded our Holy Lands and places so they can steal our philosophies, culture art forms and music and put a white face on it. Keep laughing as we systematically wipe the arrogant smirks of your face. It’s always about race race race when dealing with Caucazoids Neanderthals. When the Druids Cannibal tells you it’s not about Race…it’s about Race. Just read All the old racial grievances drivel brought up below about articles or studies done by Lammy 30 years ago that rub Caucazoid the wrong way. Talk about fallacious Caucazoid nonsense. Seemingly only White perspectives has any substance. Black Perspectives is always laughable until it jumps up and bite you in your flat derriere.
Try reading Thomas Sowell.
buzz off and take your tedious victimhood peddling with you.
You were the one who decided to make a horses arse of himself by commenting on something you know nothing about and which does not concern you and now you are complaining because you got called out for it? You saw Lammy’s race and immediately made it a racial issue. The UK does not have the same feked up race history as the US does, something you would know if you could be bothered to look beyond your own borders. Indeed, the UK is demonstrably one of the most racially tolerant places in the world according to UNESCO figures.
Your unhinged rants tell us more about your personal issues than it does add anything to the conversation.
Now take your tedious American race issues, roll them up and stick them where the sun doesn’t shine and let us get on with our problems and mind your own!
A Black Briton.
“The first problem Britain faces is that we are governed by people who do not understand what is coming towards them.”
AR could’ve saved himself the trouble of seeking to intellectualise the ‘thoughts’ of David Lammy by starting and finishing his article with this single sentence.
You should run for office mate and show them how it’s done.!!
I think he could have just left the article at half of the first sentence, i.e. “There is a fundamental problem with David Lammy.”
The rest is just fluffing out the necessary word count.
He would not get paid for something any of us could write.
The astonishing thing is that he apparently gets paid for writing worse content than most of the people in the comments could do !
That is a bit harsh – Roussinos does blow a bit hot and cold in terms of the quality of his work. At least compared to Kathleen Stock and Mary Harrington who are excellent almost all of the time.
Occasionally, I think I need to copy his work into DeepL Write to be able to hack through the word salad. But this article is one of his better ones.
Maybe not.
Your content is far better than his (and far less predictable). I know which I’d rather pay for.
He is far better than Stock or Harrington.
As per my earlier comment I’m no fan of David Lammy but the article raised some fundamental points well in my opinion. Maybe I’m not that on the ball but it seemed less about David Lammy and more about the core issues with Foreign Policy and the UK’s place in the world. Does anybody have the answer?
Asking for “the answer” is something many of us might view with suspicion, whilst “our place in the world” can hardly be viewed through a ‘David Lammy lens’.
To quote Theodore Roosevelt:
Here is something for you racist cheap shot artist in the cheap seats”
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
You seem to have confused those people with politicians. Politicians are not doers, they are talkers, and expert talkers too since that is their speciality.
The doers are in the private sector toiling away to pay the salaries of the public sector.
Then why do you have a PM and Parliament old chap? Let’s do away with both. Let your King who aspire to be a Tampon make all the decisions??
The great mistake of the modern era was for the United States to get involved in the Great War instead of letting the Germans and the French and the British fight until exhaustion. Given that the US was led by a former university president, such stupidity was to be expected.
Never forget, dear Brits, that the United States is protected from invasion by two huge oceans, and you are not.
I’ve been reading Henry Kissinger’s books “esoterically” and what comes through his veiled commentary is that Realpolitik is the way to go. Forget about saving the world.
Meanwhile I expect that all you chaps are familiar with Lord Montgomery’s advice in the House of Lords on 30 May 1962.
Good old Monty. But I propose we make it Real Simple so that even Foreign Office and State Department bureaucrats would understand.
There was a reason why Lord Salisbury ran Brit foreign policy out of his back pocket.
The US had to JOIN the Great War if only to protect its DEBT!
By late 1916 HMG*had wracked up such enormous debts in the US that even the first Deputy Chairman of the newly formed Federal Reserve, one Mr Paul Warburg of that Ilk, was beginning to panic, and quite rightly so.
If ‘we’ had LOST, the Kaiser was certainly not going to pay our bills. Victory was essential, at ANY cost as it turned out.
ps. Montgomery was an egotistical menace and we would have been far better of without him.
(*His Majesty’s Government.)
Is that why you sold Palestine to the Zionist settlers and there representative Banker Lord Rothschild? The babies of Gaza is still paying your debts with there lives as we speak. How do you Caucazoids Neanderthals sleep at night?
Russia didn’t / doesn’t want the Ukraine to join NATO but it fell and keeps falling on deaf ears. We didn’t like Russia in Cuba (next door) so it’s easy to understand why they wouldn’t want NATO at the back door either. Western leaders are feckless.
The MONGOLS managed to disobey Rules One & Two with spectacular results!
You leave that as an after thought… Rather significant imo 🙂
Never forget, dear Brits, that the United States is protected from invasion by two huge oceans, and you are not.
We are surrounded by fair amounts of ocean though. There’s a fair bit of it off the east and north coasts actually. Isn’t that exactly why gb was hard for Germany to invade in the second world war?
It isn’t the 1940s. You are not protected from China and Russias hypersonics, anymore than we are.
Lol, he who laughs last…
“Never forget, dear Brits, that the United States is protected from invasion by two huge oceans, and you are not.”
Mainland Britain has not suffered an invasion by land forces since 1797. The United States on the other hand had the ignominy of seeing the White House burned down in 1814 as its President fled. Mexican bandits also invaded the USA in 1916. Some would say the threat on its southern border remains.
Britain is protected by one channel and one huge ocean which seems to have done a pretty good job.
And our (UK) great mistake was allowing ourselves to be manipulated by self centred US bullies.
“ No US ally can now reasonably expect that, at its time of greatest trial, American military support will not be subsumed into Washington’s domestic conflict, their survival a weapon cynically wielded by one faction against the other in their struggle for power. “
No truer word has been said, and what is true of America is, probably, just as true of half a dozen other Western states. If anything lasts longer than 30 seconds, we might just change our minds, although, in hindsight, that might be giving the Western strategists and political activists undue credit for an overly extended attention span.
Aye ! Quite right.
Although as others have stayed, liebor and Tories and lieberals are cheeks of the same arse!
The corrupt Westminster cess pit, as we are watching sellouts to the greater military industrial complex.
Weak 4th rate , politicians , incompetent, cheating the citizens and ignoring the mass.
They have like lammy no realism , they run from realism , truth and moral justice ,whilst trying to maintain a faux justification for the self.
Truth to justice .
Lammy cannot claim either.
Bought and paid for.
He like liebor , lieberals and Tories are the failure of empire and decline into the morass of fascism, follow the leader of dead Yankee exceptionalism and the EU oligarchy
BRICS is the way forwards no amount of hand wringing will stop it.
We must vote out , vote down , abstain from the continual perception of the faux democracies of the west .
There is only one realism propped up by the west and it s continual insipid support of settler colonialism as the norm of western states.
The realism , that time has run out for empirical genocide, slaughter , perpetual holocausts.
Great comment, down voted by the unherd bigots, unfortunately they walk amongst us.
AMEN. They have not changed much from Neanderthal ancestors. All they have is a thin veneer of civility to try and hide behind. Soon er or later the Beast within will bare its fangs.
Ah hear you brotha. But I think it’s a bit unfair to place this horror show at Lammy’s door step. He is just the proposed new school caretaker that might be hired to clean up the White Man’s stinking pile of shit. One Black man can’t stop no show in Honkkkkee Land. He just got to navigate as best he can. Look at Obama he had to apologize to some random White cop before he could get his Presidency on track All because he had the temerity
to state that it was stupid for a cop to arrest a 65 year old world renowned (Black) Harvard professor with a walking cane for trying to break into his own house in the middle of the day. As you can see from the Unheard White Lynch Mob from URope they already got the Rope ready forhLammy’s Black ass and he ain’t even arrived in Dodge City as yet. Thus is the lot in life for a Black man in U-Rope i guess. I don’t know why they bother. In my younger days I was offered the opportunity to run Federally in my North American Jurisdiction. I immediately said No because as a Black man I would be instantly kicked out of Caucus as soon as I refused to be one of the White Man’s trained seals and a good n***a. It takes a Special kind of brotha to navigate the White Man’s horse shit and still keep a smile on his face.
The US benefitted from Britain’s not being an autocracy in its War of Independence. George III could not wage war without recourse to Parliament for funds and so Britain could not bring sufficient force to bear on the rebels in the colonies. It was ironic that the Founding Fathers painted George III as a tyrant, for he was anything but, and now the lesson, that raising money for wars via the democratic process is difficult at best, is being learned the hard way by America’s allies.
A Labour policy which is ideological but impracticable, who would have thought it ……
65 upvotes, seriously? King David may be right, what a bunch of sycophants on here, has Unherd been offering free membership?
You may be too young to remember yhe last Labour government but that is not the case for all of us.
You would think his rant involving Brexit, Tories and Nazis would make him a less than ideal candidate for foreign secretary.
Added to that his very public thoughts on the likely US president would also count against him.
The fact that he now has an ill conceived plan for future foreign policy doesn’t surprise me at all.
Yeah a Black man opining on White SUPREMACIST Tories, Nazis ,Brexit and Trump should automatically disqualify him from public office. From the response below its very popular in certain White SUPREMACIST circles and chat rooms. That’s the type of canceling White folks like
Are you trying to act like a buffoonish caricature deliberately or is it accidental?
troll off American, this isn’t your business. You’re making a fool of yourself.
A Black Briton
America’s goodwill toward Ukraine translates directly into war economics for arms suppliers and an expanded US share of the European energy market via LNG. But the cost to that country is its progressive hollowing out via population flight and the destruction of its infrastructure.
It seems as simple as the Vietnam-era dictum “It might be necessary to destroy a village in order to save it.” But such a hole has been dug by Washington and London that the new $60bn ofaid will just go towards stopping Russia’s military marching on Kiev again, successfully this time.
In short, we hardly need the likes of the not-very-bright Lammy to continue with the anti-strategy pursued by a misguided NATO having botched post-Soviet geopolitics post-Merkel.
Respectfully, I have to dispute the assertion that US hegemony is reaching its end. China’s economy may be large, but economic power without military power is far less effective at securing influence abroad, and China’s most recent military ventures have hardly been promising. Same for Russia. If any significant advances in Ukraine have coincided with a drop off in western support to Ukraine , then the obvious implication of that is that the US easily possesses the resources to inflict a humiliating defeat on Russia, but they lack the will to. Every defeat the US has suffered since Vietnam was a defeat by choice, because they withdrew due to public opinion, not because they ran out of men or hardware or money. The US military is absurdly powerful compared to any other armed force on the planet, and I don’t see any rival to that power anywhere. Maybe a multipolar world is coming, and certainly America isn’t the power it once was, but it’s still far more powerful than anyone else, and that multipolar world is still a long way off yet.
Seriously? You are deluded.
“The British government must leave the Kremlin with no doubt that it will support Kyiv for as long as it takes to achieve victory,” it notes. “Once Ukraine has prevailed, the United Kingdom should play a leading role in securing Ukraine’s place in Nato.”
“Climate diplomacy is at the centre of progressive realism,” Lammy asserts, “and a Labour government would make advancing the fight against greenhouse gases central to our agenda.
The contradictions between these two statements are many and enormous.
How are we going to make more bullets with climate diplomacy. Cutting off hydrocarbons from Russia has hardly been a resounding success. Now we have more bankruptcies than at any time since records began in the sixties. Energy prices are all over the place and again in danger of increasing due to the tensions in the middle east.
Are we going to keep going with these ridiculous green policies until the entire country is bankrupt.
These people seem unaware that any increase in industrial activity requires power. Power is cheapest and easiest to generate using hydrocarbons. We need to make more munitions and expand industry to defeat russia and therefore we need more cheap energy, not expensive, unreliable fields of solar and wind. Solar and wind is fine, if there isn’t a war on. How are we going to get all this green energy tech without importing it from China. If we don’t import it from China, it will be even more expensive and we will be even more bankrupt.
NATO is a crock of sh*t that can’t even do war. As much as you may want to support ukraine, you can only do so while you can provide them with munitions, money and people. We can’t do that if we are bankrupt, if our industries are already failing and energy prices are through the roof because of your climate diplomacy.
Putin would laugh his arse off at your climate diplomacy.
‘The first problem Britain faces is that we are governed by people who do not understand what is coming towards them.’
Brilliant conclusion. Very good article. Maybe you should staple it to lammys head, in the hope that he just sticks to realism while there is a war on instead of:
‘Realism without a sense of progress can become cynical and tactical.’
What does that even mean.
War is cynical and tactical.
We cannot have all this ridiculous progressive cr*p and fight a war. He needs to get his priorities right.
If we loose or if this escalates we will be lucky to have enough gas to generate electricity. I don’t think the electorate would be too bothered at that point where their intermittent power comes from.
I think they might tell you to shove net zero up your arse and instead save the country from becoming a bankrupt, dystopian, missile attacked nightmare. It’s all very good having empty platitudes about saving the planet, if we can’t pull this back from the brink what is the point if we are f*cked as country.
Welcome back!
Thanks Mr Stanhope 🙂
Would Lammy really fantasise about Britain’s global , leadership and a multi country anti OPEC bund? Surely he heard the leaders of India and Saudi Arabia bluntly dissing the whole anti fossil fuel scam. The idea must be that of his mentor, Judah. Brilliant article, btw.
Thank-you, B Emery, for being the first writer I have encountered to point out the glaring contradiction between prolonging the war in Ukraine and the official promotion of green energy. If our leaders were truly concerned about the effects of burning carbon on our planet they would be turning cartwheels to end this war. This tells me that the whole green technology push is not about the planet but rather about, as alluded to in the article, getting the jump on a new growth industry. The hypocrisy is so glaring I am stunned so few are pointing it out. I am a proponent of green tech when it makes sense, and reducing all kinds of pollution but this focus on the West reducing their fossil fuel production and domestic use (I am from Canada) makes no sense to me at this moment in history.
The ‘green’ issue is about control, the Liberal elite knows but doesn’t care that we will be poorer, as long as it is in charge, it will then porn us out to the surviving hegemony and serve like a Vichy government. Nice…
You must be from Alberta with All that Oil Sands dirty oil. Who cares if the global climate is Fcuked just as long as you make a buck. When you die they can stuff the cash in your coffin so you can take it with you.
That is quite beside the point, which you are missing entirely.
Although we obviously should pay attention to climate change and be kind to trees, a lot of the green tech when it comes down to it, isn’t always that green and actually is either produced in China or the raw materials come from mines owned by China. The point you should get here is that at the moment, our dumbass governments are trying to cut off trade with China and keep sabre rattling over taiwan. So where is your green tech going to come from. We can’t fight china and also roll out net zero. It just can’t happen. A war with Taiwan will cause an enormous shipping disruption and we be lucky to get anything done, especially an energy revolution.
The next point you have missed, getting on your high anti oil horse, is that at the moment, the west is short of ammunition supplies and our industry needs expanding if we wish to produce more. To produce more, quickly, without bankrupting industry because of hikes in power costs we need cheap energy. Our industry is already folding under the pressure of sanctions on natural gas. While we are embroiled in a war with Russia it is more important to ensure that the soldiers we are sending to the front lines actually have bullets for their guns. So they don’t get shot.
So the commenter you have accused of just wanting to make money, is actually raising some very serious concerns about the conflicts between our green policy and our foreign policy, which if we don’t sort out, people will get shot, because they have no munitions. Not just a bit hotter because of climate change. Shot. Missile attacked.
Which is more important as a priority.
You can have your net zero. But you need to tell me how you resolve these global conflicts first.
Don’t bother ‘King David’ is an American troll who insists on imposing his nation’s screwed up history of race relations on the rest of us. He’s both ignorant of our nation and our national issues and stupid enough to then comment despite this.
“Climate Diplomacy and Reality” these 3 words in one sentence are totally contradictory and prove what an id**t he is. Does Lammy pledge to sanction half the world’s developing and successful economies , which are currently increasing their use of “evil” fossil fuels.
At last an intelligent response! Thank you for a little reprieve from these puerile comments!
I lost respect for David Lammy when he produced his 2017 ‘independent review into the treatment of, and outcomes for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic individuals in the criminal justice system’, it was a review that had been commissioned by the Prime Minister, so it was an opportunity to give the BAME communities hope, he chose not to.
He explained how 40% of the young offenders prison population were from the BAME community, when they only made up 14% of the UK population, he carefully explained how racist police worked in a racist criminal justice system to jail a disproportionate number of the BAME community, this was a massive review, I read every page and felt like screaming.
According to ONS statistics, the BAME community make up 40% of the working class community, and correct me if I’m wrong, our prisons are not full of middle class people, though I’d argue they should be.
The 14% and 40% stats are always worth remembering when you read race related reports, for example, deaths from covid, up to 40% of those affected were from the BAME community, we’re supposed to believe it’s because of racist NHS structures and attitudes of those notorious racist doctors and nurses, when in reality, it’s because working class people couldn’t afford to take time of work, they also work in public facing jobs, bus drivers, taxi drivers, working on reception desks or at busy transport hubs, of corse they were more likely to be victims of covid, and like all working class communities, their NHS outcomes are going to be worse, they’re more reluctant to take time off work to go to hospital, often allowing a simple issue to develop into a serious complaint before they seek help.
David Lammy had an opportunity to explain this, to give the BAME community hope that working hard to improve your standard of living will help you move away from the problems faced by the working class community, instead, he chose to tell the BAME community that no matter how hard they work, or how hard they try to improve their life, they will be held back by racist institutions.
Shameful.
It’s difficult to have any confidence that he’ll identify world problems and promote credible solutions, when he couldn’t identify issues faced by his constituents, when he was commissioned to find them.
Fascinating numbers you quote.
I feel strongly that a very similiar opportunity was missed after the wicked murder of Stephen Lawrence. Any dispassionate reading of the evidence of that case shows that police corruption was the scandal behind the failure to find his killers. Adressing endemic police corruption and collusion in the Met would have benefited all, but most immediately the working classes who are ever at the mercy of and ‘stitch up’ by Old Bill.
Instead the spiritual disease of ‘institutional racism’ was made the obssessive object of attention, Perhaps from a desire to imitate the American political story. Our administrators, feeling the pains of provincialism, needed an Emmet Till for the 51st State.
MacPherson then made his recommendations and here we are 20 years later with race relations the worst they’ve ever been.
A mess is what you get when the White man is always Judge, Jury and Exercutioner. And I guess if it doesn’t work out he can always go back to square one and blame his black victims. Yes there is STILL such a thing as a ” victim ” .
I have experienced and observed criminal justice in a number of non-majority-white countries and have come to the conclusion that apathy, corruption and muddle do not have a discrete racial profile but are common to all processes instituted by fallen man.
Don’t bother, William. Brother David is an American troll who seems to be obsessed with viewing the world through the lens of american race relations, and then screaming ‘racism’ at everyone who points out his position is irrelevant.
He’s like a drunken narcissist at a funeral. Incoherent, irrelevant, offensive, self centred, ignorant and arrogant.
LOL.Uncle Tom trying to placate Massa.
Fair enough. The only difference is these Black run countries are not going around bragging and patting themselves on the back for their superior highly civilized way of addressing criminal matters. Plus these countries are all newly created countries so under colonialism there was no Black judges or institutional knowledge or tradition to draw upon when they got so called Independence. You have near 2000 years head start. Why can’t you put aside your racism and deliver justice as you pontificate about? It’s your usual Hypocrisy that piss of the Black man.
Re criminal stats – it’s the same in the USA. Blacks are 13% percent of the population but commit 40-50% of crime in inner cities especially but it varies across the country. Is it poverty or depravity or a combination? But the left goes nuts when these stats are brought up, hence ‘Defund the Police’.
Either. It’s fun, and not likely to receive serious sanstion.
I’m not sure that you are offering the same interpretation of he statistics as the original commentator.
His point, which I find compelling, is that the overrepresentation of ethnic minorities in HM Prisons is attributable and proportional to their component in the Working Class. A predictible continuation of an historic English trend and nothing new there. I cannot comment on the United States but historically in this Kingdom pure equality before the law has been adulterated by wealth, almost never by race. That was indeed our grandsires, only somewhat conceited, boast. As Lord Mansfield put it: – “this air is too pure for a slave to breathe in”
Yet John Gay could write of that same pure air, at the same time –
“Since laws were made, for every degree,
To curb vice in others, as well as me,
I wonder we han’t better company
Upon Tyburn tree.
But gold from law can take out the sting;
And if rich men, like us, were to swing,
’Twould thin the land, such numbers to string
Upon Tyburn tree.”
There’s a very interesting piece by Thomas Sowell in which he notes that there was a distinct cultural difference between black Americans who were born and raised in the northern states and those who emigrated north from the southern (former slave) states in the 1900s. He reports – and this as a general difference across all races – some basic differences betweeen the “redneck” culture of the south and that of the north. The north originally being more law abiding. Contemporary reports record unhappiness of the original northern black Americans at the effect the southern blacks were having.
Only one data point, but he’s a fairly old black man who grew up in Harlem and has seen it first hand then and now.
As always, we’re up against the fallacy pushed by many that all people within a racial group believe the same and behave the same.
Culture and social norms are surely the crucial factor for differences in behaviour.
Nice but what has this got to do with the article?
“Is it depravity or poverty”….or mostly the break down of the Family? Even the “Community Organiser” Obama working for years in deprived areas of Chicago, admitted that the high percentage of crimes were mostly committed, because of lack of proper father figures in a family unit (according to his book “Dreams from my Father”)
Yeah sure after you carry out the mass criminalization campaign against Black men after Voting Rights Act was passed coupled with laws taking away a Felons right to Vote what do you expect ? 4 million Black men is unable to vote in USA because of ongoing campaign to suppress the Black Vote. The White Man’s ongoing war on Black people in the Americas and Europe has many adverse effects on Black communities. War on Black people has never stopped. White SUPREMACY NEVER Sleeps.
You haven‘t commented on my and Obama‘s argument about how many black men are avoiding family responsibilities. Also how come that most big US cities have black mayors, prosecutors and chiefs of police, if their voting rights are suppressed. “White man‘s war on black people”.. don’t be ridiculous!
Hey Fool ever heard of Jim Kkkrow? Last hired first fired. Pretty hard to be a father when you are in jail. Can’t get a job when u get out of jail cause you are a Felon so how do you male money? U got get into crime again. Prison is big business in Amerikkka creates lots of jobs for White boys. I can go
On abd and on. But I got to time to explain reality to you White Devil and ignoramuses. You know what EVIL you Demons are doing.
unhinged idiot
Good call, that immediately came to mind too – it’s a damning reflection of his core values and ideology and a clear demonstration that he should be nowhere near a position of power or influence. Lord help us if he ends up in the Cabinet.
Oh Massa don’t like it When Slave tell Massa what’s Really happening on the Plantation. Slave once told Massa Jesus Christ was A Black man Massa beat him fo days. Massa don’t like Truth. When you are blood sucking Vampires trafficking in human beings you don’t want to hear the truth. Truth is bad for business. Makes Massa and his Police Slave Catchers uncomfortable. No sir Massa don’t want nutten to do with Truth.
Slavery was and still is an African thing, not a European thing. Britain ended slavery and used its colonial might to force Africans to do the same.
LOL yeah sure thing blame your victims if it makes you feel better about your self Snowflake. The White criminals revionist His-Story is laughable. I guess it’s Honkkkkee new talking points..lol
Excellent post Steven, nice to have some nuance in the comments section! AR’s essay is excellent, we are (our children/grand children) literally doomed and all we get from some Unherd readers are cheap partisan snide remarks, did you not read the article, do you not understand?
Oh the Darky great crime is that he did not tell you racist Caucazoid Neanderthal Druids Cannibals what you wanted to hear? Coming from descendants of Druids Cannibals who was roasting humans beings and eating them a few days ago in the long scheme of human history you should be the last one to lecture your victims about statistics. You know what your arch Racists and White SUPREMACIST Degenerate Drunk Winston Churchill said about Statistics eh? You celebrate him and have a lot of confidence in him I guess because of the credible solutions he delivered for Apartheid Israhell and Apartheid South Africa. Lammy has not even assumed the position as yet but you and the Unheard White Lynch Mob has already deemed him a failure. You lowlifes see every Black man thru your white SUPREMACIST lens know matter what he does or says. Your inherent hatred and jealousy of the Black man has no bounds. But your cheap shots and hatred of us only makes us stronger. We are Homo Sapiens Human Beings 2.0. We emerged out of Africa 50,000 years ago and created you when some of the brothaz engaged in beastiality with Neanderthal Hags. We unfortunately created the likes of you which has come back to haunt us. I guess the moral of the story is don’t engage in beastiality cause you never know what kind of sick Bastards you will create. All Homo Sapiens got from fcuking Neanderthal Hags is genital herpes. Something for brotha Lammy to contemplate as he readies himself for the usual racist minefield and traps and snares been set with
Racist glee just for him. We know how Caucazoid Neanderthals mutants roll.
‘All Homo Sapiens got from fcuking Neanderthal Hags is genital herpes.’
That’s quite a statement. Is there any scientific evidence for this. I worry what weird corners of the Internet you have been living in.
I feel like you are accusing people of racism while simultaneously being racist to Neanderthals, Caucazoid Neanderthal Druids and Caucazoid Neanderthals mutants. Do you consider these as three different types of Neanderthal? I’m not sure they appear in my encyclopedia.
‘Degenerate Drunk Winston Churchill said about Statistics eh? You celebrate him and have a lot of confidence in him ‘ – not as such and we can’t have any confidence in him because he is dead.
Maybe you should fully read my initial reply, I’m frustrated by David Lammy because in my opinion, he’s let down the BAME community, I feel he looked for confirmation bias in his investigation, and didn’t allow the evidence to lead to different conclusions, I’ll repeat, he didn’t mention the BAME community making up a whopping 40% of the working class community, instead, he implied there was no hope, and no matter how hard they tried to improve their lives, racist institutions and attitudes were going to prevent them from moving up the social ladder.
I don’t expect you to understand, reading through your replies have left me convinced you’re a white person pretending to be black.
Hey Fool how is he wrong?. Has the the lot of Black Briton gotten better in the interim? As you can see from the Caucazoid Neanderthals on this platform there is probably more anti-black than there has ever been. Same like in the Americas. So your idiocy and shallow cheap shot at Lammy has been confirmed. He didn’t tell you and hypocrital White Brits what they wanted to hear in his report so he is a Loser. Typical White horse shit.
you really are a racist bell end, Brother David. Making an arse of yourself projecting American racial politics onto nations you know nothing about. You’ve clearly never left your own borders and know nothing of the world.
stop making a prize t*t of yourself,
A Black Briton
Born in the Blair years, the new New Labour boys even look like the old New Labour boys, to whom they are probably related. And Grandmammy David Lammy is pulling old New Labour’s favourite trick of declaring absolutely anything to be “progressive” if the politician saying or doing it happened to hold a Labour Party membership card. Although in those days it was more often called “centre left”, and that change is important in itself.
For example, it is “progressive realism” to support British sanctions on an Iranian drone programme in which Britain has no part. Is the pointlessness of this progressive, or realistic, or both? But remember, it would be a ban on arms sales to Israel that would be a meaningless gesture, yet at the same time an existential threat to Israel. One part of that must be the progressiveness, and the other the realism. But I cannot begin to imagine which is which.
Just as I cannot begin to imagine which part is which of the outrage at Iran’s killing of no one, which progressives and realists alike would once have taken as a win while realists would have been sympathetic to Iran’s response to the bombing of its consulate, and the indifference at Israel’s deliberate killing of tens of thousands of women and children, as well as of three British military veterans whom realists would openly and progressives would quietly have understood were working simultaneously as aid workers and as intelligence operatives.
From Gaza, to Ukraine, to anywhere else, Lammy and Starmer hold no foreign policy position that would differentiate them from Liz Truss, or Suella Braverman, or Richard Tice, just as Labour opportunistically pretended to oppose the abolition of the 45p rate of income tax, the only mini-Budget measure that had not been in Truss’s prospectus to Conservative Party members, but it supported every single one of the others. Had Kwasi Kwarteng’s loony list ever been put to a Commons vote, then the Labour whip would have been to abstain. While calling themselves PopCons as ostensible adults, certain people are looking for a Trusssite Restoration. They are looking in the wrong party.
Labour is a party of extremely right-wing people who lack the social connections to make it in the Conservative Party, and whose two defining experiences were being brought up to spit on everyone below them, which was everyone else where they grew up, and discovering in their first 36 hours at university that they were nowhere near the top of the class system, a discovery that embittered them for life. Centrism and right-wing populism are con tricks to sell exactly the same economic and foreign policies to different audiences by pretending to wage a culture war.
Naive on part of the Author.
The idea Lammy, not even in power, going to do or say anything too radical at the moment really shouldn’t be a surprise. Few general platitudes and ‘steady as she goes’ was inevitable and predictable. Much may yet change in 24 to influence any inheritance, whether in S China sea, Ukraine or Middle East. And of course the impact of the US elections too, meaning any future FS going to be v careful what they say at the moment.
What’s good about the Article is shows Lammy already acting like a Minister likely to be charged with some v difficult situations and not showing too many cards now just for ‘performative’ purposes. Good sense.
The combination of the nailed-on incoming Labour government with Lammy as the Foreign Secretary and the increasingly likely looking Trump Presidency, is highly combustible. The years have shown, instead of putting personalities aside in the context of longstanding geopolitical alliances, Trump will hold a grudge related to what specific personalities have said and done about himself in the past, and the relationship could be significantly worse than the one between Trump and Merkel, which was pretty bad and Germany paid the price. The variety of Atlanticism espoused by Lammy is likely going to irk Trump. Nor, I suspect, will Starmer go down too well with Trump – so the the incoming Labour government will have their work cut out to maintain the US – UK and Nato relationships in their current form. Like the emperors of old, Trump will demand a tribute, and the Labour government in that situation will be between a rock and a hard place – they could not concede without sparking a civil war within the Labour party, and if they don’t, they will damage the interests of the UK, likely forcing the Labour government into re-approaching the EU, sparking a UK wide culture war.
As combustible as squashing a flea.
By ‘combustible’ I meant that the US and UK are the spine of NATO, and a few years of a bad relationship between Labour and Trump with each snarling at the other with increasing vitriol would quite possibly break NATO, with the US simply walking away.
If Lammy is as stupid as he sounds then foreign policy should carry on uninterrupted towards an inevitable catastrophe!
LOL!! …More cheap shots from the cheap seats!
So you support the Tories foreign policy, you liked Libya and Ukraine, I think you will find it was the US foreign policy and the Tories bent over and took it?
To Christopher Chantrill
“Never forget, dear Brits, that the United States is protected from invasion by two huge oceans, and you are not.”
What is happening on your US southern borders? Invasion
In the past two years, 50,000 young Chinese single men have illegally entered the Southern border….the USA is insane, it’s toast.
Another Political “rebranding” ostensibly to describe a brave, new policy programme and in reality just a load of nonsensical word salad. The incoming Labour Party are royally screwed with what they will inherit and so need to undertake this sort of meaningless gibberish to try and persuade the political commentariat that they genuinely have something new to offer -so on Foreign Policy we have “Progressive Realism”-on economic policy we have “Securonomics” -just waiting for Domestic Policy rebranding and we’ll have a full house. A bunch of political and intellectual pygmies masquerading as intellectual and political heavyweights .
The reality will be an accelerated decline both domestically and internationally.
Oh dear. UnHerd its nowadays no better than the comments section of the daily telegraph. It has descended into polarised views and sniping. What good does that do folks? We live in a world where people seem to need a cause, to take sides, to hurt others.
It’s unnecessary.
Unfortunately the bulk of our population are stupid, as you can tell from this comment section…
Lammy is a despicable racist and a fool. If you have an issue with that consensus go back to the Morning Star.
What in the world was Aris dissecting? People like Lammy toss words together as if happy-sounding terms equate to meaningful policy and decision-making. They don’t. They sound like the meanderings of someone who thinks he has something to say and desperately wants to say it, but winds up putting forth an incoherent jumble.
He reached an ironic point in saying that “democracies have become more economically dependent on authoritarian states.” while blithely ignoring how many of the democratic states are themselves becoming authoritarian, especially the ones with progressive govts in power. It’s why we hear the continuous freak out over “far right” this and “right-wing extremist” that to any real or perceived threat to the left’s hegemony over institutions.
No one wants or harks back to the greatness of Empire. Only our aged grannies ever saw the pink map on maps as tiny children while the bombs came down. What we yearn for is the conservation of the great values and traditions upon which a once free democratic proud cultured society and nation state were built; values we can then project globally. Yet all these values have been trashed and violated by the unremittingly negative Progressivism of the Blair/EU/Fake Tory State over the past 30 years. Top down diktat. Coercive Big States trampling on liberties. The veneration of individual rights and twisted reverse racism of its DEI dogma. The madness of economic Aid to superpower states. Blasphemy laws and bowing the knee to identitarian manias and hate mobs on our streets. The idea that a warped progressive state committed to punitive degrowth, race and gender intolerance has ANYTHING positive to contribute to world affairs is simply risible. Its all flatulent empty fraudulent ‘idealism’ mixed in with toxic ideologies like climate catastrophism and CRT. We have nothing of value to offer the world bar ammo for Ukraine.
The greatest catastrophe in human history, with the sole exception of the Fall of the Roman Empire, was the total collapse of Great Britain as a Great Power during the period 1914-1964.
During that brief period we absolutely beggared ourselves and degenerated into the squalid little progressive state we know claim to be. The standards of decency, honesty, and fair play which we used to espouse are long gone and the World is much the poorer for it.
As it happens, although not “an aged granny” I do recall the ‘pink maps’ and the dying days of Empire, and even then knew that it was little more than a colourful financial ‘basket case’.
However it was our worldwide influence that counted as millions huddled around their crystal radio sets to hear the BBC World Service, otherwise known as the Voice of God.
To take one rather esoteric version of this ‘influence’ my parents were particularly impressed by the dress of the Japanese Delegation which arrived on/in the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay to surrender in late 1945. All the Japanese civil/diplomatic staff were correctly dressed in morning coat, striped trousers and silk hat, and looked immaculate, in stark contrast to some others present. WHO taught them that?
The “BlackaMoors” who dragged Europe out of the Dark Ages with a Rennaissance that continues to this day? Oh you forgot about that part of the story.
Where these the same ones responsible for the Barbary slave trade between the 16th & 19th Century and acted as the primary conduit for slaves into the Ottoman empire? Ah yes, I think they were. And as for dragging Europe out the dark ages the moors were kicked out of Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella c1490. And the Renaissance (one n) started in Florence, Italy which was never subject to moorish rule.
I’m not sure which story you are referring to, but it doesn’t appear to bear any relation to his-story.
LOL. The WOPS started the Renaissance. WOW! Ever heard of Spain Fool? 800 years of Free Education for the Caucazoid Neanderthal and you got no gratitude. LIKE PUTIN Get down on your knees and worship Black Jesus White boy and ask him for forgiveness.
What is the end goal of Progressivism? A world where every gender, every sexual identity except family life is celebrated across the world? Where Chinese and Caribbean perform equally on the running track and in the office? Where every nation is hobbling its economy in deference to the climate theory of the day? Progressive Realism is the ultimate oxymoron.
Has Black people ever stopped anyone from performing or participating in any sports? Can you say the same for white people?
Lammy’s progressive realism will go the same way as Robin Cook’s “foreign policy with an ethical dimension”. No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.
I suppose at least Lammy has got a doctrine- unlike Rishi Bojo-Sunak’s fig leaf philosophy: “these are my principles, if you don’t like them i have others” – with thanks to Marx, G. His doctrine is flawed, i think because he still sees the world as driven by historical materialism and especially by skin tone. The currents of history are deep and so far as unfathomable to humanity as the laws of the cosmos. So all we have are competing conjectures. One of mine is this: China is more likely to liberalise under upward pressure from its burgeoning middle class than to double down and export the “imperial communism” of its recent past. This in effect means aping the US model and that of its client states eg UK. One main drive of this IMO is their demographic crisis – like UK and US they will need to import migrants on the cheap to continue to achieve growth whilst their native population gets fatter, lazier and more entitled. To that extent marxist materialism does have some data in its favour – easily explained by the ideas of various recent philosophers: EG “without food and cash, man will get rash” (Perry, L)
I agree, but the one caveat is, the CCP is not the type of entity to relinquish any level of power without a fight, and is liable to turn vicious if it perceives it’s automatic right to govern in perpetuity is under threat.
Politicians and Economists do not understand software. A Chinese EV or shovel may be both ‘products’ but they are not the same. The software developer always retains some control (however much they want)
Filling you country with software containing products made by an adversary just hands control to them.
Of course you may be able to deter them from using this power, but this just shows that extreme openness has to go with extreme military might.
Absolutely. And especially if that software is automatically updatable with patches from the vendor, as vast amounts of IOT embedded software is. Any nation that allows large amounts of software in it’s artefacts from a foreign power that is a potential military rival is completely stupid. Software is a movable feast – you don’t have what you think you have, but instead you have a general purpose mechanism to host whatever the vendor wants to, whenever they want to. The software inside artefacts can be changed in milliseconds on a mass scale and you have no control over the incoming changes.
The fatal flaw in David Lammy’s progressive realism, aside from everything about it, is David Lammy.
Anyone snapshot the racist anti-white diatribe that was posted up here earlier on by ‘King David’? It could have been Lammy himself.
A few years ago Lammy thought the black and white smoke the Vatican uses when deciding on a new Pope was about race. Stupid and racist.
He’s just a race grifting communitarian like so many of them are these days.
“To survive, progressives will be better placed making their peace with reality..”
In an age when reality is subjective, any utopian objectives are justifiable. Progressives don’t deal in objective facts any more. They used to just weigh them less important than intention, now they just select new facts through corrupted science.
Just read David Lammy’s article, some bits I agree with, and as is usually the case, it’s difficult to disagree with the wording in any Labour party document, but as usual, it’s the things not mentioned that cause the most worry and confusion.
Israel and the Palestinians barely got a mention, 1 short paragraph, and it’s in this particular region I worry most about Labour foreign policy, too many political activists – usually on the Left -, have no real understanding of the difficulties of finding a solution that will pass the critical test of Israeli and Palestinian referenda.
Too many activists (from both sides) seem to get their info from a select few agreeable sources, their arguments are easy to dismantle, but they seem incapable of proper discussion, and it’s pressure from some of these groups that could have too much influence over a Labour Foreign Secretary.
The word ‘Iran’ wasn’t mentioned once by David Lammy, this worries me, Iran has played a clever long game, taking advantage of chaos in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and Yeman, then supplying arms, military training and finance to further destabilise those countries.
Iran’s next target is Jordan, Iran is suspected of arms and drug trading across Jordan’s northern border, and of provoking potentially destabilising protests in the country, but it’s latest move was well thought out, that of routing it’s drones and missiles over Jordan.
Had Jordan done nothing, it would have put the peace treaty with Israel at risk, as well as annoying the Americans, so Jordan chose to shoot down some of the missiles/drones, this allowed the Iranians to say Jordan was helping protect Israel.
Iran may eventually provoke serious trouble in Jordan’s (60% Palestinian origin) population, and could potentially support an anti-Israel militia along the river Jordan, this will force the EU, USA and UK to make some very difficult decisions, boots on the ground, or allow Israel to sort the problem out.
Destabilising Jordan is a price the region can’t afford, it has to be stopped now, the biggest help must be a viable 2 state solution for Israel & Palestine, and recognising Palestine as a state in the UN (as David Lammy want’t to do) will only lead the Palestinians to believe a 2 state solution can be forced on Israel, and that will never happen.
The UK ‘s special relationship with the extractive, tax-dodging and ‘join us in our war’ US, as a dumb impoverished wingman, is more dire by the day. After the Iraq debacle, 2008 and Brexit/Ireland brickbats it is now well-defined by the Gaza aid bridge – the US will build but Brits can go ashore to the 1948 refugee camps and take the hit. The UK to the US has no acceptably separate interests, just duties and economic fealty. The Foreign Policy Research Institute nailed it neatly – and yet Labour is about to install another satrap. Nothing will change under them, Reform or the Conservatives. We have a Dead Donkey democracy of obeissance and dull-mindedness in search of a glimmer of hope.