Britain, Economic, Government, Politics, Society

Labour’s true manifesto is being revealed

BRITAIN

NOW he’s safely in office, Sir Keir Starmer continues to reveal his real manifesto – attacks on pensioners, higher fuel bills, and a whole array of excuses for other flops and errors that he has not even made yet. With apparent gusto, he will tell us shortly that things will get worse before they get better and that he will not shy away from tough and unpopular decisions.

Such rhetoric has often been a favourite warning from Prime Ministers nearing their end of time in office, usually an attempt to claim that their difficulties will one day produce a happy outcome. But it is highly unusual for newly elected leaders with a full five years ahead of them to use language like this. If he starts in this way, what will it be like a year hence?

This is a government in trouble within weeks of being elected to office.

Beguiled by Labour’s legendary skills at spin and planning, many expected and hoped that Sir Keir would ride smoothly into power. It has been anything but. Apart from proposing to concrete over the Green Belt, abandoning any attempt to control illegal migration, splurging taxpayers’ money on extravagant public sector pay claims, and mauling independent schools with VAT, there has been little for the PM to boast about. The chief turn of phrase of his opening few weeks, along with that of his Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has been: “The Tories left a huge black hole in the national finances.” Labour claims that the outgoing Conservative government left a £22bn black hole that Labour has exposed following an audit of the books when they took over. Anyone who understands economics, whether Labour supporting or not, will know the claim to be untrue.

Absurdly, and in a similar vein, Labour has even started blaming the previous government for the recent violent disorders. No doubt the Tories have not been as tough as their voters would have liked on law and order, but Labour, for more than half a century has been the party of soft sentencing and politically correct policing, can hardly blame the Conservatives for the “cracks in our society”.

This is a government in a mess. The removal of the winter fuel payment to pensioners looks more than ever like a classic political bungle, now made even worse by the ten per cent rise in the energy cap that has just been announced by the energy regulator. It will hit many elderly people hard. Is this what Starmer calls a “government of service”? It increasingly looks like the sort of administration in which the people serve the state, and the state is above our heads in ways that aren’t normally associated with socialism.

Britons can feel the wind blowing and will know that things aren’t right. Expect some heavy hitting changes.

Standard
Britain, Economic, Government, Politics, Society

Ingratiating the unions will lead to ruination

BRITAIN

DURING the election campaign, one of the very few things Sir Keir Starmer was clear about was that the Labour Party had “changed”. He said this even more often than reminding the nation that his father had been a toolmaker.

Anyone listening to this pledge must have assumed that he meant the party had changed for the better: less militancy, more readiness to tackle immigration, being tougher on crime, no rapid resort to higher taxes, and more consideration for the squeezed middle class.

Well, it has been far from that. The “changed” Labour Party has immediately resorted to traditional Leftist policies, from a penal VAT levy on independent schools to promises of higher taxes, based on highly dubious claims of a hitherto concealed £22bn black hole in the national finances. It has begun to sidle up to the EU, giving every sign of stealthy plans to undo much of Brexit. On top of that, it has cynically cut pensioners’ heating allowances, launched a frenzy of green spending, and lit a bonfire of the planning protections which have for many decades helped to keep the suburbs reasonably green and spacious. It all sounds pretty “unchanged”.

But above all Labour has remain unchanged in its treatment of trade unions and their excessive pay demands. There is hardly a militant union which has not received a large bag of taxpayers’ golden mint in the past few weeks, which is why Chancellor Rachel Reeves is now complaining that she does not have enough of our money and will soon be demanding more.

With amazing abandonment, within just a few short days of Labour coming to power, intractable disputes were cheerfully resolved. This was easy to do if you do not care how much it costs. The political benefits to Labour are considerable, especially now it has ended the very unpleasant and dangerous junior doctors’ dispute in England.

Such a primrose path which has started merrily will end in tears and trouble. That is a given. Perhaps Sir Keir and his government ministers have forgotten their party’s own history, and the story of how it was undone in the 1960s by an unstoppable round of pay claims, one group leapfrogging another. This did huge damage both to private industry and the great nationalised concerns which took up so much of the landscape.

Unions today, it is worth remembering, do not have the power, wealth, or strength of their 1960s and 1970s forbears. They tend to pester and annoy the public with short and frequent protest strikes, rather than marathon walkouts lasting months at a time. We should be grateful we are not contending with that.

But even so, strikes do great mischief. They slow down the economy, they can wreck the education of the young, they can get in the way of the very necessary movement of getting people away from “working from home”, and they keep inflation and prices on the boil.

Free trade unions are an integral part of any open and proper free country. But with freedom comes responsibility, and a combination of militant-led unions and an increasingly spendthrift Labour government does not encourage such responsibility.

If he is not careful, the PM will soon find that he has made a rod for his own back. He may think that he can pass on the costs of this policy to hard-pressed taxpayers. But experience shows he will instead destroy the very businesses he needs to pay for his largesse. We need real change before the bad times start rolling again.

Standard
Britain, Military, Russia, Ukraine, United States

A daring strike. Reason why we must keep sending arms

UKRAINE-RUSSIA

THE surprise factor has always been critical in war. And once again, Ukraine has displayed it with audaciousness – just as the country did when fighting back so valiantly against the world’s second biggest military power 30 months ago after Vladimir Putin tried to crush their country with his invasion.

Kyiv’s troops have made a lightning-fast thrust into the Kursk region of Russia with tank and mechanised units that no one anticipated – especially not the Kremlin.

It was clearly well prepared and planned, with cyber attacks stifling Russian communications and drones, aided by substantial artillery firepower. These are regular Ukrainian military forces – not the militia involved in previous incursions.

Russian convoys hastily transferring troops to the region after the initial raid seem to have been hit hard by Ukraine. Minefields were laid to protect the attack force. Social media suggests more Ukrainian tanks and troops are going in, plus significant captures of enemy soldiers.

It is difficult to determine precise numbers of the troops involved, let alone the aims of this daring strike that has taken them possibly 20 miles over the border. Whatever the case, it all shows an impressive level of operational planning and diligence.

It also bears similarities in style to the rapid advance by Ukraine two years ago that recaptured big chunks of the Kharkiv region. That was led by General Oleksandr Syrskyi, who has since been promoted to overall commander of Ukraine’s armed forces.

To take the fight into Russia with the first invasion of its terrain since 1941 is a bold and risky move. And it seems Western allies were left as surprised as the Kremlin when it was launched from Ukraine’s Sumy region.

Putin, the architect of so many bloodstained atrocities in this hideous war, has been silent so far. His aides are appealing to the United Nations for support, and bleat pathetically about “large-scale provocation”, and seemingly are threatening a “tough response”.

Only time will tell if this was a brave and foolhardy move by Ukraine – or a smart move that will force Moscow to shift forces from other parts of the frontline, thereby aiding Kyiv’s defence of its terrain while raising much needed morale among citizens and Western allies.

The attack certainly demolishes any suggestions that the war was settling into a stalemate, with Russia’s remorseless military steamroller making grinding gains in eastern Ukraine despite massive causalities.

Kyiv has demonstrated its military capabilities again when sufficiently equipped with modern weapons – just as it has in its remarkable defeat of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, where it used drones and missiles to sink or damage at least one third of the ships, forcing the rest to retreat from Crimea. This has frustrated Moscow’s ability to bomb Ukraine from warships.

In this latest operation, Ukraine has hit two airbases used to launch the glide bombs that are causing horrific carnage among Ukrainian civilians and soldiers with massive blasts.

The sluggish Russian response shows (again) the failings of a top-down, Soviet-style command structure under a power-crazed dictator. Moscow’s propaganda has been reduced to showing footage of “successful” strikes repelling Ukraine in Kursk – footage that was in reality filmed elsewhere.

We do not know if Ukraine intends to press on or try to hold this captured terrain for trading in future negotiations for its own stolen lands – or to retreat having shaken the enemy, rattled the Russian regime, and forced it to place more security and troops all along the border regions.

Military strategists are, however, right to point out that Moscow has held a big advantage in this war until now because it has not needed to commit military resources to defend its border – that’s an amazing thing during any war.

This advantage was down to the West’s ridiculous determination from the start to restrain Ukrainian efforts to fight back inside Russia. Washington even complained to Kyiv about attacks on fuel dumps supplying the Kremlin’s military machine.

The West’s pathetic fear of escalation, stoked ceaselessly by Russian threats of nuclear war, has been a powerful weapon for Putin because it has limited military aid for Kyiv and severely shackled Ukraine’s ability to defend itself.

Now, though, Kyiv has dramatically challenged this stance and shown the absurdities of such timidity in this epochal confrontation between dictatorship and democracy. It feeds into the dictum expressed by Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz, who said: “Enemy blows must be returned in war”.

. 14 August 2024

A sign negotiated peace is edging closer

IN the last few weeks, Kyiv had been signalling it was open to peace talks with Moscow. This was not an attempt to surrender, but to arrange a settlement that preserves Ukraine’s independence and by recovering as much ground as possible.

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, had even gone to see Vladimir Putin’s allies in Beijing to sound out whether China would act as an intermediary.

If Putin took Zelensky’s willingness to talk as a sign that his resolve to fight was weakening, he surely suffered the greatest shock of his presidency in the early hours of August 6.

A week ago, an elite Ukrainian unit stormed the border and its forces have since seized some 400 square miles of Russian territory in the Kursk region.

It appears that the Ukrainians have adopted the great Soviet art of “maskirovka” – deception in warfare – and taught the Russian tyrant a lesson in over-confidence.

The claim that Kyiv’s allies were caught by surprise is disquieting. The presence of NATO advisers and technicians helping the Ukrainians deploy Western weaponry – including F16 fighters, French and British cruise missiles, and German armoured vehicles – must have been seen along with the preparations being made for the sudden offensive. The West is treading carefully, mindful of the cost the war is extracting from its taxpayers. Its leaders are more than happy to see Putin embarrassed by Ukraine’s surprise attack, but they’ve kept the triumphalist rhetoric to a minimum (for fear of burning bridges with the Kremlin were it to open talks on a ceasefire).

Through its successful invasion into Russian territory, Ukraine has dramatically gained more leverage for any impending talks. Zelensky now has the basis for bargaining Russian land not only for peace but also for the return of areas of the Donbas overrun by the enemy.

Seen in that light, this act of aggression is not an escalation of the war but a signal that a negotiated settlement might be edging closer. It will be tempting for Zelensky to push further. With new American F16s at his disposal, Russian targets in the Black Sea will be vulnerable.

Potential propaganda coups like destroying the bridge linking Russia to Crimea, or by targeting Putin’s palace near Sochi on the coast, could be strategic options. Such gains, however, could also be counter-productive, for they would enrage and infuriate Putin so much that any prospect of a peace deal would be dead in the water.

The important point is that being good at war is not just about fighting well.

As the Prussian general and military theorist Carl von Clausewitz argued after fighting with the Russian army against Napoleon in 1812, the ultimate purpose of war is to achieve a political objective.

Political and military leaders have to keep their eyes on the great prize of attaining that ultimate goal – whether they call it victory or peace – rather than just tactical victories on the battlefield.

The choice of invading Kursk was hugely symbolic given the emotional resonance the region holds over Russians.

On the very same terrain in 1943, the heroic Red Army routed the retreating Nazis in the biggest tank battle ever seen. That involved some 6,000 tanks and almost two million troops. The Battle of Kursk became a decisive turning point in the defeat of Hitler in the east.

The ill-fated submarine that was named in its honour has also imprinted itself on the Russian psyche. In August 2000, just eight months after Putin won his inaugural presidency, the nuclear-powered K-141 Kursk sank in the Barents Sea, taking with it all 118 souls on board.

Therefore the invasion of Kursk in particular, the first foreign incursion into Russia since the Second World War, will have hurt Putin.

That war ended in total victory; this one will end with a messy compromise.

Diplomacy is an unseemly business best kept secret from squeamish publics. A lot can go wrong, even with diplomacy behind the scenes. Trust is in short supply to put it mildly. Yet, there is now a glimmer of hope that Ukraine can get to hold its essential territory and rebuild its society and economy.

Standard