Tag Archives: ukraine

7 November 2024 – today’s press releases

  • ONS GP Survey: Two in five who could not get through to GP did nothing about symptoms
  • Interest rate cut: Govt must work to deliver growth, especially through small businesses
  • Davey to visit Ukraine charity: “Leaders across Europe must stand up to Putin”

ONS GP Survey: Two in five who could not get through to GP did nothing about symptoms

Responding to the latest ONS Survey, which showed that two in five (39%) people who were unable to contact their GP in the past month opted to do nothing about their ailment, Liberal Democrat Health and Social Care spokesperson, Helen Morgan MP said:

Our primary care services are at breaking point. Patients are left completely without options, instead letting their issues get worse when they are unable to get the care they need.

The blame for this shocking state of affairs lies squarely with the Conservative Party whose years of shameful neglect has broken our NHS.

It is now down to the new government to rise to this challenge and rescue our health service. That is why it is so disappointing to see that instead of supporting our GPs they are piling more pressure on them with their national insurance hike.

The new government needs to urgently rethink these proposals, scrap the GP penalty and get patients the care they deserve.

Interest rate cut: Govt must work to deliver growth, especially through small businesses

Commenting after the Bank of England has cut interest rates to 4.75%, Liberal Democrat Treasury Spokesperson Daisy Cooper MP said:

This is welcome news for families across the country who are still living with the consequences of Conservative economic failure.

Notwithstanding, millions of households are still struggling with sky high mortgage payments two years on from the Conservatives’ disastrous mini-budget.

The burden of fixing the Conservatives’ mess has fallen on struggling households for too long. As rates are cut, the new Government must work to deliver growth in the economy, especially through small businesses and high streets.

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Tom Arms’ World Review

North Korea at al

China is unhappy. So is Belarus. Both countries are worried about North Korea sending troops to Russia in the middle of the Ukraine war.

President Xi Jinping is worried that the move will de-stabilise the Korean Peninsula, escalate and complicate the Ukraine War, increase Russian influence in the Far East and potentially drag China into a head-on conflict with NATO.

Alexander Lukashenko is concerned that the appearance of non-Russian troops in Ukraine will increase pressure on him to send Belarussian soldiers in support of the Kremlin.

Xi hates uncertainty. He likes his foreign policy to run along diplomatic railway lines painted bright red so that others know not to cross them. If there are going to be any spanners to be thrown, he wants to toss them and control their flight and consequences.

He does not like North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. He is uneasy about the hereditary communist dictator’s nuclear arsenal. He supplies the regime with just enough aid and trade to keep them going, but not enough to threaten the status quo. This is because for the past 74 years one of the chief aims of China is to keep Korea divided and to maintain North Korea as a buffer state between the Chinese border and 25,000 American soldiers in South Korea. Anything which threatens to disrupt that policy is bad news in Beijing.

The bromance between Vladimir Putin and Kim threatens to upset this delicately balanced apple cart. Kim will want something in return for his troops. It will almost certainly include Russian military help which will embolden the mercurial North Korean leader and increase the threat to South Korea and Japan.

Belarus is on the frontline in the Ukraine War. The initial attack in 2022 was launched from its territory. Lukashenko is closely allied with Russia and continues to provide bases and logistical support. But Lukashenko knows he is unpopular. He clings to power with the help of the Belarussian KGB (yes, they retained the name of the old Soviet organisation). Committing his small military force of 50,000 to the Ukraine War would be unpopular and threaten his rule.

By the way, just everyone else is also unhappy about North Korean troops fighting in Ukraine.  It adds a new and dangerous dimension by internationalising the conflict.

Russia

Russia is unhappy too. The recent referendum in Moldova on closer ties with the European Union did not go the way the Kremlin wanted. It was extremely close: 50.46 percent in favour of closer ties and 49.54 percent against.

The Russians did everything they could to push the vote the other way. They played fast and loose with bribery, intimidation and misinformation. A BBC reporter was filmed being approached by a voter asking for the payment she had been promised.

The misinformation focused on an expensive advertising campaign which claimed the EU planned to brainwash Moldovan children to turn gay or transgender. The gay community is generally unpopular throughout Eastern Europe.

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Tom Arms’ World Review

France

As I sat down to write, French Prime Minister Michele Barnier was making last minute adjustments to his budget before presenting it to the National Assembly.

So, there may be a few unintentional omissions from this piece, but not too many because the problems of the French economy have been widely circulated in advance of the Barnier budget.

On Friday morning Barnier was widely expected to introduce an austerity budget of cuts and higher taxes totalling $66 billion – or two percent of the French GDP. Two-thirds will come in cuts in government spending and one third in tax increases.

The savings will come from a six-month delayed pension increase and $20 billion in cuts to government departments. The newly-appointed Barnier also wants to cut local government subsidies for businesses. To raise money, Barnier plans to introduce a temporary super tax on firms with more than a $1.1 billion turnover and households with earnings over $547,000.

The super tax is likely to have no problem in the French legislature. There is very little sympathy in France – or most everywhere else – for the rich. Pensioners are another problem. National Rally leader Marine Le Pen has already accused the government of “stealing from the elderly.” As for government cuts, the devil is in the detail and those details will only become clear in the coming weeks of debate.

It is clear, however, that something must be done to deal with the government deficit which is expected to exceed six percent of GDP in 2024.

President Emmanuel Macron had a reputation as a good money manager. And back in January 2020 he appeared to have the economy under control. Then the pandemic struck. Macron pledged to “protect” the French people “whatever it costs.” Government spending leapt to 59 percent of GDP – more than Germany or Spain or any other OECD country.

As the pandemic eased, Russia invaded Ukraine and the price of oil and grain rapidly rose along with almost every inflation marker. Macron’s economic plans went out the window.

But the parlous state of the French economy is not Barnier’s only problem. He is prime minister of a minority government with France’s left and right wing parties broadly united in their opposition. But not completely, Le Pen’s RN favours cuts in government but not cuts in pension payments.  The left joins them on behalf of pensioners but also opposes any cuts in government spending.

Barnier’s hope is to gain broad support from the Gaullist parties and then play off the left and right over specific aspects of France’s finances.

The budget has to be agreed by December. If Barnier fails to win the support of a majority of the National Assembly then he has the option of using emergency measures to push it through. But that is highly unpopular and could easily lead to the collapse of his government.

United States

Trump may have broken the law – again. This time the law in question is known as the Logan Act.

The Logan Act was passed in 1799 shortly after the creation of the United States. It makes it illegal for private individuals to conduct diplomacy or negotiations with foreign governments without authorisation from the federal government. Breaching it can cost a fine and three years in prison

The law makes sense. The Secretary of State – or any of his officials – don’t want their efforts being contradicted or undermined by an individual negotiating with a different agenda.

According to the latest book by investigative journalist Bob Woodward, Donald Trump spoke with Russian president Vladimir Putin at least seven times since leaving the White House. Of course, they may have just been exchanging recipes or discussing when to send Putin the latest health care products. That, however, seems unlikely given wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

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Tom Arms’ World Review

United States

Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene WAS the female darling of the Republican far-right. No longer. The new girl on the block is 31-year-old Laura Loomer who is so far to the right that right-wing Ms Greene has called her “mentally unstable and a documented liar.”

Ms Loomer is also emerging as a confidante of Donald Trump. She travelled on his plane to the 10 September presidential debate in Philadelphia and is said to have fed him the story about immigrants eating pets in Ohio.

She continued with the former president to New York and was with him when he attended the bipartisan services to commemorate the 9/11 terrorist attack. This despite the fact that Ms Loomer has claimed that 9/11 was an “inside job” perpetrated by the Deep State liberal elite.

Laura Loomer loves right-wing conspiracy theories. In her playbook the mass shootings at Last Vegas, El Paso and Parkland were all staged by the anti-gun lobby. The winter storm that disrupted the Iowa caucus was created by meteorologists hired by Deep State Democrats to help Republican candidate Nikki Haley.

Ms Loomer proudly identifies as an “Islamaphobe.” When told that 2,000 Muslim immigrants had drowned while crossing the Mediterranean, she tweeted: “Good. Here’s to 2,000 more. “

Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have all banned her for spreading hate speech and misinformation, although Elon Musk reinstated her account. She has also been banned by the online banking services Paypal, Gofundme and Venmo. The taxi services  Uber and Lyfft have barred her from using their vehicles because of her attempts to ban Muslim taxi drivers. She is suing all of the above – unsuccessfully.

Twice Ms Loomer has run for Congress for a Florida seat. Twice she lost and twice she was endorsed by Donald Trump. She has written for Alex Jones’s Infowars; The Geller Report which pushed the Obama birther lie; Rebel Media which describes as a counter-Jihad platform and Veritas, a major broadcaster of conspiracy theories.

Ms Loomer denies that she is a White Supremacist but proudly admits to being a White Nationalist. She is not a Christian nationalist because she is Jewish and has been the target of death threats from the anti-Semitic wing of America’s far right.

Her loyalty to Donald Trump is rock solid. She told the Washington Post: “If Trump doesn’t get in I don’t have anything. Ms Loomer attacked Florida governor Ron de Santis and his wife for daring to challenge the former president and has advised Trump that he should make a list of those who have challenged him in the courts and elsewhere and, when re-elected president, “execute them for treason.”

United States – more

What if Trump loses? Will there be a repeat of January 6 when rioters stormed the US capitol in a vain attempt to block the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory?

Unlikely. But only because this time around Biden – not Trump – controls the security apparatus. And he has put in place an array of measures to protect not only the capitol building, but the entire metropolitan area of Washington DC.

No. If there is a threat to the election it will be in the voting booths, the counting rooms, the election boards and the courts.

As in 2020, Trump is planting the seeds for a legal challenge in case the vote goes against him. This time his objections will be based on illegal immigrants voting for Harris. He told a rally in Las Vegas this summer that “the only way they can beat us is to cheat.”

In the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin the Trump-controlled Republican National Committee has put 102 election deniers on local and state election boards. In Georgia, for instance, the election deniers control the state-wide board and have already introduced rules that allow them to delay voter certification while they conduct “investigations” into “unspecified irregularities.”

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Observations of an Expat: Ukraine – Shrewdness or Mistake?

Ukraine has introduced a new strategic weapon in its war with Russia. How it uses this weapon could determine the course of the conflict.

There is a heavily-defended 600 mile frontline between the Russian army in Eastern Ukraine and the Ukrainian military, grouped mainly on the western bank of the Dnieper River. Movement along this frontline has been incremental, much like the western front of World War I.

Defended by poorly-trained Russian conscripts is the 650-mile border between northeast Ukraine and the Russian oblasts of Kursk, Bryansk and Belgorod.

Ukraine’s military commander Oleksandr Syrsky has crossed a 10-mile stretch of that border to become the first military leader since World War Two to invade Russia. As of Friday, Ukrainians have established their dominance in 800-square miles of the Kursk oblast; set up a military administration in the Russian town of Sudzha and gained control of 81 other towns and villages.

General Syrsky declared: “We are here to stay.  A spokesperson for the Ukrainian foreign ministry, said: “We have no intention of staying. We will leave.”

The Syrsky stay strategy is likely to lead to failure and defeat. The diplomats’ approach contains the seeds of victory.

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Tom Arms’ World Review

United States

Weird is the new catchword of the American presidential elections. It is weird that Donald Trump – a convicted felon – is the Republican nominee for the presidency of the United States.

It is weird that J.D. Vance – an anti-abortionist who claims that America is run by a miserable “bunch of childless cat ladies” – is the Republican nominee for the presidency of the United States.

It is weird because both those images sound totally “un-American” and thus unlikely to win the votes of the American electorate. So it is weird that those two men have been nominated for the two highest offices in America.

Not weird is that Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, has been chosen by Kamala Harris to be her running mate in the presidential elections. Governor Walz is – as they like to say – as American as apple pie.

For a start he is from the mid-West which is often viewed as the traditionally American part of America. He attended Nebraska State College where he met his wife Gwen. They have two children – very American.

He taught high school social studies and coached the football team. The team went on to win the state championships. That is very, very American story almost worthy of a based-on-a-true-story Netflix film.

Walz was in the National Guard for 24 years, and reached the rank of Master Sergeant. Military service is almost a requirement for American politicians.

He served six terms in Congress before being elected Governor of Minnesota in 2018. He was re-elected in 2022. It was while he was Governor that Republicans have veered away from his all-American roots and towards what they might regard as weirdness. Walz legalised marijuana, passed strict gun laws, affirmed abortion rights, introduced free school meals and free college tuition. The liberal democrats love him. Which could explain why he is also chair of the Democratic Governors Association.

Walz is also credited with coming up with the catchword “weird” to describe Trump and Vance. President Biden had been focused on Trump’s threat to democracy. Walz reckoned that threat talk was a bit of a stretch for most American voters. “Weird” is easier to understand.

Bangladesh

From Nobel prize-winning micro-banker to leader of Bangladesh is quite a leap. But at the tender age of 84 Professor Muhammad Yunus has made the jump.

He replaces Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed who has fled the country after an estimated 400 people died in student-led riots against her quota system for the civil service.

Yunus probably doesn’t need the headache of running a country of 170 million people. He already secured the Nobel Peace Prize for creating the micro-finance banking system which has lifted millions out of poverty.

Yunus’s Grameen Bank pioneered micro-credit which is acknowledged as one the factors that transformed Bangladesh from the world’s second poorest country to the 38th wealthiest.

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Tom Arms’ World Review

Gaza

The world was presented with two alternative approaches to the Gaza War this week. The first was brokered by China. The second was outlined by Benjamin Netanyahu in an address to a Joint Session of the US Congress.

The first was supported by the feuding leaders of Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, 12 other Palestinian factions and a big chunk of the Global South. The second was received with a standing ovation by America’s Republican lawmakers but boycotted by dozens of Democrat Congressmen.

The Chinese-brokered deal is aimed at ending the schism between Fatah which rules the West Bank as the Palestinian Authority and Hamas which has governed Gaza since ejecting Fatah in 2007. The bitter split between the two has been one of the chief obstacles to implementing the much sought after two-state solution.

On Tuesday the Palestinian factions agreed to form an interim reconciliation government. They also agreed to jointly demand a ceasefire; a total withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and the West Bank; elections and they established the bones of a reconstruction programme for Gaza.

On Thursday, Netanyahu denied that Israel was blocking aid to Gaza; claimed that only a few civilians had died; called for the total destruction of Hamas; made no reference to the two-state solution and insisted that a post-war Gaza should be a “demilitarised and de-radicalised” enclave under Israeli military control.

Among those boycotting Netanyahu’s address was former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. She described his speech as “by far the worst presentation of any foreign dignitary invited and honoured with the privilege of addressing the Congress of the United States.”

Ukraine

Another visitor to Beijing this week was Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba. It was the first visit to China by a Ukrainian official since the Russian invasion, and indicates a Ukrainian shift in emphasis from the military to the diplomatic.

The Ukrainians see the Chinese as the only third party power with any leverage over Vladimir Putin. Kuleba told his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi that Ukraine was ready to negotiate in good faith, but he added: “No such readiness is currently observed on the Russian side.” Wang agreed that that the “conditions and timing are not yet ripe.”

Vladimir Putin, for his part, is sticking to his demands that Ukraine handover the four regions his troops have occupied in eastern Ukraine; promise not to join NATO and agree to demilitarisation.

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Tom Arms’ World Review

Gaza

 Benjamin Netanyahu and the Hamas leadership share a common interest: It is to neither’s advantage at this stage to end the Gaza War. But neither is in either party’s interests to be seen as the bad guy.

In the case of the Israeli prime minister it is the fact that once the war is over he will face an overpowering clamour for a general election. It is an election which he will almost certainly lose as the Israeli electorate will hold him to account for the events that led up to the October 7th Hamas attack.

And then, once he is out of office, Netanyahu is likely to exchange the prime minister’s official residence for a prison cell via a trial on charges of fraud, bribery and breach of trust. Fleeing the country is not an option because by then the International Criminal Court will have issued an arrest warrant for war crimes – unless he flees to America.

With Hamas the story is different. There are two wars being fought in the eastern Mediterranean. One is on the ground and in the air over a strip of land 26 miles long and 2.5 miles wide. The other is a war in the court of international public opinion. Hamas is losing the first and winning the second.

The longer the military war continues. The greater the disproportionate losses in human terms between Palestinians and Israelis and the greater the victory for Hamas. Already it has secured diplomatic recognition of a Palestinian state from six EU countries—Norway, Spain, Slovenia, Cyprus, Sweden and Ireland.

Hamas has repeatedly proven that it puts political objectives before Palestinian lives. A string of historical precedents would have told them that the October 7th attack and the taking of hostages would have resulted in a highly disproportionate number of dead and injured Palestinians. It is also clear that Hamas has used hospitals, schools and Palestinian civilians, as shields.

So, where does that leave the prospects for peace and the diplomatic brokering of the US, Egypt and Qatar? At the moment US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is focused on the lack of Hamas’s enthusiasm for the latest peace proposal. Hamas say they have responded with “positivity” but Blinken says that the Hamas’s “positivity” includes “unworkable” changes.

Part of the latest problem is ownership of the plan currently on the table. It was announced by President Biden. But in his announcement he said it was an Israeli plan. However, as Hamas’ has been keen to point out, no Israeli official has publicly endorsed the plan.

In fact, official Israeli pronouncements continue to focus on continuing the war until Hamas’s “governing and military capabilities have been destroyed and the hostages returned.” There is also the political problem that Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners will withdraw from the government if the plan outlined by Biden goes ahead. This would result in an election which Netanyahu would lose.

Israeli problems and positions in turn appear to be in direct conflict with a Hamas demand that Israel commit in writing to ending the fighting before it agrees to any plan from anyone. Until this deadlock is resolved and the Americans come up with a plan that allows both sides to achieve the aims they want without fighting, then the war continues.

Ukraine

Shortly after the Russians invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the West froze $325 billion in Russian assets.

Almost immediately the call went out to hand the money over to Ukraine to finance its war against Russia. But there was a problem with this tactic which can easily be summed up with one word – hypocrisy.

Putin was being condemned for contravening international law with his naked war of aggression. But confiscating Russian assets and handing them over to Ukraine would also break international law. And respect for international law is at the root of what Ukraine and the West is fighting for. Putin wants to create a world where might is right. America and its allies want to retain a world based on respect for international law.

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Tom Arms’ World Review

South Africa

Three decades of ANC rule in South Africa look set to end. The final votes from Wednesday’s election have yet to be counted and are expected to be announced on Sunday. But the general consensus is that the party that ended apartheid will garner about 45 percent of the vote. Which means it is coalition time.

The downfall of the ANC vote is evidence of the well-worn political truism that power corrupts and that absolute power corrupts absolutely. In 2004 the African National Congress won 70 percent of the vote. It dropped to 57 percent in 2019 and is projected to drop between 10 and 15 points in this election.

The reason for the collapse of the ANC vote is corruption, poor governance and economic mismanagement leading to a flight of capital and an unemployment rate of 37 percent.

Corruption reached its peak under the presidency of Jacob Zuma whose misuse of government funds led to his ousting in 2018. In 2020 he was sentenced to 15 months imprisonment for contempt of court. He served only three, but he is still barred from serving in parliament.

Zuma’s successor, Cyril Ramaphosa, made some progress towards resolving the corruption problem, but it was too little too late> Unemployment – especially among the urban youth – remains troublingly high. Zuma, in the meantime has emerged as leader of a new KwaZulu Natal-based political party, Umkhonto we Size (MK) or Spear of the Nation.

MK has surprised political pundits by beating the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) to take third place in the polls. Both the EFF and MK have adopted radical agendas which include the expropriation of white-owned land and widespread nationalisation. MK also wants to return more political power to the traditional trial chieftains.

MK took votes away from both the ANC and EFF. Another winner from this week’s was the Democratic Alliance (DA) who appear to have won the confidence the white South African voter. A fifth party is the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) is—like MK– also based in Natal. The most likely coalition is between the IFP, Democratic Alliance and ANC.

Europe

Europe’s far-right parties appear set to sweep the boards in European Parliament elections held on 6-9 June.

Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy are on the rise. Marine Le Pen is current favourite to win the 2027 and her National Rally party is currently at 30 percent in the opinion polls. Viktor Orban’s Fidesz has a stranglehold on Hungary and Geert Wilder’s Party for Freedom won elections in the Netherlands. Far-right parties, in Spain, Belgium, Slovakia, Sweden and Austria are growing or having a stake in government.

There is, however, a chink, in the far-right armour: Germany’s Alternative for Deutschland (Afd) has swung too far to the right even for Europe’s far-right. Recently, there top candidate for the European Parliament, Maximilian Krah, said that members of the wartime SS were not automatically “criminals.” Krah is also being investigated by the police for accepting payments from China and Russia. His problems followed a secret meeting in a hotel outside Berlin where senior officials in the AfD discussed the mass deportation of non-ethnic Germans, including German citizens.

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Tom Arms’ World Review

Russia and China

It took Vladimir Putin just nine days for Putin to go from his inauguration in the Kremlin to Zhongnanhai – the seat of China’s political power and the home of President Xi Jinping.

At the end of the two-day visit the “partnership without limits” had been elevated to one in which there are now “no forbidden areas of cooperation.”

The two countries – and the two leaders – are united in their common goal of dismantling the liberal Western political order that has dominated the world since 1945. Democracy, they are convinced, has had its day. It is time now for Sino-Russian orchestrated autocracy.

The current pivot of the Beijing-Moscow axis is the Ukraine War. This war presents both problems and opportunities for China. On the one hand, Russian failure would be regarded as a disaster. On the other, Xi Jinping is conscious of the need to prevent Sino-American relations from deteriorating too quickly. China is not ready to step into American shoes.

So, Xi Jinping exploits Russia to poke, needle and goad Washington. He talks of “no forbidden areas of cooperation” but then urges Putin to row back on the nuclear rhetoric. China has yet to recognise the Russian annexation of Luhansk and Donetsk and – so far—has refused to supply Russia with obvious weaponry. It buys more oil from Russia but is playing hardball on the Russian request for a gas pipeline that would replace revenues that Gazprom has lost in Europe.

China, has however, ignored Western sanctions against Russia. In 2022 Russian imports of Chinese machine tools grew by 120 percent and in 2023 they rose another 170 percent.

Machine tools are just one industrial category which Secretary of State Antony Blinken has complained loudly about as helping the Russian war effort. This equipment either has a hidden defense element or it is categorised as dual-use, which means it can be used for civilian or military purposes.

Other similar categories of Chinese exports have grown exponentially since Russian tanks rolled across the Ukrainian border. Semi-conductor exports rose from $230 million in 2021 to £407 million in 2023. The machinery for making computer chips grew from $3.5 million to $180 million over the same period. Computer chips are essential for the conduct of high-tech 21st century warfare.

Russian oil

Russian oil and gas are financing Putin’s Ukraine War. So, this week, the Russian president had good news and bad news about his war coffers.

Oil revenues are up. Gas revenues are down.

Gazprom – the state gas monopoly – lost $6.9 billion in 2023. Its first annual loss since the bad old days of Russian financial chaos 20 years ago. The reason for the drop is Western sanctions and the closure of the gas pipelines Nordstream 1 and 2. Russian gas sales to Europe were down 55.6 percent. They will be even lower next year.

The picture provided by Rosneft – the Russian oil equivalent – is much rosier. Its profits were up a record 13 percent to $14.07 billion. The reason for its financial success were India, Putin’s friends in OPEC and the end of the pandemic.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has completely ignored Western sanctions and exploited Putin’s difficulties by buying huge quantities of oil at discounted prices, India then reaps a nice profit by selling the processed oil to third countries via the world market.

The OPEC countries meanwhile, have obliged President Putin by keeping oil production down and prices up. At the same time demand for energy has grown as the world economy recovers from the Covid pandemic.

But what about the coming year. Gazprom’s revenues are unlikely to rise. It takes time to build alternative destination pipelines and storage facilities. As for oil prices, demand is starting to fall. India has reached the limits of how much oil it can process and world economic growth is expected to drop to 2.7 percent in 2024 compared to 5.5 percent in 2022.

So, what Putin needs is a first class money manager to ensure that the maximum efficiency is squeezed out of every rouble. That is why he has appointed economist Andre Belousov as his new Minister for Defense.

Putin is his own commander-in-chief. He already has a Chief of Staff in the form of General Valery Gerasimov. What he needs is someone who can organise a defense budget that is now 6.7 percent of the country’s GDP before oil prices start to go the way of gas prices.

United States

In 1923, the US Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall, was hauled before the courts for accepting a $350,000 bribe that allowed an oil company to drill in protected reserves at Teapot Dome, Wyoming.

This is the crux of the Teapot Dome Scandal which was recognised as America’s biggest political scandal until Watergate and the resignation of Richard Nixon.

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Observations of an Expat: War is Expensive

The $61 billion in in military aid that the US Congress voted for Ukraine this week is in the nick of time. The Ukrainians were literally running out of bullets to hold back the Russian steamroller.

But war is expensive. How much bang can the Ukrainians get for their American bucks?

Let’s start with the workhorse of the battlefield – the humble 155 mm artillery shell and the Howitzers that fire them. For the past few months a steady stream of shells from North Korean and Russian munitions factories has meant that the Russians have been lobbing five times as many shells into the Ukrainian frontline than the Ukrainians have into the Russian.

It has been working. The Russians have gradually pushed forward all the way along the 620-mile front and have captured the town of Aadvika. But the release of the American aid means that the Ukrainians can now start firing back at an anticipated rate of 8,000 shells a day.

Each basic 155mm shell costs $3,000. The all-singing, all dancing precision-guided variety can set you back as much as $130,000 a shell. The Anglo-American built howitzer that fires them costs $4 million.

The howitzers have a range of up to 20 miles, which puts them near the front and in harm’s way. The popular HIMARS (the acronym for America’s High Mobility Artillery Rocket System) is deadly accurate up to 186 miles. This means its mobile launcher (cost $20 million each) can be fired from relative safety. But make each shot count. The missiles cost $434,000 each.

NATO has been reluctant to provide F-16 fighter jets (price $50 million plus approximately $4 million for each air-launched cruise missile). But the Americans have given the Ukrainians thousands of Avevex Phoenix ghost drones at $60,000 a drone. These can be used for reconnaissance or to carry a high explosive on suicide missions.

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9 April 2024 – today’s press releases

  • Hospital’s spend £3million on pest control as patients suffer from rats and insects
  • Cameron and Trump: European leaders’ summit needed to seize frozen Russian assets
  • Cole-Hamilton: SNP have failed to help A&E recover
  • Lib Dems launch London Transport Policy – Blackie: “No more bus cuts”

Hospital’s spend £3million on pest control as patients suffer from rats and insects

  • Staff report being bitten by bugs as rats roam maternity and emergency wards
  • Freedom of Information requests reveal NHS Hospitals coping with 18,000 pest incidents since 2021
  • Liberal Democrat Leader demands urgent repair fund for crumbling hospitals

Freedom of Information Requests by the Liberal Democrats have revealed the extent of pests roaming NHS Hospitals. As the NHS repair backlog reaches record levels, these new revelations show staff and patients subjected to poor conditions.

Since 2021, over 60 NHS Trusts have reported £3.7 million spent on pest control at their hospitals. Imperial College NHS Trust, which includes St.Mary’s Hospital London, spent a staggering £383,597 on pest control, including dealing with 748 pest incidents last year alone.

East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust spent £119,199 to deal with mice in the kitchen, maggots in the mortuary and rat droppings in a corpse bag, amongst many other pests.

The most shocking incidents were reported by East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Trust, which includes Colchester Hospital and Ipswich Hospital. Staff reported:

  • Black insects are biting the legs of staff
  • Ants and fly infestations
  • Rats in the ambulance area

At Ashford NHS Trust, dead headless pigeons and dead rabbits, as well as slug and ants were reported. Royal United Hospitals Bath reported pests in the children’s ward and breast clinic.

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Ukraine; are we absolutely sure we want a wider war?

In war it is good to remember two bits of age-old wisdom, if unnecessary deaths are to be avoided; ‘know your enemy’ and ‘don’t believe your own propaganda’.

Ignoring these two adages led to the West’s humiliating defeat in Afghanistan, and Western-led conflicts in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Saharan Africa and Yemen, which have all been catastrophic for Western interests.

We now have a parallel in Ukraine.

As I wrote in LDV on 11th Feb 2023:

In April Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said ‘We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine’ and ‘Ukraine clearly believes that it can win, and so does everyone here’. At the end of the previous month the US President called for the removal of President Putin from power.

Posted in Europe / International and Op-eds | 23 Comments

Observations of an Expat: Ukraine: Bad or Worse

Too often the political choice is not between good and bad or moral or immoral. It is between bad and worse.

Ukraine’s President Vlodomyr Zelensky is facing just such a choice. And he must decide soon or sooner.

Eastern Europe’s bitter winter is coming to a close. The spring thaw and rains are turning the wheat fields into mudflats. But summer is coming and the ground will be hard, flat and ready for tanks.

It is strategic decision time. Does Zelensky abandon the counter-offensive hopes of last summer, withdraw to defensible positions and start digging trenches, laying minefields and constructing tank traps? If he does he will be building a man-made hard border that separates the Donetsk Region from the rest of Ukraine with physical obstacles and increases the possibility of the permanent loss of Eastern Ukraine to Russia.

If the Ukrainian leader does concentrate on strengthening his defences by summer, then he runs the risk of the Russian steamroller breaking through all the way to Kyiv.

His decision-making window is small and closing. By May the ground should be suitable for a tank attack. Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu is reported to have 350-500,000 fresh troops ready to move into the front line. And Putin is expected to use his recent electoral victory to justify another mobilisation.

Zelensky made the decision to make a stand at the factory town of Avdiika. He lost. It cost the Russians an estimated 17,000 lives, but they have eliminated a Ukrainian foothold in the Donetsk Region and improved their position for a spring offensive. Ukraine’s battle for Avdiika was at the expense of building defensive fortifications elsewhere along the 600-mile front line.

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Tom Arms’ World Review

United States

The Ukraine aid bill is starting to inch its way through the American House of Representatives. Up until this week the $60 billion much-needed package has been blocked by Speaker Mike Johnson’s refusal to allow Congress a vote on the issue.

He also tied the aid bill (which also includes money for Israel and Taiwan) to tougher laws on immigration.

This has clearly been done in collusion with Donald Trump who opposes aid to Ukraine and wants to delay any agreement on immigration so that he can make it his key election issue.

Senate Republicans have already passed the Ukraine aid bill and have been piling the pressure on Speaker Johnson to allow a vote. This week he agreed. But with several huge caveats. For a start, aid to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan will be voted on separately. Next, he wants to change the wording of the legislation from “aid” to “loan” or possibly “lend-lease.”

Johnson also wants to explore the possibility of applying the profits from $300 billion of frozen Russian assets to the aid that Ukraine needs. This would involve something called the REPO Act or, The Rebuilding Economic Prosperity and Opportunity for Ukraine Act which authorizes the President to seize Russian assets.

The problem with the REPO Act is that it specifies that the seized assets should be used for reconstruction. Ukraine needs money to fight. Reconstruction comes after the fighting.

There are other problems with Johnson’s apparent change of heart. To start with, separating out the different clauses and turning aid into a loan will seriously delay the bill. Next, because it is substantially changed the bill will have to go back to the Senate and, finally, both houses of Congress are about to start their 22-day Easter recess.

Mike Johnson’s change of heart may actually be a change of delaying tactics.

European Union

Meanwhile the Europeans are trying to fill the gap and smooth over their differences over Ukraine. The last few weeks have seen French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olof Scholz sniping at each other over who is more generous to the brave Ukrainians.

Macron talked about the possibility of sending troops to Ukraine and urged Scholz to provide Volodomyr Zelensky with long-range Taurus missiles. The more cautious Scholz delivered a firm “nein” to sending troops and ruled out the despatch of Taurus because German soldiers would be needed to operate the system. Scholz also pointed out that Germany was providing a lot more money than France and that if the French leader wanted to help Ukraine he should put his money where his mouth is.

Enter Donald Tusk, former European Commission president and current prime minister of Poland. He called a meeting of the leaders of the EU’s two biggest countries to smooth out difficulties that were threatening to derail EU support for Ukraine.

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Russia’s frozen state assets must be used to rebuild Ukraine

On Thursday, at their summit in Brussels, EU leaders agreed in principle to commandeer most of the profits being generated from frozen Russian state assets to use in support of Ukraine.

This news follows last weekend’s Lib Dem Spring conference’s endorsement of an amendment to the “Liberal Values in A Dangerous World” motion, calling for legal ways to be found to access the estimated US$ 300 billion of the Russian state’s frozen sovereign assets – about half the total being held in the world – as reparations for Ukraine. The World Bank estimates that US$ 480 billion’s worth of damage has been done to Ukraine so far in Russia’s war of aggression.

EU leaders’ initial steps involve leaving the principal untouched for now and concentrating on accessing the profits being generated by the frozen state assets. The aim is to generate €3 billion this year, with the first tranche of €1 billion released to Ukraine by July. European Commission President von der Leyen wants to use it primarily to assist Ukraine’s defence of its country.

This perhaps rather hesitant start to the use of Russian state assets is part of ongoing efforts to find ways to access the funds in legal ways which also do not run high risks to the stability of the euro and have impact on the financial system. Most of the money is held in Belgium by Euroclear, the central securities depository, which will clearly need to be protected from Russian retaliation.

As European governments are struggling to support Ukraine financially, there is no realistic possibility of rebuilding Ukraine without using frozen Russian assets. The principle is clear to everyone: the aggressor must pay.

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Pan-European solidarity – shielding Ukraine from Russia’s desperation

As I contemplate the current state of the world, Russia relentlessly continues its barbaric bombardment of Ukraine, while, seemingly, the US Republicans play the fiddle as Ukraine burns. Reflecting on the past two years of this disastrous occupation of Ukraine, the initial unity and support pledged by the United Kingdom, the United States of America, and the European Union seem to falter. Certain elements in the United States and Europe, Hungary notably, lean towards a path of apathy and appeasement, potentially jeopardising any efforts to curb Putin’s hunger for rebuilding the Russian Empire.

With each passing day, Russia grows more desperate, seeking weaponry from the hermit kingdom of North Korea. Rumours circulate that Mr. Putin plans to visit North Korea post what is sarcastically referred to as “free and fair elections” in Russia. However, the stark reality is that the special operation in Ukraine has utterly failed, leaving Russia increasingly isolated from the rest of the world. Britain, in response, pledges a substantial £2.5 billion to support the war effort, and the French contemplate the deployment of European troops in Ukraine. A move that I fear might escalate tensions to the point of an all-out war with the Russian state.

My primary concern revolves around the potential re-election of a certain Donald Trump. As an isolationist leader with little interest in the safety of Europe unless a considerable price is paid, Europe can no longer rely on the United States. This realisation marks a sombre day for both European and British politics. In response, the European Union introduces the European Defence Industrial Strategy, outlining the aim to purchase 40% of defence equipment from Europe by 2030. Additionally, half of their defence procurement budget is to be allocated to products made within Europe.

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Lib Dems mark 2 years since invasion of Ukraine

Two years ago we all woke up to the awful news that Russia, after lots of menacing, had finally invaded Ukraine. Honestly, not many of us gave the Ukrainians much chance in fending them off. That they are still standing is down to their charismatic leader and a huge international effort.

Ed Davey said:

We stand with all Ukrainians as they bravely and brilliantly resist the Russian war machine.

The UK will continue to aid their fight for their country, for their democracy and for their freedom.

Sarah Green said:

Today we mark the second anniversary of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine (not forgetting the invasion of Crimea in 2014). We must continue to stand with the Ukrainian people – Putin’s aggression cannot be allowed to prevail.

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton is marking the anniversary by urging the UK and Scottish governments to expand their support for the country.

Mr Cole-Hamilton is calling on the UK government to widen sanctions against those on the “Navalny list” and for the Scottish Government to deliver transparency over who owns land in Scotland as well as to support the 1 in 10 Ukrainians in Scotland who remain in temporary accommodation.

At 11am this morning he will lay a wreath at the National War Memorial at Edinburgh Castle to commemorate the Ukrainians who have died in the fighting.

Alex said:

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22-26 January 2024 – this week in the Lords

Hello, dear readers, and we meet again for another episode of the costume drama that is the House of Lords. And this week, it’s a “Rwanda week” even though the Rwanda Bill only received its formal First Reading on Thursday and isn’t due back until next Tuesday.

Even a relatively keen observer like myself is often surprised by the working of the Lords and, this week, the International Agreements Committee takes centre stage. I suppose, having thought about it, that any Parliamentary chamber would want to take a close look at international agreements signed in its name, and the House of Lords is no different. Chaired by Peter Goldsmith, the former (and rather controversial) Labour Attorney General, the Committee published its report on the UK-Rwanda Agreement on an Asylum Partnership. It doesn’t make good reading for the Government and, in typically courteous Lords fashion, accuses James Cleverly of effectively attempting to mislead the Committee (see paragraph 44). The report, including a series of recommendations, is to be debated on Monday and there will then be a motion, moved by Lord Goldsmith, resolving that:

His Majesty’s Government should not ratify the UK-Rwanda Agreement on an Asylum Partnership until the protections it provides have been fully implemented, since Parliament is being asked to make a judgement, based on the Agreement, about whether Rwanda is safe.

You can expect contributions from the two Liberal Democrat members of the Committee, Chris Fox and Tim Razzall, and there is every possibility of a Government defeat if Labour whip their members to vote for the motion.

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Tom Arms’ World Review

Surprise, Surprise, Benjamin Netanyahu is opposed to the two-state solution.

The Israeli Prime Minister has never made any secret that he believes that the only guarantee of Israeli security is Israeli control of Palestinian security. On Thursday he reiterated his position.

Any Palestinian state, Netanyahu argues, would be dedicated to the overthrow of the Israeli state. And even if they publicly committed themselves to peace, Netanyahu wouldn’t believe them.

The primary responsibility of every country is defence. Ipso facto, there can be no Palestinian state—according to Netanyahu.

Most of the rest of the world believes that there are basically three possible outcomes to the Arab-Israeli Crisis: The Israelis wipe out the Palestinians. The Palestinians wipe out the Israelis. Or the two sides somehow work out a modus operandi that allows the two groups to live side by side in peace.

The Biden Administration was hopeful that the experience of Gaza would show that the only long-term opportunity for peace is a political solution which involves a Palestinian state.

But Netanyahu appears unfazed by Gaza. He told a press conference this week that Israel must have security control over all land west of the River Jordan, which would include the territory of any future Palestinian state.

This is a necessary condition, and it conflicts with the idea of (Palestinian) sovereignty. What to do? I tell this truth to our American friends, and I also told them to stop the attempt to impose a reality on us that would harm Israel’s security.

John Kirby, the US National Security Adviser, replied: “Israel and the US see things differently.”

Donald Trump, on the other hand, sees the Middle East very much through Bibi eyes. His Abraham Accords were designed to circumvent the Palestinians and the two-state solution. Netanyahu’s continued intransigence could—at least in part—reflect his hope for a Trump victory in the November presidential elections.

A Trump Landslide?

Iowa was a Trump landslide. Or was it? Only 15 percent of the state’s 718,000 registered Republicans voted—the lowest turnout in years.

Why? There is no certain answer but here are a few possibles, starting with the MAGA camp: The weather was atrocious. Nobody in their right mind would risk leaving home to caucus in the sub-Arctic temperatures.

Also, the media named Trump the big margin winner before the caucusing started. Why bother risking frostbite to vote for one of the losers or even for the winner? Best stay warm.

Now, for the non-MAGA Republican perspective: We don’t want Trump, but none of the others can win, so why risk hypothermia for a wasted vote?

Everyone is an individual, even in Iowa. So chances are that there are 69,000 reasons why 85 percent of the state’s Republicans failed to caucus. But if that figure is extrapolated across America—then Trump is in trouble come the general election.

As any seasoned campaigner will tell you. The key to winning elections is to persuade as many as possible of your registered voters to get out and vote. Apathy can result in political disaster.

Taiwan

Conspicuous by its near silence in the aftermath of the Taiwanese elections is the voice of Chinese President Xi-jingping.

To briefly re-cap, the Chinese leader was loud in his election support for the Kuomintang but and condemnation for the incumbent Democratic People’s Party. This is because the KMT favoured closer relations with Mainland China based on the 1992 “one country two systems” concept. The DPP, on the other hand, is moving Taiwan closer to a quasi-sovereign independent state.

The DPP’s William Lai won the presidency, although the party has lost its majority in  parliament.

The US is in two-minds about the result. They want Taiwan in the democratic capitalist camp. But not necessarily as a sovereign Taiwan. This could provoke Beijing into a military solution which would drag in America’s Pacific-based Seventh Fleet.

So the State Department issued a rather anodyne statement which welcomed the fact that Taiwan held democratic elections, without focusing on the possible repercussions. Statements from Japan, the EU and NATO countries followed suit.

Beijing was, if anything, more anodyne, it has said virtually nothing about the election result itself. Instead it focused on the statements from the Western countries and basically said they had no right to make any comment because Taiwan is part of China. The diplomatic conversation then ended.

There could be lots of reasons for the Chinese not to take the argument further. There is no point. Xi is busy purging his military and party structures. The Chinese economy is sluggish. Or, he could be waiting for a Trump victory in November.

Is honour now satisfied in the Iran-Pakistan tit for tat missile exchanges?

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Welcome to my day: 15 January 2024 – trying a little harder…

Today is, apparently Blue Monday, the most depressing day of the year. But not here at Liberal Democrat Voice. Whilst Christmas is just far enough behind us now to be becoming a distant memory, the shops are full of Valentines stuff and Easter eggs, and there are at least two more by-elections for the opposition parties to get their teeth into (with a double dip in Blackpool still to come?). The Conservatives continue to find ways of tripping over their own biases and the Telegraph (yes, really) seems determined to add to their woes with polling that suggest that Rishi …

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Tom Arms’ World Review

United States (1)

Rudy Guiliani is broke. Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss wish Trump’s top legal adviser wasn’t. A US court has ruled that Guiliani has ruined their lives when he publicly and falsely accused them of tampering with Georgia election ballots.

This Friday a jury of eight was considering whether or not to grant their request for $43 million in damages. An award, which will almost certainly be academic.

Three divorces, a lavish lifestyle and backing Donald Trump’s election lie has destroyed the 79-year-old’s fortune.

The former Mayor of New York was a presidential  candidate in 2007. As such he had to reveal his assets. He said he was worth $18 million. Court accountants believe the figure was probably closer to $70 million. In 2017 he was earning $10 million a year in speaker’s fees alone, and had been doing so for more than 10 years.

He enjoyed the money. According to court documents, Rudy Guiliani in 2017 owned six homes, belonged to 11 country clubs and spent $12,000 a month on cigars.

The fall started with divorce from his wife Judith.  She took a big chunk of his assets and alimony payments of $43,000 per month. But Giuliani’s biggest mistake was joining Donald Trump’s personal legal team in 2018.

By 2020 he was his top lawyer and closely connected with Trump’s election lie. This led to a $10 million defamation suit by an ex-employee and additional law suits from election computer manufacturers Smartamatic and Dominion Voting.

In 2022 the Internal Revenue Service took out a lien on his Florida condo because he had failed to pay $500,000 in taxes. In August of this year his own lawyers sued him $1.4 million in unpaid legal bills. His current net assets are $1 million. His known current liabilities (and there are more to come) are $1.9 million. He is bust. Backing Trump has a price.

United States (2)

Republicans may be shooting themselves in the foot over their planned impeachment of President Joe Biden.

There seems to be little doubt that the president’s son Hunter is guilty of a number of bad things. But despite months of deep digging by Republican congressmen, no one has been able to uncover a shred of hard evidence linking the president to his son’s business dealings.

Nevertheless, the Republican-dominated House of Representatives appears determined to start impeachment proceedings against President Biden.

Impeachment is a serious business. It takes a lot of time and effort. While an impeachment is in progress Congress is focused on little else. That means debates over government spending, immigration, Ukraine, Israel and climate change are all put on the legislative backburner.

These are all important issues for the American electorate. They will not thank Republican congressman for ignoring their interests to pursue a political vendetta without evidence to back it up.

Ukraine

It has been a bad week for Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky. In Washington he hit a brick wall in an attempt to release $61 billion in aid.

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Tom Arms’ World Review

Ukraine

Remember Ukraine? A reminder: It is the East European country sandwiched between Russia and Poland which Russia invaded in February 2022.

You would be forgiven for letting it slip from your political consciousness. Six months ago it and its president Volodomyr Zelensky were being hailed as the “democratic shield” protecting the West from land-hungry autocratic Russia.

Now it has been pushed out of the headlines the corridors of concern by the war in Gaza and whichever crisis comes next.

The problem is that Ukraine cannot afford to slip off the front pages. It needs a successful PR campaign to stay in the war and keep the shield intact. Its armaments industry and its population are limited.

Russia’s manpower pool is four times the size of Ukraine’s. Its historic label is “steamroller.” Its armaments industry is ten times larger and was preparing years before the war started. It is also receiving weapons from Iran, North Korea and possibly China.

It is weapons that are particularly important at the moment, especially artillery shells which are used by both sides to hold the enemy at bay. Russia is estimated to have fired 22,000 rounds a day during the summer to stymie the Ukrainian counter-offensive. The Ukrainians fired 5,000 rounds.

European members of NATO promised Ukraine 1 million rounds of artillery shells by the end of 2023. It will fall well short of that target, although several European countries–  including Germany, the Netherlands, Britain, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Finland and the Baltic states—have started to increase their armaments production. However, a lot of the increased production will go towards replacing depleted national stocks.

America, is, of course, the historic “arsenal of democracy.” But President Biden’s promised support is being held up by Republican congressmen who either want to divert money to Israel or feel that Ukraine is solely a European problem.

If the defense of Ukraine is left entirely to Europe then the hard-pressed European economies will have to increase armaments production even more. At the current rate, the million promised rounds is only enough to keep the Ukrainian guns firing for another six months.

UK and Rwanda

Britain’s Rwanda asylum issue is morphing into a constitutional crisis. At stake is the independence of the British judiciary, a long-established cornerstone of the country’s democratic foundations.

The UK Supreme Court recently threw out government plans to fly asylum seekers to the central African country of Rwanda. The basis of their decision was that the proposal was in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights, the UN Convention on Human Rights, the UN Convention on Refugees and three British acts of parliament relating to asylum seekers and refugees. Rwanda was not safe, ruled the court, because its government was likely to return asylum seekers to the country from which they had fled. This is known as refoulement.

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Tom Arms’ World Review

United States

The ripple effects following the ejection of Kevin McCarthy from the Speaker’s chair in the US House of Representatives are severe and wide-reaching. The issues most affected are moderates in the Republican Party, Ukraine and the credibility of the United States.

The mainstream of the Republican Party – or at least the congressional caucus – is not as unreasonably far-right as it is portrayed. Out of the 221 Republican members of the lower house, only 40 are signed up members of the right-wing Freedom Caucus. And of those, only about 20 could be considered extreme right by American standards.

The problem is that the Freedom Caucus – especially the far-right 20 or so members – are really a separate political party using the broad coattails of the Republican establishment to pursue policies which are antithetical to their own party. They can succeed in their aims because the Republicans’ majority as a whole is so narrow that the Freedom Caucus holds the balance of power.

In practice this means that the next Speaker could easily be Congressman Jim Jordan, a rabid Trump supporter and founding member of the Freedom Caucus. He has already secured the ex-president’s endorsement.

It also means that Ukraine will find it difficult to secure the next tranche of US military aid it has been promised. For the Freedom Caucus and Donald Trump the issue of self-determination and respect for the rule of law comes after support for Vladimir Putin.

The ejection of McCarthy also makes a US government shutdown almost certain.  It was McCarthy’s successful 11th-hour deal to prevent a shutdown which provided the straw that broke the back of the caucus camel. Any future Speaker will be all too aware that he will suffer the same fate if he allows Biden’s budget through Congress.

All of the above bolsters the belief that political divisions are rendering the US ungovernable. This in turn undermines credibility at home and abroad. America is the recognised standard bearer of world democracy. Alternative systems—especially Russia, China and Iran—argue that if democracy can’t work in America… then it can’t work.

Ukraine

Support for Ukraine this week suffered a blow on the European side of the Atlantic as well as the American.

It came in the form of an election victory for the pro-Russian Slovakian politician Robert Fico and his Direction-Social Democracy (or SMER-SD) Party. Fico’s party failed to win an outright majority in parliament, but with 24 percent of the votes it is the largest single party and is currently in coalition talks with smaller pro-Russian parties.

They have until 16 October to form a government and in the interim period have announced an end to all aid to Ukraine; a block on Ukrainian membership of NATO and an end to Slovakian support for EU sanctions against Russia.

Unlike most of the current batch of European populist parties, SMER-SD is left as opposed to right-wing. This, however, has not prevented Hungary’s populist right-winger Viktor Orban from welcoming Fico’s victory. Clearly common ground on the populist positions on the EU, Russia, gay rights, woke culture, immigration, media restrictions, curbs on the judiciary, sanctions and the war in Ukraine trumps the political spectrum issue.

This is not Fico’s first run at Slovak prime minister. He was initially elected to the job in 2012 with a whopping 83-seat majority. He was forced into coalition after the 2016 election and shortly afterward ran unsuccessfully for the presidency. In 2018 he was forced to resign as prime minister after the murder of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak. He had been investigating the Slovakian mafia and police later linked Maria Troskova, Fico’s assistant, to the gangs.

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Observations of an Expat: Pivotal Turkey

Turkey is emerging as a pivotal country in the Ukraine War. As the fighting on land grinds to a bloody stalemate, the importance of naval power has dramatically increased.

As far as Ukraine and Russia are concerned this means the Black Sea and the Bosphorus and Dardanelles that links the sea to the wider world.  Turkey has control over these straits through a series of conventions dating back to the early 19th century.

Unsurprisingly, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is using his position to extract every possible concession from the Russians, Ukrainians and NATO.

At the start of the war the naval balance weighed heavily in Russia’s favour. The Ukrainians had one warship stuck in the repair yard. Moscow, on the other had its Crimea-based Black Sea fleet of 40 surface ships and seven submarines.

Putin used his naval superiority to good advantage. A successful amphibious landing was staged at Mariupol and the Sea of Azov and Kerch Straits were closed to Ukrainian shipping. Odessa and other southern Ukrainian ports were effectively closed by a Russian blockade, bombardment and minefield.

Then the Ukrainians hit back with shore to ship missiles and drones. The first major victim was the fleet flagship, the cruiser Moskva. Then the bridge connecting Russia to Crimea was bombed and now Russian naval installations on Crimea are under bombardment.

Putin badly needs to reinforce his Black Sea naval forces with ships from the Pacific, Baltic and Mediterranean commands. But he can’t. And the reason for this takes us back to the 19th  and early 20th centuries and Moscow’s perennially unsuccessful efforts to gain control of the Dardanelles and Bosporus.

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Kira Rudik wows Conference with a powerful and personal speech

 

Kira Rudik is the leader of Holos, the first Liberal Party to be elected to the Ukrainian Parliament. She is also Vice President of Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe – the political grouping that brings together like-minded political parties within Europe. She is a proud European and has campaigned for many years for Ukraine to join the EU.

She was welcomed on to the stage by Layla Moran, who was dressed in the blue and yellow of Ukraine. Kira started with some thank yous – and it was clear she knew a number of our senior members well.

She then told us about the day the invasion happened, starting at 5am. Kira and nearly two thirds of the MPs made their way to the Parliament Building – a highly dangerous act as the building was an obvious target. They were allowed 10 minutes together in the chamber during which time they hit buttons furiously so they could pass all the necessary legislation. All the political parties vowed to work together until the war was over – a pledge that has been challenging but still holds.

You can watch her speech here:

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Tom Arms’ World Review

Ukraine

Ukraine has approximately 30 days before the autumn/winter rains bring their counter-offensive to a muddy halt.

To date they appear to have broken through the first line of a three-line Russian defense in an area around Bakhmut and Zaporizhzhia. There is an outside possibility they can achieve a major breach, but that is highly unlikely.

There is more depressing news for Ukrainian troops. For a start the bromance between Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un will keep the Russian troops supplied with artillery shells to help keep the advancing Ukrainians at bay.

Then there are problems with Poland. Up until this week the Poles have been a driving force behind EU and NATO support for Ukraine. But Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki – with one eye on the farming vote and next month’s general election – has stopped military supplies to Ukraine because Ukrainian grain is driving down Polish wheat prices.

Poland has the support of Slovakia and Hungary and wants EU-wide restrictions on the import of Ukrainian grain. The Ukrainians, of course, are exporting their grain to EU countries because the Russian blockade makes it impossible for them to ship it to their usual customers in the Middle East and Africa.

The next problem is signs that US support is waning. This week Volodomyr Zelensky turned up in Washington to assure American lawmakers that Ukraine is slowly but surely winning. President Biden responded with a $325 million military aid package. Zelensky also has the support of the leadership in both the Senate and House of Representatives. But a group of far-right Republican Trump supporters are threatening to block a financial package which includes an extra $24 billion in aid to Ukraine.

And then, finally, there is the fact that Trump has pledged to stop military aid to Ukraine if he is elected in 2024.

France

It has taken seven years, but it looks as if the investigation of France’s right-wing leader Marine Le Pen may end up in court.

She and 23 members of Her Rassemblement National – including her father Jean-Marine Le Pen – are accused of misuse of EU funds. They allegedly used a total of about $620,000 of money which was meant to be spent on EU administration to fund party activities.

The accusation comes from the Paris Prosecutor’s office and still has to be confirmed by the prosecuting judges. But it seems highly likely that that is a formality.

If she is found guilty, Marine Le Pen faces the possibility of a $1 million fine, 10 years in jail, and a 10-year ban on holding public office. Her conviction would have a major impact on the French and European political landscape.

According to the Paris Prosecutor, Ms Le Pen spent $45,000 of EU funds to pay her personal bodyguard. On another occasion she is alleged to have diverted EU funds to pay for a meeting to discuss party activities and hung an EU flag outside the meeting room. When the meeting started she told party members “take that s**t down.”

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The Ukrainian Offensive Hasn’t Failed.  We have Failed the Ukrainians.

Without a doubt, the Ukrainian Military’s recent counteroffensive has proved more challenging than the last one.  Ukraine’s ability to put together such counteroffensives and defend the wider country remains at the mercy of the generosity of military aid donors.  “Give us the tools and we will finish the job” Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky pleaded.

However, the arrival of military aid has often been delayed for political reasons as much as logistical ones.  This counteroffensive for instance has seen the Ukrainian Military forced to determinedly advance without air cover.  This is despite the Ukrainian Government requesting Fighter Jets, such as F-16s, to be sent for their defence since the start of the 2022 invasion.  The delay in the arrival of equipment for the current counteroffensive gave ample time for the invading Russian enforces to entrench and defend the land they have stolen.  Some reports say it has even given them ample breathing space to counter some Western weapons such as HIMARS.  Western leaders have justified the incremental approach to giving such aid to encourage de-escalation.  Despite this, Russian President Vladimir Putin reading Western reticence as weakness, as he has always done, has proceeded on his same imperialist course. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin is betting that the short-term concerns of Western democracies, such as the US Presidential election next year, will mean that the alliance that supports Ukraine will ultimately fall apart.  This is why those democracies, especially European ones need to convene a long term plan to support Ukraine.  Bilateral and piecemeal military aid announcements were never sufficient to achieve victory.  If NATO membership is barred to Ukraine, then alternative security assurances need to be given to Ukraine.  A Memorandum of Understanding enshrining a commitment to support Ukraine could either be agreed between that country and it’s allies collectively or on a bilateral basis.  What is imperative is that European countries in particular plan for a future where the considerable US aid to Ukraine is potentially no longer available.  Brexit aside, the UK needs to be involved in any European discussions about supporting Ukraine in the long term to coordinate efforts.

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Lib Dems for Ukraine

We have potholes. They have craters. We have a cost of living crisis. They have a cost of dying crisis. We have hospital waiting lists. They have a list of bombed hospitals. As I write this in Kyiv, Vladimir Putin is trying to kill me. Not just me but everyone in the Ukrainian capital.  To be fair, Russia’s hypersonic missiles, sorry, elderly Russian ironmongery, keep getting shot out of the sky. But the war in Ukraine is not over by a long chalk. The charge sheet of Russian barbarism gets grimmer by the day: targeting civilians, torture, execution, rape, castration.

The values of Ukraine are our values: democracy, liberalism, we don’t just respect the other – we fight for them. Together, we must stand against the Fascist International. Our job as Liberal Democrats is to keep up the pressure on the Conservative government and remind the rather too many people in the Labour Party that the word of Vladimir Putin is not reliable, to put it mildly. That’s why we are setting up the Liberal Democrat Friends of Ukraine.

Three policies stand out. We must support Ukraine with the military hardware necessary for the defeat of Russian fascism. We must make Britain as welcoming to Ukrainian refugees as the European Union is: if you have a Ukrainian passport, you can stay and live and work in Britain for three years, just as you can in Germany, Italy, France, across the whole union. We must burn down Londongrad and send Russia’s ill-gotten gold to help rebuild Ukraine.

I am no arsonist. But Londongrad – where Russian oligarchs hide their dirty money – is a danger not just to Ukraine but also to our own democracy. For far too long, the Labour and Conservative parties let Vladimir Putin get away with murdering people in Britain because they liked the sheen of Moscow gold.

Senior figures in Labour and the Tories have been far too close to the Kremlin and its proxies for comfort. Tony Blair made a catastrophic mistake when he identified radical Islam as a greater danger than Russian fascism. To secure cover for the “war on terror” he went out of his way to cosy up to Vladimir Putin.

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UK Trade Unions rally in solidarity: resounding support for Ukraine at TUC 2023

This past week at the 2023 UK TUC Congress, trade unions stood in solidarity with Ukraine in the face of the fascist russian invasion, passing a motion from the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign.

The motion, moved by GMB, seconded by ASLEF and supported by the NUM, supports the immediate withdrawal of russian* forces from all Ukrainian territories occupied since 2014; Ukrainian unions’ calls for financial and practical aid from the UK to Ukraine; a peaceful end to the conflict that secures the territorial integrity of Ukraine and the support and self-determination of the Ukrainian people; the full restoration of labour rights in Ukraine and a socially-just reconstruction and redevelopment programme that embeds collective bargaining and rejects deregulation and privatisation; TUC work, and facilitation of affiliates’ engagement, with the main Ukrainian trade union centres (FPU/KVPU), and acknowledges the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign.

Amidst the support for Ukraine, however, there was a minor pushback from the RMT, NEU, UCU and FBU. None supported the motion, with RMT, NEU and UCU choosing to abstain and FBU voting against, adding that they “do not think the escalation of war is in the interests of the russian or Ukrainian working class”. This is despite russia having carried out annexations, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine since 2014.

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