Keir Starmer must remain aware Netanyahu is acting like menacing rogue state leader or risk Britain being dragged into another bloody Middle East war, says Kevin Maguire
That Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu is behaving like the menacing leader of a rogue state is a truth that Keir Starmer dare not speak but must beware or Britain will be dragged into another bloody Middle East war.
Scuppering nuclear talks that had a reasonable prospect of success by attacking Iran was the calculated act of an Israeli Prime Minister who daily treats the British Prime Minister with contempt by ignoring pleas to end the unforgivable slaughter and suffering of Palestinians in Gaza. Iran isn’t Britain’s conflict and to be sucked into a conflagration, should pleas for restraint be ignored by the two sides, would risk repeating the mistakes of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Deploying RAF jets and military to protect British personnel and bases may be a sensible precaution. Fighting with Israel would not when a traditional ally is run by the most reactionary Right-wing group in its history. Netanyahu’s itched to assault Iran for years, Donald Trump the first US President to let him to call the shots.
Stopping Iran developing nuclear weapons to join Britain, Israel, US, France, Russia, China, India, Pakistan and North Korea as the world’s 10th country with the doomsday bomb is desirable if also hypocritical of those retaining or bolstering their own WMD arsenals. How the international community halts proliferation since Trump, in his first Presidency, unilaterally ripped up a treaty shackling Tehran, is a huge challenge.
But a Netanyahu who on his watch didn’t keep Israelis safe from the horrendous Hamas pogrom is endangering his people. He isn’t interested in a two-state solution with Palestinians, Israeli war crimes in Gaza and settler violence in the occupied West Bank the river-to-the-sea drive of extremists in his own cabinet.
Hezbollah in Lebanon was decapitated at the cost, it must be remembered, of many civilian casualties. Regime change in oppressed, illiberal, despotic Iran would, depending on who came next, in all likelihood be a gain for that country and wider world.
But Netanyahu is out of control, a truth Starmer knows and should follow even while biting his tongue.
Young transplant patient is truly inspiring
Bright and a terrific talker, young transplant patient Charlie Frieland is truly inspiring when much of his childhood was stolen by kidney disease. I watched as MPs and Peers hung on his every word as the 15-year-old detailed without a hint of pity the anguish and suffering he endured.
Wes Streeting too, the UK Health Secretary quipping that speaking after articulate Charlie at a Parliamentary meeting organised by Lord Dave Watts was a hospital pass. Charlie’s on the mend, “I’ve been handed back my childhood” since the transplant he said, and is a champion of home dialysis which Streeting is committed to expanding.
It saves patients travelling long distances and the NHS precious resources, costing between £16,000 and £23,000 per patient annually against £20,000 to £23,000 in a unit and up to £33,000 when transport is included. Streeting has only one kidney after losing the second to cancer so is acutely aware of why the NHS is a lifeline.
Increasing home dialysis from 17.4% would benefit more Charlies and demonstrate extra cash is invested wisely. By chance a close friend of mine with dodgy kidneys recently started treatment at home and works or watches TV while his blood is cleaned.
Frieland and Streeting could prove an unstoppable force for good, transforming lives and the nation’s health.
Nigel Farage is ‘Mr No’ of British politics
A wrecker never a builder, blockhead Nigel Farage is the Mr No of British politics.
Opposing change for the sake of it, particularly when that change is popular and demonstrably beneficial, is the instinctive hostility of a golf club bore stuck in the 1950s. We saw it again with his boorish, let’s reverse the deal, reaction to Foreign Secretary David Lammy’s historic deal with Spain to ease border controls with Gibraltar.
Gibraltar’s elected First Minister, charismatic Fabian Picardo, is delighted but true to form old stick-in-the-mud Nige was instantly against. The boozer with no idea how to stop the boats, and whose latest false promise is sending men back down South Wales’ shut pits rather than creating better paid, safer hi-tech jobs, is shallow and clueless.
I’m making exposing him and them a personal mission.
Private school fees VAT is a joke
Laugh? I nearly died guffawing when judges ruled 20% VAT on private school fees is a rare Brexit freedom.
Dismissing a legal challenge from privileged parents, the High Court opined that Labour imposing the surcharge to fund breakfast clubs and extra teachers for the great unwashed would not have been possible under EU law.
“This is therefore one respect in which the UK’s exit from the EU has increased the scope of Parliament’s freedom to determine policy,” concluded the legal eagles.
Now, Brexit remains a living standards-hurting, trade-destroying £100billion-plus disastrous national own goal. But thank you very much Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and Kemi Badenoch for the private school VAT you all oppose. Losers.