Caribbean and African leaders of the British Commonwealth, CNN reports, are insistently raising the issue of British reparations for slavery and for Shanghaiing colonial subjects, shipping Indians off to Guyana and Fiji on false pretenses. British ships transported some 3 million Africans to the New World between 1640 and 1807, 400,000 of whom died in transit. The unpaid labor of these enslaved people and their descendants added significantly to Britain’s bottom line. Jamaica, one of London’s most profitable colonies because of the sugarcane trade (produced by slave plantations), figures Britain owes it $9.5 trillion.

Once we see that the Palestinians are a deeply injured party, it becomes clear that they are owed reparations. After World War I, the victors divvied up the defeated empires at Versailles and the satellite conference of San Remo. The League of Nations awarded the great powers “mandates,” giving them charge of territories on the grounds that they would administer them and also prepare them for independent statehood. This was a new form of colonialism, since the freebooters of the 18th century conquered countries like India purely for profit, with no obligation to ready it for independence. If it had been up to Winston Churchill, Britain would still be ruling India and taking money out of it to pay for his brandy and cigars.

As I point out in my new book, Gaza Yet Stands, the British Mandate of Palestine was peculiar compared to all the rest. The British Mandate of Iraq eventuated in an independent Iraq in 1932. Formerly German Tanganyika was a British Mandate and became independent in 1961. It joined with Zanzibar to become Tanzania in 1964. Syria, a French Mandate, became independent in 1946. The French Mandate of Togo became independent in 1961.

The British Mandate of Palestine, however, did not eventuate in an independent Palestine. The other League of Nations members, including France and Italy, remonstrated with Britain that it had to look after the native Palestinians, despite the Balfour Declaration of 1917 in which the British (who did not then rule Palestine) promised a “Jewish national home” there that, they pledged, would in no way disturb the locals.

Lord Curzon wrote in 1920, “As regards the Palestine Mandate, this Mandate also has passed through several revises. When it was first shown to the French Government it at once excited their vehement criticisms on the ground of its almost exclusively Zionist complexion and of the manner in which the interests and rights of the Arab majority (amounting to about nine-tenths of the population) were ignored. The Italian Government expressed similar apprehensions. It was felt that this would constitute a very serious, and possibly a fatal, objection when the Mandate came ultimately before the Council of the League. The Mandate, therefore, was largely rewritten, and finally received their assent.”

“Palestine Reparations,” Digital, Midjourney, 2024.

The League of Nations therefore demanded that the British Mandate of Palestine attend to the “interests and rights” of the 90% of its residents, who were native Palestinians.

When Palestinians revolted in 1936-1939 against the British policy of settling European Jews on their land, the British army brutally crushed them, with the help of Jewish militias like the Haganah. Embarrassed, the British commissioned the MacDonald White Paper of 1939, which pledged an independent Palestinian state by 1949, in which immigrant Jews would form a minority.

The British abruptly departed Palestine in 1948 and they failed to prevent the half-million Jews they had brought to Palestine from expelling 750,000 or so of the 1.3 million Palestinians from their homes and usurping all their property, leaving them stateless, homeless and penniless. Some 250,000 of those refugees were crowded into Gaza, where their descendants are now being genocided by the Netanyahu government.

The value of the land seized from the Palestinians at that time is estimated at over half a billion dollars in 1998 dollars.

But that $500,000,000 worth of property in 1948 is worth way more today.

The total value of Israeli real estate today is roughly $2.5 trillion, and in 1920 when the British accepted the charge of administering the Mandate of Palestine and turning it into and independent country for its citizens, the Palestinians owned virtually all the land in it.

I’d say that $2.5 trillion is a good place to start for British reparations to the Palestinians. That is roughly a year’s worth of the UK GDP. But I’m sure the Palestinians would accept an installment plan.

Great Britain’s electricity system (Northern Ireland is part of the integrated Irish electricity grid) made a leap forward in August 2024. The amount of power generated by fossil fuels fell to 3.6 terrawatt-hours (TWh), its lowest level in over a century. This meant that each kilowatt-hour of electricity consumed during August emitted on average just 84 grams of CO₂.

The record-low contribution of fossil fuels to British electricity in August will have affected household emissions. Heating your home with an average heat pump in August would have been eight times cleaner than using a gas boiler for instance, while charging a typical electric vehicle could have been about ten times cleaner than a petrol car.

Before August 2024, monthly generation from fossil fuels had never dipped below 4 TWh, even during the lockdowns of 2020 when demand for electricity and transport fuels plummeted. What’s more exciting is that this was the first time fossil fuels (98.5% gas and 1.5% coal) fell to third place in the British electricity mix over an entire month.

Gas power plants can be quickly and reliably ramped up when there is a surge in electrical demand or a lull in output from weather-dependent renewables like wind and solar. This makes phasing out gas particularly difficult. That’s why the results from August 2024 are so encouraging: gas appears to be losing its dominance.

While the contribution of gas to Britain’s electricity will rise again in autumn and winter, its meagre showing in a low-demand month like August suggests its heyday is waning.

What the data shows

August typically sees very low demand for electricity. There is next to no need for space heating, Britain still has low levels of air-conditioning and there is lower industrial and household demand while more people are away on holiday and fewer people are at work due to the month’s two bank holidays.

Lower demand means that less electricity needs to be generated or imported, and so a greater share of it can come from the installed capacity of low-carbon sources like wind, nuclear, solar and hydro.

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

However, lower electrical demand in Britain alone does not guarantee there will be lower generation from fossil fuels. For example, the power sector in August 2022 emitted 4.4 million tonnes of CO₂, whereas in 2024, this dropped to 1.7 million tonnes.

This was in part due to Britain being a net exporter of electricity (1 TWh) to the European continent in August 2022. Whereas this year, Britain was a net importer of 1.9 TWh. To put this in perspective, this 2.9 TWh change in net monthly trade is about 80% of the electricity generated from fossil fuels in August 2024.

Compared with 2023, electricity generation from combined cycle gas turbines in August 2024 more than halved thanks to renewables and imports.

The standout increase in renewable energy for August was wind, which generated 6.8 TWh, or 33% of August’s electrical demand, compared with 25% in August 2023. Apparently there was one upside to the wet and windy weather that swept Britain this summer. This trend will continue, with significant wind capacity additions planned by 2030.

Britain’s energy system is changing

As renewable energy sources become more prevalent, weather patterns will play an increasingly important role in power generation. This will affect both the supply of electricity and its demand. The inherent risks are something that energy system planners must address to provide stability and security of supply by supporting a range of low-carbon fuels.

So far during 2024, CO₂ emissions from electricity are nearly 6 million tonnes lower than they were at the same point in 2023. Britain is on track to end the year with power sector emissions of between 30 and 35 million tonnes, which would be 40-50% below emissions just five years ago (57 million tonnes in 2019).

Emissions are expected to decrease even as overall electricity demand is likely to rebound from low levels in 2023. Slightly lower electricity prices, and the growing shares of electric vehicles and heat pumps, are contributing to rising demand. These are helping the benefits of clean electricity spread into other sectors, by shifting energy demand from high-carbon liquid fuels (transport) and natural gas (heating) over to electricity.

It may well be that 2023 marks a low point for annual electricity demand for Britain. Future growth in low-carbon heat and transport, plus data centres, AI and robotics, will push demand upwards. However, it is also inevitable that the record lows for emissions and fossil fuel generation in 2024 are merely a step towards even lower levels, as natural gas generation loses market share to renewable generation over the coming years.

This year’s milestones are encouraging signals that Britain’s energy transition is gathering much needed pace, paving the way for a future with less reliance on volatile imported fossil fuels and less impact on the environment. Indeed, by the end of September 2024, the UK’s last coal-fired power station will close, leaving gas as the only fossil fuel left to phase out.

Grant Wilson, Associate Professor, Energy Systems and Data Group, Birmingham Energy Institute, University of Birmingham; Daniel L. Donaldson, Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering, University of Birmingham, and Iain Staffell, Senior Lecturer in Sustainable Energy, Imperial College London

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

To end civilian suffering in Ukraine and Gaza, the UK must quit its double standards and apply international humanitarian law equally

(The Conversation) – As someone who has researched Islamophobia in Britain for a quarter of a century, it is clear to me that the current violence on the streets of Britain is an example of it.

This was true from the first outbreak of violence, after a peaceful vigil for the three young girls who were fatally stabbed in an attack in Southport. A group of several hundred people began throwing bottles and bricks at police. They then directed their anger on the local mosque and those inside, with some even attempting to set fire to it.

The targeting of Muslims was initially put down to misinformation on social media claiming the perpetrator was a Muslim who had arrived in a small boat the year beforehand. Both of these claims have been refuted, yet Muslims and mosques continue to be targeted in the violence across the country, along with hotels known to be housing migrants.

Politicians have shied away from calling it Islamophobia, instead describing the violence as “far-right thuggery” and “anti-immigration protests”. Islamophobia and anti-immigration sentiment have been par for the course for the British far right since the turn of the century.

Beginning with the British National Party – a far-right political party that had unprecedented electoral success in local council elections in the early 2000s – a similar ideological trajectory can be traced through a number of far-right street movements that emerged between 2009 and 2018. These included the English Defence League (EDL) in around 2010, Britain First, Football Lads Alliance and Democratic Football Lads Alliance among others.

These groups have couched racist ideology in the notion of “defence”. Initially in providing a defence against a perceived threat from Muslim “extremists”, at times this has been used as code for all and every Muslim. More recently, far-right groups have mobilised to defend free speech and “our” women and girls from “grooming gangs”. Underlying all of this is a desire to defend “our” country, way of life and culture from threatening enemy others.

This is evident in the activities of the far-right group, Britain First. Claiming to provide “the frontline resistance to the Islamification of Britain” they conflate the threat they claim is posed by Muslims with the threat posed by “illegal immigration”. The group has taken to patrolling beaches near the English Channel with the intention of stopping “illegal” Muslims from entering the country.

Today, Muslims and immigrants, particularly asylum seekers from the Middle East, are two sides of the same problem for the British far right. But this conflation of the two groups has not occurred in a vacuum.

Much of the far-right rhetoric about Muslims and migrants has been replicated by at least some mainstream politicians. Just look at the similarities between the language used in the ongoing riots and the rhetoric used by politicians. Some are chanting “stop the boats” – Rishi Sunak’s own policy on irregular migration.

The vilification of Muslims and their communities has become normalised by both Labour and Conservative parties, as well as Ukip and Reform UK. Baroness Sayeeda Warsi spoke of Islamophobia having passed the “dinner table test”, where ordinary people would say things about Muslims in company with others that they would never say about other minority communities.

This is partly the legacy of the Brexit Leave campaign’s toxic rhetoric on popular views about immigration that continued right up to the recent general election.

Over the years, large sections of the public have become receptive to and accepting of Islamophobia (including far-right messages), and of the demonisation of migrants. Politicians of all stripes have enabled this by avoiding explicitly discussing Islamophobia.

The I-word

In his response to the unrest, Keir Starmer told Muslims: “I will take every step possible to keep you safe.” He continued: “Whatever the apparent motivation … we will not tolerate attacks on mosques or our Muslim communities.”

Surely, the “apparent motivation” is Islamophobia?

This has been pointed out by both MP Zarah Sultana and general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, Zara Mohammed. For them, the motivation was clear and unequivocal, and both wanted the prime minister to name it for what it is.

Starmer choosing not to use the “I-word” is far from surprising. As my research has repeatedly shown, few politicians are willing to do so. Acknowledging that Islamophobia exists would mean having to do something about it. And as we know, this has never happened.

Few politicians can be seen to truly care about Islamophobia. As a result, it is rendered unimportant by most politicians and the parties they represent. Despite some paying lip service to the matter, it always quickly disappears from the political agenda. Maybe this is what Starmer is hoping for.

Furthermore, mainstream political actors have been able to deploy Islamophobia for personal and political gain without fear of recourse or censure. There is no better illustration than Boris Johnson referring to Muslim women who wear the niqab looking like “letterboxes” or “bank robbers”. Not only did Johnson refuse to apologise but shortly after, he became prime minister. Another example is Lee Anderson, whose comments accusing London mayor Sadiq Khan of being controlled by Islamists were never called Islamophobic by the party.

The consequences of refusing to address (or even acknowledge) Islamophobia are now playing out in towns and cities across the country. The longer politicians pretend that Islamophobia doesn’t exist, the worse the problem will get, and the more permission the far right will feel they have to get away with violence.

Chris Allen, Associate Professor, School of Criminology, University of Leicester

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

Zeteo Video: “The UK’s “far right, racist, islamophobic riots,” Mehdi Talks To British Muslim MP Zarah Sultanah”

The frightening scenes of far-right extremists clashing with police and even rioting in British towns and cities in recent days have many wondering how to stop the spread of the propaganda that encourages racism, violence and misogyny.

The tough truth is that in seeking to fact check misinformation and force social media companies to remove hateful content, we are doing it wrong. Another message will simply pop up in place of each that is removed. The people who plant propaganda are far more advanced in their methods than the people trying to stop them. They are not thinking about messages but about audience. Hate is clickbait. And social media algorithms put it on steroids.

The unrest started in Southport where a group who claimed to be “protesting” over the deaths of three young girls during a knife attack in the area attacked a mosque. They seemed to believe that the attack was perpetrated by a migrant (which was untrue). More than 50 police officers were injured when they responded to the emergency.

Misleading messages about the Southport attack were posted online and Reform MP Nigel Farage “questioned” whether we were being lied to about the Southport attacker’s identity (although he told the BBC that he had “merely expressed a sense of sadness and concern that is being felt by absolutely everybody I know”).

Our working definitions of propaganda are hopelessly outdated because they all focus on message. And message is unimportant because propagandists will say anything to generate clicks, income or power. They will post calls to “build a wall” and “stop the boats”. They will claim “those kids were murdered in the name of Islam”. Factual accuracy is not important, what matters is that those who wield online influence identify and target a powerbase.

If what they say is taken down, they will simply find a different way to say it to the people they are trying to reach. In the meantime, then they can claim to be censored victims of the establishment. They appeal to emotion rather than rationality, and while their messaging is equal parts ludicrous and disturbing to the rest of us, it wins an audience. Therefore, that audience – rather than the messaging – should be our focus.

‘Imagined communities’

The modern propagandist creates what political scientist Benedict Anderson described as “imagined communities”. He argued that states and nations (and mass media) are founded by successfully creating a community with its own foundation myths, symbols and history. This chimes with the work of propagandist theorist Jacques Ellul, who argued that myths were central and necessary to successful propaganda.

Some symbols are well known and largely shared among us all – spitfires, the British bobby, royalty. But others, like the “cockroach” immigrant, the loss of national agency, and the language of conspiracy theories, are foundational to a community that speaks only to itself. Worse still, those who don’t share their beliefs are naive and need to “do their own research”. Marianna Spring, the BBC disinformation and social media correspondent, found in her book Among the Trolls, algorithmic rabbit holes with their own imagined communities.

Such myths are also fundamental in the process of generating “agitation” propaganda. Traditionally, agitation propaganda is the casus belli summoned by states to send people to war. In the same way, the hatred of today’s racist bigot and the misogyny of the incel are both founded in “agitation” propaganda. Influencer Andrew Tate, for example, has made his name summoning an army of men to fight for his cause.

As Ellul would have it, “hate is generally its most profitable resource … Hatred is probably the most spontaneous and common sentiment, it consists of attributing ones misfortunes and sins to ‘another’… Propaganda of agitation succeeds each time it designates someone as the source of all misery, provided that he is not too powerful.”

Add to this mix social media bots and it brews a poison for our democratic public sphere.

Finding the lost

Fact checking is not useless, but it doesn’t resolve the central problem. Better to identify the silos, and work with their members. We could water down the messaging being sent out to the people causing unrest on the streets with other, better sources. We might even even block some of the networks that deliver the content.

This is better than playing fake news whack-a-mole. Once we have identified the silos of information, we can target the algorithms that create them, and those being targeted or isolated. We can then mediate and ameliorate the problem by reaching out to these groups, spending our energies introducing alternative views, new symbols and foundational myths, negating the effects of algorithm that led them to their silo.

Spring writes of people whose lives have been ruined, of charlatans who create clickbait, but most of all the pathos of those dragged down. Factchecking simply convinces the converted that those who don’t share those views have taken the blue pill of blissful ignorance, rather than the red pill of painful knowledge.

Malicious actors are more than prepared to “flood the zone with shit”, as Trump adviser Steve Bannon puts it. This makes clearing the misinformation impossible, but, by thinking about audience first, we can, maybe, find the lost, and lead them through the storm.

Richard Fern, Lecturer, media, Swansea University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

Channel 4 News: “Rioters attack hotel housing asylum seekers amid far-right violence”

Starmer is a strong supporter of Israel and, in alliance with a secretive British Israel lobby, has purged severe critics of Tel Aviv from Labour Party ranks, so in some ways the decision is surprising. Further, Starmer appears to have gotten heavy pressure from the Biden administration to challenge prosecutor Karim Khan’s request for warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for the commission of war crimes in Gaza.

Starmer, however, also faced pressure from British Muslim constituents of the Labour Party, a significant bloc. In the July 4 election that Labour won so handily, it nevertheless did lose some seats it was expected to win, apparently over Gaza policy. Five independents ran and won, campaigning for an immediate ceasefire. Some 3,801,186 Muslims live in the UK, or 6.7% of the population of 67 million. They therefore have even more clout than Asian Americans in the US, who form about 5.6% of the American population.

The British youths, the left, and British Muslims as well as other minorities, e.g. left-liberal Hindus and activists from the Caribbean, have staged large and frequent demonstrations against Israel’s total war on Gaza. Further, trade unionists, another key Labour constituency, have urged an arms boycott on Israel over its atrocities against Palestinians.

Given Starmer’s stalwart support of Israel, he would not have backed down on the ICC submission unless the pressure from within his party was overwhelming.

The episode demonstrates the limits of Israel’s policy of ignoring Western public opinion in general and concentrating on influence-peddling in governmental decision-making bodies. Those bodies, as with Labour parliamentarians, are also susceptible to shifts in public opinion, as with the vehement denunciation of Israel for what many Britons see as a genocide in Gaza. Europeans also pay more attention to bodies such as the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court than do Americans

The Labour Party said that it was leaving the decision up to the ICC, and the BBC concludes that if Netanyahu and Gallant are indicted, the United Kingdom would feel itself obliged to arrest them if they stepped foot on British soil. The same would also hold true for Spain, Ireland and Norway, all of which recognized the State of Palestine in late May as a way of protesting the Israeli destruction of Gaza and the brutalization of the Palestinians living there.

It should be understood that this move by Labour is a major symbolic loss for Israel and for the Biden administration, which has sought to ensure impunity for Netanyahu and his cronies and has even refused to allow the State Department to certify that Israel is using US weaponry in Gaza in a manner contrary to International Humanitarian Law, as required by the Leahy laws.

It is highly unlikely, however, that Starmer will take any practical action, such as an arms boycott or even a limitation on arms sales to Israel, as demanded by many trade unionists and other activists.

Palestine was recognized by the UN General Assembly as a non-member observer state of the UN in 2012. That status permitted Palestine to sign the Rome Statute and accede to the International Criminal Court as a member in early 2015. In 2018, the Palestine Authority brought a case against Israel at the court for its illegal settlements on Palestinian land. Although Israel is not a signatory to the Rome Statute and would ordinarily not be under its jurisdiction, the argument the court accepted in 2021 is that Israeli actions in the West Bank and Gaza are within the court’s purview. Sunak had intended to challenge that argument. Note, however, that the US and most European countries welcomed the 2023 ICC finding that Russian President Vladimir Putin is guilty of war crimes in Ukraine. Russia is also not a signatory to the Rome Statute, nor is Ukraine. But Ukraine granted the court jurisdiction over Russian war crimes in the Donbass. The case for the ICC’s jurisdiction over Israeli actions in the West Bank and Gaza is tremendously stronger than that for its jurisdiction over Russian actions in Ukraine.

Gavin McGuire at Reuters reported that for the first time this winter, wind generated more power for Britain than all fossil fuels combined. It produced 39.4% of all electricity in the emerald isles, as opposed to 36.2% from fossil fuels.

In fact, the government says, “Renewable electricity generation reached a near record share of 50.9 percent of total generation in the first quarter of the year.” That’s right. A majority of British electricity is now produced by sustainable sources. In fact, if you count nuclear, the low-carbon energy sources provided about 61% of British electricity.

Some 19.5% of British electricity in Q1 was supplied by offshore wind, and 14.3% by onshore wind. Some 2.5% came from solar PV and 2.6% from hydro. Unfortunately, Britain counts “bioenergy” as a renewable, providing 12% of electricity; but sorry, friends, burning wood and biomass is not green. On the other hand, 11% of electricity is imported from France, and that is mainly from nuclear plants, which are relatively low carbon. So the 61% low-carbon statistic likely stands.

And it is a magnificent statistic at that, for a major industrial country to have its power be 61% low-carbon — something undreamt of even a decade ago. The below chart shows the welcome downturn in fossil fuels as a percentage of electricity generation:

H/t UK.gov .

The future clearly lies with the genuinely sustainable energy sources. The government says, “Solar PV accounted for 60 per cent of the new capacity and offshore wind a third.” Amazingly enough in cloudy Britain, new solar is growing faster than new wind. That statistic is now likely to change.

Coal use in Britain has fallen to almost nothing, and the government says that after October 1, the country will not use coal to generate electricity.. I noted how historic this achievement was, given Britain’s prominence in coal production and use: “ The world’s first coal-fired electric plant opened in London in 1882. It was the Edison Electric Light Station, at 57 Holborn Viaduct. It powered electric lights and wasn’t a commercial success. In the twentieth century until about 1965, almost all British electricity was fueled by coal, after which nuclear, hydro, and from the mid-1990s, natural gas, took large shares. Coal pollution in London grew so bad that in 1952 some 4,000 to 12,000 people are thought to have died in the Great Smog, when particulate matter in the air proved so heavy that it slashed visibility and fingers of it swirled into homes.”

The Labor Party, led by Sir Keir Starmer, overturned a big Conservative majority of 80 seats in the Parliament achieved by Boris Johnson’s victory in December 2019, with an unprecedented majority of 412 Labor seats to the Conservative Party’s 121 seats, a gain of 211 seats by Labor and a loss of 250 seats by the Conservatives.

Only five years ago, the Labor party led by Jeremy Corbyn suffered its biggest loss since 1935, while in this election the Conservative Party suffered the biggest defeat in its entire history. The election has completely changed Britain’s political landscape. The Conservative Party is a big vote-winning machine and regards itself as the natural party of government. It has ruled Britain for most of its recent history. As the result of winning this election, Keir Starmer has become the 58^th UK prime minister, but only the 7^th Labor prime minister. This shows the scale of the dominance of  British politics by the Conservative, and in the past by a few Liberal prime ministers.

This also shows the significance of the latest Labor victory. The scale of this victory was even bigger than Margaret Thatcher’s landslide victory in 1983 when she won 397 seats to Labor’s 209 seats, or the former Labor landslide victory in 1997 under Tony Blair when Labor won 418 seats compared to the Conservative’s 165 seats, with a gain of 145 seats by Labor and the loss of 178 seats by the Conservatives.

A large number of prominent Conservative ministers have lost their seats and have been kicked out of the parliament. They include former Prime Minister Liz Truss, the House of Commons Leader Penny Mordant who was tipped as a future Tory leader, Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg who was a former cabinet minister and the leader of the Commons, and 12 other cabinet ministers, including Defense Secretary Grant Shapps, Justice Secretary Alex Chalk, Technology Secretary Michelle Donelan, Education Secretary Gillian Keegan, Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer, Chief Whip Simon Hart, and many other prominent Tories who have fallen by the wayside.

Contrary to US elections where campaigning goes on virtually for the second half of a presidential term, the latest British campaign only lasted six weeks. Elections were held from 7.00 in the morning to 10.00 at night on Thursday. The ballots were counted overnight and the results were announced by 09.00 in the morning. Rishi Sunak, the outgoing Conservative prime minister, conceded defeat at around 03.00 in the morning and in a gracious speech accepted responsibility and apologized for the election defeat, and congratulated Keir Starmer for his impressive victory.

Early in the morning, he and his family left their apartment in 10 Downing Street, went to see King Charles to submit his resignation, followed shortly by Keir Starmer who was invited by the king to form the new government. Starmer drove with his wife back to 10 Downing Street by mid-day and gave his first speech as prime minister in front of the famous black doors of his new residence.

The transfer of power in UK elections is among the fastest, smoothest and most orderly changes of governments in the world. The outgoing prime minister did not question the accuracy of the votes, did not try to overturn the election results and did not ask his deputy prime minister to subvert the will of the electorate. Within a 24-hour period, the election was held, results were announced, the former prime minister left office and the new one took over.

The new prime minister spent the afternoon finalizing the members of his government who will take part in the first cabinet meeting tomorrow morning. The first King’s Speech, which includes the policies of the new government will be delivered to the members of both Houses of Parliament on July 18^th.

Another important aspect of these elections was that, contrary to a number of European countries where we have seen a move to the extreme right, this election resulted in the triumph of a left-of-center party against a rightwing Conservative Party. In many recent elections in Hungary, Holland, Germany, Italy and recently in France we have seen big wins by far-right parties.

Sunak could have remained in power till next January but, encouraged by a fall in the inflation rate and a few favorable economic indicators, he called an early election hoping that Labor and the far-right Reform Party would be unprepared for it. His gamble resulted in the biggest loss for his party.

However, although on paper, Keir Starmer has achieved a remarkable victory, the future may not be as rosy as it seems at the moment. The country is facing a number of major economic problems, including low productivity, high interest rates resulting in high mortgages and high prices, a widening gap between the rich and the poor, long waiting lists for seeing a doctor or a dentist and unacceptable delays in hospital admissions, etc.

In his first speech outside Number 10 Downing Street, Starmer who had won with his slogan of “Change” referred to the public’s mistrust of politicians and said: “Change begins now … We said we would end the chaos, and we will, we said we would turn the page, and we have. Today, we start the next chapter, begin the work of change, the mission of national renewal and start to rebuild our country.” However, he admitted: “Changing a country is not like flicking a switch. And the world is now a more volatile place. This will take a while.”

The problem is that millions of people who have been suffering as the result of a long recession and who have pinned their hopes on rapid change under the new government may not be willing to wait too long for all the promises to be fulfilled.

LBC Video: “Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘warning’ for Keir Starmer” | LBC

The other problem is that although the number of seats that have been won may look very impressive on paper, the Labor victory has not been based on solid foundations. Labor may have come to dominate the parliament but it has won only 36% of the vote. The Conservatives won 23%, and Nigel Farage’s populist Reform UK party won some 17% of the vote. In other words, the combined number of votes cast for rightwing parties exceeds the numbere of votes cast for Labor. The vote has been a rejection of the Conservative Party and not necessarily an endorsement of the Labor Party.

Nigel Farage, a close friend and supporter of President Trump, was the leader of the far-right UK Independence Party (UKIP) from 2006 to 2009, and 2010 to 2016. He was also the main force behind Brexit who pushed for the referendum under former Prime Minister Cameron and who supported Boris Johnson to get it done. He stood unsuccessfully seven times to win a seat in the Parliament and succeeded yesterday in his eighth attempt.

Being disillusioned by the failure of Brexit to stop large numbers of migrants to Britain and to achieve what he called full political and economic independence from Europe, he formed the Reform UK party, and only during the election campaign he stood again for parliament.

His party which is way to the right of the Conservative Party won 17% of the vote, but due to the nature of the first past the post system of voting in Britain, it won only four seats in the parliament. Most former Conservative voters who were fed up with the party voted for Reform, resulting in big losses for the Conservative Party. Reform came in second place in 103 constituencies, set against only three during the last election in 2019, when a pact with Boris Johnson led it to hold off contesting Conservative-held seats.

Consequently, the big Labor win is more due to the hemorrhage from the Conservatives to Reform, rather than due to support for Labor. The Reform Party which devastated the Conservatives in this election has vowed to target Labor in the future and become the main opposition to Labor. This should ring alarm bells for the Labor Party, especially if the government cannot stem the tide of illegal immigration or if it tries to reach some agreements to cooperate with the EU.

While Reform poses a threat from the right, many people on the left of the Labor Party are also very worried about the center-right policies of the new Labor Party. Many leftwing labor supporters even regard Starmer a traitor who went along with a rightwing campaign against former Labor leader, Jeremy Corbyn. Cornyn who advocated socialist policies and even opposed the possession of nuclear weapons and NATO membership had many supporters in the Labor Party, especially among younger members. He built Labor into the biggest political party in Europe.

However, he became the victim of an extensive campaign of vilification and was accused of anti-Semitism. The fact remains that, as in most Western countries, there are more antisemites in the extreme right groups than in socialist groups. However, the well-orchestrated campaign resulted in Corbyn’s defeat in the 2019 election, which was won by Boris Johnson. Although the Labor Party attracted many more members under Corbyn than before, the anti-Semitism campaign was very effective and led to his undoing.

It is interesting to note that Starmer got three million votes less in 2024 than Corbyn got in 2017 and half a million votes less than Corbyn got in 2019. However, due to the vagaries of the British voting system, Corbyn went to a crashing defeat, while Starmer won a landslide victory in 2024. After his defeat in 2019, Corbyn resigned as party leader and Starmer who had been appointed as EU negotiator by Corbyn was elected leader. He waged a relentless campaign of purging the Labor Party of alleged antisemites, and when Corbyn protested that the extent of antisemitism in the party had been exaggerated, Starmer expelled him from the party. In this election, Corbyn stood as an independent candidate in his constituency and won with a big manority.

All of this has alienated a considerable number of leftwing members of the Labor Party who have never forgiven Starmer for his alleged betrayal of his former boss. In a rare recent interview, Corbyn said that the pressure of the Israeli government on the Labor Party had been huge and this had led to his ouster. He said: “During one extremely hostile meeting of the Parliamentary Labor Party Committee, they confronted me and said will you give a blanket undertaking that you, as party leader and potentially prime minister will automatically support any military action Israel undertakes? And I said No, I give no such undertaking. I will give no such agreement because the issue of Palestine has to be resolved and Palestinian people do not deserve to live under occupation, and the siege of Gaza has created the most incredible stress, and by the way I have been there on nine occasions in Israel, Palestine and the West Bank… So, was I surprised at this support for Israel? No, because the pressure of the Israeli government on the Labor Party is huge…”

So, although at the moment the Labor victory is sweet and the government will be able to do a great deal of good for the country, there are some clouds in the horizon which might become threatening in the future, especially if the new government is not able to resolve all the problems quickly and adequately.

In other venues, Biden has repeatedly highlighted Washington’s efforts to incorporate the “Global South” — the developing nations of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East — into just such a broad-based U.S.-led coalition. At the recent G7 summit of leading Western powers in southern Italy, for example, he backed measures supposedly designed to engage those countries “in a spirit of equitable and strategic partnership.”

But all of his soaring rhetoric on the subject scarcely conceals an inescapable reality: the United States is more isolated internationally than at any time since the Cold War ended in 1991. It has also increasingly come to rely on a tight-knit group of allies, all of whom are primarily English-speaking and are part of the Anglo-Saxon colonial diaspora. Rarely mentioned in the Western media, the Anglo-Saxonization of American foreign and military policy has become a distinctive — and provocative — feature of the Biden presidency.

America’s Growing Isolation

To get some appreciation for Washington’s isolation in international affairs, just consider the wider world’s reaction to the administration’s stance on the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Joe Biden sought to portray the conflict there as a heroic struggle between the forces of democracy and the brutal fist of autocracy. But while he was generally successful in rallying the NATO powers behind Kyiv — persuading them to provide arms and training to the beleaguered Ukrainian forces, while reducing their economic links with Russia — he largely failed to win over the Global South or enlist its support in boycotting Russian oil and natural gas.

Despite what should have been a foreboding lesson, Biden returned to the same universalist rhetoric in 2023 (and this year as well) to rally global support for Israel in its drive to extinguish Hamas after that group’s devastating October 7th rampage. But for most non-European leaders, his attempt to portray support for Israel as a noble response proved wholly untenable once that country launched its full-scale invasion of Gaza and the slaughter of Palestinian civilians commenced. For many of them, Biden’s words seemed like sheer hypocrisy given Israel’s history of violating U.N. resolutions concerning the legal rights of Palestinians in the West Bank and its indiscriminate destruction of homes, hospitals, mosques, schools, and aid centers in Gaza. In response to Washington’s continued support for Israel, many leaders of the Global South have voted against the United States on Gaza-related measures at the U.N. or, in the case of South Africa, have brought suit against Israel at the World Court for perceived violations of the 1948 Genocide Convention.

In the face of such adversity, the White House has worked tirelessly to bolster its existing alliances, while trying to establish new ones wherever possible. Pity poor Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has made seemingly endless trips to Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East trying to drum up support for Washington’s positions — with consistently meager results.

Here, then, is the reality of this anything but all-American moment: as a global power, the United States possesses a diminishing number of close, reliable allies – most of which are members of NATO, or countries that rely on the United States for nuclear protection (Japan and South Korea), or are primarily English-speaking (Australia and New Zealand). And when you come right down to it, the only countries the U.S. really trusts are the “Five Eyes.”

For Their Eyes Only

The “Five Eyes” (FVEY) is an elite club of five English-speaking countries — Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States — that have agreed to cooperate in intelligence matters and share top-secret information. They all became parties to what was at first the bilateral UKUSA Agreement, a 1946 treaty for secret cooperation between the two countries in what’s called “signals intelligence” — data collected by electronic means, including by tapping phone lines or listening in on satellite communications. (The agreement was later amended to include the other three nations.) Almost all of the Five Eyes’ activities are conducted in secret, and its existence was not even disclosed until 2010. You might say that it constitutes the most secretive, powerful club of nations on the planet.

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The origins of the Five Eyes can be traced back to World War II, when American and British codebreakers, including famed computer theorist Alan Turing, secretly convened at Bletchley Park, the British codebreaking establishment, to share intelligence gleaned from solving the German “Enigma” code and the Japanese “Purple” code. At first an informal arrangement, the secretive relationship was formalized in the British-US Communication Intelligence Agreement of 1943 and, after the war ended, in the UKUSA Agreement of 1946. That arrangement allowed for the exchange of signals intelligence between the National Security Agency (NSA) and its British equivalent, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) — an arrangement that persists to this day and undergirds what has come to be known as the “special relationship” between the two countries.

Then, in 1955, at the height of the Cold War, that intelligence-sharing agreement was expanded to include those other three English-speaking countries, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. For secret information exchange, the classification “AUS/CAN/NZ/UK/US EYES ONLY” was then affixed to all the documents they shared, and from that came the “Five Eyes” label. France, Germany, Japan, and a few other countries have since sought entrance to that exclusive club, but without success.

Although largely a Cold War artifact, the Five Eyes intelligence network continued operating right into the era after the Soviet Union collapsed, spying on militant Islamic groups and government leaders in the Middle East, while eavesdropping on Chinese business, diplomatic, and military activities in Asia and elsewhere. According to former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, such efforts were conducted under specialized top-secret programs like Echelon, a system for collecting business and government data from satellite communications, and PRISM, an NSA program to collect data transmitted via the Internet.

As part of that Five Eyes endeavor, the U.S., the United Kingdom, and Australia jointly maintain a controversial, highly secret intelligence-gathering facility at Pine Gap, Australia, near the small city of Alice Springs. Known as the Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap (JDFPG), it’s largely run by the NSA, CIA, GCHQ, and the Australian Security Intelligence Organization. Its main purpose, according to Edward Snowden and other whistle-blowers, is to eavesdrop on radio, telephone, and internet communications in Asia and the Middle East and share that information with the intelligence and military arms of the Five Eyes. Since the Israeli invasion of Gaza was launched, it is also said to be gathering intelligence on Palestinian forces in Gaza and sharing that information with the Israeli Defense Forces. This, in turn, prompted a rare set of protests at the remote base when, in late 2023, dozens of pro-Palestinian activists sought to block the facility’s entry road.

From all accounts, in other words, the Five Eyes collaboration remains as robust as ever. As if to signal that fact, FBI director Christopher Wray offered a rare acknowledgement of its ongoing existence in October 2023 when he invited his counterparts from the FVEY countries to join him at the first Emerging Technology and Securing Innovation Security Summit in Palo Alto, California, a gathering of business and government officials committed to progress in artificial intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity. Going public, moreover, was a way of normalizing the Five Eyes partnership and highlighting its enduring significance.

Anglo-Saxon Solidarity in Asia

The Biden administration’s preference for relying on Anglophone countries in promoting its strategic objectives has been especially striking in the Asia-Pacific region. The White House has been clear that its primary goal in Asia is to construct a network of U.S.-friendly states committed to the containment of China’s rise. This was spelled out, for example, in the administration’s Indo-Pacific Strategy of the United States of 2022. Citing China’s muscle-flexing in Asia, it called for a common effort to resist that country’s “bullying of neighbors in the East and South China” and so protect the freedom of commerce. “A free and open Indo-Pacific can only be achieved if we build collective capacity for a new age,” the document stated. “We will pursue this through a latticework of strong and mutually reinforcing coalitions.”

That “latticework,” it indicated, would extend to all American allies and partners in the region, including Australia, Japan, New Zealand, the Philippines, and South Korea, as well as friendly European parties (especially Great Britain and France). Anyone willing to help contain China, the mantra seems to go, is welcome to join that U.S.-led coalition. But if you look closely, the renewed prominence of Anglo-Saxon solidarity becomes ever more evident.

Of all the military agreements signed by the Biden administration with America’s Pacific allies, none is considered more important in Washington than AUKUS, a strategic partnership agreement between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Announced by the three member states on Sept. 15, 2021, it contains two “pillars,” or areas of cooperation — the first focused on submarine technology and the second on AI, autonomous weapons, as well as other advanced technologies. As in the FVEY arrangement, both pillars involve high-level exchanges of classified data, but also include a striking degree of military and technological cooperation. And note the obvious: there is no equivalent U.S. agreement with any non-English-speaking country in Asia.

Consider, for instance, the Pillar I submarine arrangement. As the deal now stands, Australia will gradually retire its fleet of six diesel-powered submarines and purchase three to five top-of-the-line U.S.-made Los Angeles-class nuclear-powered submarines (SSNs), while it works with the United Kingdom to develop a whole new class of subs, the SSN-AUKUS, to be powered by an American-designed nuclear propulsion system. But — get this — to join, the Australians first had to scrap a $90 billion submarine deal with a French defense firm, causing a severe breach in the Franco-Australian relationship and demonstrating, once again, that Anglo-Saxon solidarity supersedes all other relationships.

Now, with the French out of the picture, the U.S. and Australia are proceeding with plans to build those Los Angeles-class SSNs — a multibillion-dollar venture that will require Australian naval officers to study nuclear propulsion in the United States. When the subs are finally launched (possibly in the early 2030s), American submariners will sail with the Australians to help them gain experience with such systems. Meanwhile, American military contractors will be working with Australia and the UK designing and constructing a next-generation sub, the SSN-AUKUS, that’s supposed to be ready in the 2040s. The three AUKUS partners will also establish a joint submarine base near Perth in Western Australia.

Pillar II of AUKUS has received far less media attention but is no less important. It calls for American, British, Australian scientific and technical cooperation in advanced technologies, including AI, robotics, and hypersonics, aimed at enhancing the future military capabilities of all three, including through the development of robot submarines that could be used to spy on or attack Chinese ships and subs.

Aside from the extraordinary degree of cooperation on sensitive military technologies — far greater than the U.S. has with any other countries — the three-way partnership also represents a significant threat to China. The substitution of nuclear-powered subs for diesel-powered ones in Australia’s fleet and the establishment of a joint submarine base at Perth will enable the three AUKUS partners to conduct significantly longer undersea patrols in the Pacific and, were a war to break out, attack Chinese ships, ports, and submarines across the region. I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that the Chinese have repeatedly denounced the arrangement, which represents a potentially mortal threat to them.

Unintended Consequences

It’s hardly a surprise that the Biden administration, facing growing hostility and isolation in the global arena, has chosen to bolster its ties further with other Anglophone countries rather than make the policy changes needed to improve relations with the rest of the world. The administration knows exactly what it would have to do to begin to achieve that objective: discontinue arms deliveries to Israel until the fighting stops in Gaza; help reduce the burdensome debt load of so many developing nations; and promote food, water security, and other life-enhancing measures in the Global South. Yet, despite promises to take just such steps, President Biden and his top foreign policy officials have focused on other priorities — the encirclement of China above all else — while the inclination to lean on Anglo-Saxon solidarity has only grown.

However, by reserving Washington’s warmest embraces for its anglophone allies, the administration has actually been creating fresh threats to U.S. security. Many countries in contested zones on the emerging geopolitical chessboard, especially in Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, were once under British colonial rule and so anything resembling a potential Washington-London neocolonial restoration is bound to prove infuriating to them. Add to that the inevitable propaganda from China, Iran, and Russia about a developing Anglo-Saxon imperial nexus and you have an obvious recipe for widespread global discontent.

It’s undoubtedly convenient to use the same language when sharing secrets with your closest allies, but that should hardly be the deciding factor in shaping this nation’s foreign policy. If the United States is to prosper in an increasingly diverse, multicultural world, it will have learn to think and act in a far more multicultural fashion — and that should include eliminating any vestiges of an exclusive Anglo-Saxon global power alliance.

Copyright 2024 Michael Klare

Via Tomdispatch.com