So what has happened to the great Ukrainian offensive, which we were led to believe would dislodge Vladimir Putin’s invading armies? I suppose a surprise is still possible, but it looks as if it has stalled, just as similar big pushes did in the First World War.
In fact, the whole thing looks more and more like the First World War, with its years of muddy, bloody stalemate, trenches, artillery bombardments – and the mass slaughter, disfigurement and maiming of thousands of young men.
And in the USA, those who were once keen on this war are growing cool. America’s NBC News recently reported that there are already ‘conversations’ aimed at starting peace talks.
Back in the spring, I debated this very issue before a London audience, saying that the war was dangerous and wasteful and should be ended by negotiation.
One of my bitterest opponents in that debate was the comedian Konstantin Kisin, who has become a significant internet commentator. Mr Kisin treated me like something he had recently scraped from his shoe. But last week, lo, he began calling for an end to the war.
Quite right too. Let us rejoice over the sheep that was lost, etc. I do hope he will not now be called all the stupid names (‘Kremlin Shill’, ‘Putin Apologist’ etc) I was called for reaching the same conclusion rather sooner.
I welcome him to the growing camp of reason. But I would say that, had he and others taken a wiser view eight months ago, or earlier, many young men now dead or terribly wounded would be unharmed and alive.
Thousands of shells and bombs would not have fallen on cities, turning them into ruins. Many refugees would have been able to return to their homeland.
Some estimates suggest that it will cost more than £300 billion to make good the physical damage done in the conflict, and who is to pay this bill? The dead, alas, cannot be brought back by any amount of money, nor can those mangled by the horrible weapons of modern war be made whole again. But at least a rapid peace could begin the long task of rebuilding.
The conflict in Ukraine was always unnecessary. It has done nothing but harm to Ukraine and Ukrainians. Ukraine has been used as a battering ram in someone else’s quarrel. The whole thing was cooked up in the same Washington DC kitchen where the even crazier invasion of Iraq was prepared. And I did try to tell you that the policy of driving Russia crazy with Nato expansion would make us less safe, not more so.
I really hope this will be the end of it. But I very much fear that it won’t.
I must respectfully ask Suella Braverman, the current Home Secretary, how she has until now failed to realise the police in this country are a militant Left-wing organisation. I mean, apart from anything else, she is Home Secretary and so has to pay some attention to this increasingly strange organisation, with its rainbow flags, its Twitter patrols and its knee-taking.
Actually, the conversion of the police into a Blairite Army has been a long, slow business. It began even before the 1999 Macpherson report. But that document greatly speeded up the change.
This was supposedly about the bigoted murder of Stephen Lawrence. In fact, it signalled the end of the already decaying idea of police as the defenders of the public against crime and disorder, something you will have noticed they barely bother with now. From that moment, the road to promotion in the police was through ‘equality and diversity’, ‘human rights’ and the things that go with them.
This went very deep. The Blairite Police Reform Act of 2002 (Section 83) quietly changed the constable’s oath from a simple promise to enforce the law without malice or favour to a politicised pledge to uphold ‘fundamental human rights and according equal respect to all people’.
The words ‘without favour or affection, malice or ill will’ disappeared, replaced by the blander and more inclusive ‘with fairness, integrity, diligence and impartiality’. But impartiality between what and what? Impartiality between supporters of Hamas and supporters of Israel? Impartiality between Field Marshal Lord Bramall and his obviously absurd accuser? It sometimes looks like it. It also replaced a section promising to ‘prevent all offences against the persons and properties of Her Majesty’s subjects’ with new politically correct wording. The reference to the monarch and her subjects was simply cut out.
The police’s lack of interest in the public and its normal concerns has been affirmed in recent years by their almost total disappearance from view. They don’t need us, and, as I have often pointed out, they expect the same in return.
Ms Braverman seems to be trying very hard to pose as a ‘Right-wing’ conservative at the moment, picking self-promoting fights of various kinds and turning up at some edgy events in London where modern Blairite Tories would normally not go. And she seeks to please some by giving the impression that she would have been tougher if she could have been, on the ill-mannered and bigot-infested march which took place in London yesterday.
But – what a shock! – the police wouldn’t let her. Maybe all this is genuine passion. It does little for me. As a strongly pro-Israel, social and moral conservative, I do not agree with the banning of marches or the restriction of speech short of incitement anyway. I think this is dangerous posturing.
But I have to ask what she has been doing, reading and thinking for the past quarter of a century. After all, she was born in 1980 and was quite old enough to observe the Blairite social revolution as it unfolded after 1997. Yet nominal Tories such as her have been in office for 13 years since those developments. And they have not reversed one of them, despite much Rightist rhetoric. Forgive me if I remain unimpressed.
Rush-hour ride took me back to Peking
In another age, perhaps 30 years ago, I made my first visit to Peking (only the most pretentious regime toadies called it ‘Beijing’ then).
I greatly enjoyed renting a Maoist Flying Pigeon pushbike (one gear, any colour you like as long as it’s black) and launching myself into the multitudes who then pedalled round the vast city in their millions. They’ve gone now. Cars have taken over.
The experience was a little like plunging into a fast-flowing river. I had thought I could never do anything like that again, but last week I found myself riding into London from the South East during rush-hour. The number of cyclists was astonishing, close to old Peking levels, filling the new cycle lanes and (yes, I know not all of us behave well) obeying traffic lights and signs like grown-ups.
When I first began cycling in London 45 years ago, I was almost alone and colleagues sneered at me as if I was mad. What I saw last week made me think that we actually might one day do as the Dutch have done, and re-adopt this healthy, civilised clean form of transport – to our great national benefit.
Emily Foster is a globe-trotting journalist based in the UK. Her articles offer readers a global perspective on international events, exploring complex geopolitical issues and providing a nuanced view of the world’s most pressing challenges.
