It’s been tough this century, tougher than I ever thought. At the turn of the century, I was here, in this house, and I thought, "There we are, we’ve done it. Nice little world. Well done, the West, we’ve made it, we’ve survived". What an idiot. What a stupid little idiot I was. But I didn’t see all the clowns and monsters heading our way, tumbling over each other grinning.
(Muriel Deacon, Years And Years, 2019)
© Jon Anderson, Steve Howe, 2001
Wer die Wahrheit nicht weiß, der ist bloß ein Dummkopf. Aber wer sie weiß, und sie eine Lüge nennt, der ist ein Verbrecher.
(Bertolt Brecht, Leben des Galilei, 1937)
It is wrong to say that no good music was produced in the 21st century, though it is also fair to say that lots of the good stuff comes from artists who were already there during the Glory Days of the 20th century. Like Yes' Magnification, released in the UK on 10 September 2001, The Day Before. It wasn't my first choice for today's soundtrack, but neither was focusing again almost exclusively on Ukraine. Then, "events, my dear boy, events", as Harold Macmillan once said. The Yes tracks looked definitely more appropriate, and you will get it listening to the lyrics. The bonus tracks at the end come from the 2003 compilation The Ultimate Yes, two reworkings of classic tracks from Fragile and two new ones, that were the band's last ever studio recordings with Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman. Leading to two live performances from the Symphonic Live CD of 2002, of songs from the legendary groundbreaking Close To The Edge album.
Remember to click on the images for larger and easier to read versions, if you didn't know already.
I will start with a short excursion abroad, to Germany, where a snap general election was held on the last Sunday of February. Putin's Little Helper Olaf Scholz was dragged into it against his will by the breakup of his government coalition late last year. The main contenders were the AfD (Putinist neo-Nazis supported by Elon Musk and JD Vance), CDU-CSU (Christian-democrats), FDP (neo-liberals), SPD (social-democrats), Bündnis 90-Die Grünen (Greens), Die Linke (socialists) and Bündins Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) (Putinist anti-woke far-left). Plus a number of minor and regional parties, among which only the social-liberal SSW ever had any chance of bagging a seat, thanks to its constitutionally-protected status of 'minority interests' party. The SPD lost their first place in voting intentions quite quickly after the previous election in 2021, and were steadily credited with a dismal third place in the polls since June 2023. The trends of voting intentions polls never left any doubt about the outcome, and the final batch of polls were quite accurate. The German political landscape is now as fragmented as ever, boosted by their absolutist commitment to pure proportional representation, so we can probably expect another agonisingly long period of negotiations before the next government is formed, Unless the CDU's leader Friedrich Merz decides to move fast because time if of the essence for some major decisions.
You know it if you have followed my earlier rants here or on Twitter, I self-identify as a social-democrat. But I will not shed tears about the SPD's abysmal performance at this election, as they definitely asked for it and deserved it. They are the perfect example of the most toxic and unforgiveable combination in Western politics, wokeism cum Putinism. Which, in their case, was more like a cowardly submission to the defence of Russian interests rather than their own country's. But it gutted their credibility, and the final official results were really close to what the last week's polls predicted and to ARD's exit poll, broadcast seconds after the polling places closed. Interestingly, Elon Musk's and JD Vance's shameful interference in Germany's democratic process did not bear fruit, as the AfD flatlined on the 20-21% vote share they had already reached in polls as soon as the election was called. On Election Night, there was some suspense about the eventual fate of BSW, whose vote share ebbed and flowed between both sides of the national 5% threshold for representation as more results came in, making them the only ones whose vote share was displayed with three decimal places for the avoidance of rounding-induced doubt. But they finally failed to clear the threshold by 0.28% or 139k votes, thusly avoiding 30ish more Putinist MPs in the next Bundestag.
The fun bit of Election Night was obviously Donald Trump calling the CDU 'the Conservative Party', which was surely not a pre-scripted 'Gulf of America' moment, but just another sign of his crass ignorance of European matters. The most significant came the morning after, when the winning CDU commemorated the third anniversary of Russia's criminal invasion of Ukraine with a tweet to the colours of the Ukrainian flag, soberly proclaiming 'Ukraine must win the war". Can't be more direct, can they? Which is summat of a hint Friedrich Merz might now want to fast-track the government formation. 316 seats are needed for a majority, and another Große Koalition between the CDU-CSU and the SPD would get 328. A major obstacle has been removed when Olaf Scholz announced he would not seek to be a member of a coalition government, thusly leaving incumbent Defence Minister Boris Pistorius as the most likely senior SPD Minister in the next government. This is good news for Ukraine as Pistorius has always been far less ambiguous in his opposition to Russia, even once comparing Putin to Hitler, which is not what you spontaneously expect from a German politician. Three years after Vladimir Putin's Day Of Infamy, it's more than time for Germany to up its game, and coordinate their actions with the rest of Europe, rather than with the now Putin-enabling United States. Delivering Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine, as Friedrich Merz has promised during the campaign, would be a good place to start.
Und wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein.
(Friedrich Nietzsche)
© Jon Anderson, Chris Squire, 2001
We don't live in an ideal world, do we? We live in a shitty one.
(Jessica James, Unforgotten, 2023)
Thank Dog the United Kingdom has a freer press than the United States, contrary to JD Vance's atrocious rant at Munich. So The Telegraph have been able to reveal all the hideous details of Donald Trump's plan to make Ukraine a mining colony of the United States, or more likely a mining subsidiary of Elon Muck's business racket. It's not Leader Of The Free World™ politics, it's Don Corleone politics, an abject loot-sharing agreement between American oligarchs and the Russian state-owned crime syndicate with a side-order of MAGA colonialism. You surely remember Donald Trump trying to justify his betrayal by telling us Volodymyr Zelenskyy is hugely unpopular in Ukraine. Of course, that was another fucking lie. The Orange Baboon even claimed that Zelenskyy had 4% approval, which was fairly ridiculous even by his own standards. He could have saved himself the embarrassment if he had asked Elon Musk to fact-check. Or just had had a sneak peak on Wokopedia or Bluesky, Elmo's pet hates, where data from two separate pollsters soon emerged, and tell quite another, and real, story.
Nobody will be surprised that the most popular Western politician, more popular even than Zelenskyy, is our very own Boris Johnson. Say what you will about Bozo, but he has never wavered in his support for Ukraine, even if he often tended to turn it into a Bozo Show for self-gratification and scoring political points at home. But that was before Bozo tweeted some really bizarre stuff that basically amounted to "when in doubt, always blame the EU". The Ukrainian public is still a bit on the fence about Keir Starmer, but he has inherited some of Johnson's popularity. And also some of the massive positivity the Ukrainians feel towards the British people generally, which may be more than some of us deserve. Aye, looking at you, Nigel Farage. Nevertheless, Zelenskyy's good ratings don't mean that the future is a golden road paved with roses for him. We have a new Ukrainian presidential poll that was conducted in December, and another one conducted in early February, that both show Zelenskyy in a very difficult situation if an election was hypothetically held now. Then we had an unexpected reversal of fortunes in the most recent poll, which was conducted in late February by Survation, not by an Ukrainian pollster. It also did not poll the second round. But that was the day before Zelenskyy's televised clash with Donald Trump, and who knows what might happen now?
Most polls still assumes that Valerii Zaluzhnyi would challenge Zelenskyy, which still remains a highly hypothetical scenario, even if the publication of his autobiography might lead you to believe he is not ruling it out despite officially denying it while convolutedly admitting he is definitely considering it. There could be a worse scenario, as both Zelenskyy and Zaluzhnyi are part of the broad liberal pro-European 'central bloc' that still has the approval of almost two thirds of the Ukrainian electorate. This is confirmed by the one poll that tested only Zelenskyy and has him on 60%. There is no window of opportunity for Zaluzhnyi yet, as the rapidly evolving environment has made his position as Ambassador to the United Kingdom the most strategically important in the Ukrainian diplomatic corps. And surely also the most difficult one, as his obvious priority is to convince Keir Starmer and David Lammy that their best option is to stop cuddling Trump, and instead go for a clean break with the ancestral 'special relationship'. But, if an election is held in late 2025 or early 2026, Zaluzhnyi seems to have a fair chance of winning. Which would not necessarily be an outright rejection of Zelenskyy, but more like a Churchill-to-Attlee situation. "Thanks for being our heroic leader during wartime, but now we want someone else leading us into reconstruction", or summat.
If it is absolutely necessary for me to leave my post, I am ready to do so. I can exchange it for NATO membership. I am focused on Ukraine's security today and do not intend to remain in power for decades.
(Volodymyr Zelenskyy, 23 February 2025)
© Jon Anderson, 2001
Putin never asked for anything. He just invaded our territory. Then why should people on whose continent there is a war today ask him? Maybe we should just stop those infantile conversations.
(Volodymyr Zelenskyy)
Of course Zelenskyy has far more pressing issues to deal with than an hypothetical presidential election that may not happen for another year. There has often been talk in Western countries about an alleged 'Ukraine fatigue', mostly from political circles who wished it happen so they could undermine our support for Ukraine. But there are also, after three years of an atrocious war, signs of fatigue in Ukraine. There are many reasons for that, from the devastating death toll to Russia's neverending strikes on the civilian population, all of which feed a feeling of discontent and go a long way explaining why Zelenskyy has very low numbers in presidential polls. There is also a heavy dose of fatalism, as the Lord Ashcroft poll found they are still expecting the war to last despite all of Trump's chest-thumping.
This is a rather gloomy perspective on the future, but there is definitely some truth in it. Donald Trump is the only one in a real hurry to sign a deal and turn the page, no matter the cost. Because he has his eyes on a Nobel Peace Prize, which would be even more outrageous than when Barack Obama got one in 2009, and by several orders of magnitude. Because he made a fast-tracked end to the war a keystone of his election manifesto, and the MAGA mob need this pint of blood, now that they see that the price of eggs continues to rise despite what Trump promised, and Elmo Muck's DOGE is turning into a fucking farce. Vladimir Putin is in no hurry because every day that passes allows him to launch more strikes on Ukrainian civilians, totally fitting his genocidal plan and increasing a sense of despair and hopelessness within the Ukrainian population. But they are not totally broken, and won't be so long as there is no major shift in the military situation. Another question in the Lord Ashcroft poll shows that their assessment of the current state of the war is not much different from the British public's view, that is regularly polled by YouGov.
We haven't heard much from the frontline recently, due to all the 'diplomatic' fracas, but all we know validates the idea that it is indeed still a stalemate. The Armed Forces of Ukraine are still occupying a chunk of Kursk Oblast after six months. They have also retaken some ground in Donetsk Oblast, so the often announced fall of Pokrovsk has yet to happen. Obviously, Russia have more resources to pour into their meatgrinder tactics, so the situation may not be that good for Ukraine in the long run. But the Ukrainians are not ready to give up all hope yet, and accept any kind of peace settlement. The Lord Ashcroft poll of Ukraine also includes a question about possible peace deals, which give a pretty good idea of where the people of Ukraine draw their proverbial red lines. Of course these are just bits of what would be included in an actual peace settlement, but the message is nevertheless clear. Ukrainians will not accept anything that would be acceptable for Russia, and likely to be pushed by Donald Trump for this reason alone. Giving up on the illegally annexed territories is a massive no-go wherever the border is set.
But Mikey went further than just submitting options that pretty much define the boundaries of a possible peace deal, rather than its content. He also probed his Ukrainian panel about a much more developed scenario, that does look like the outline of an actual peace plan, and is thusly worth quoting in full. The international community would not recognise the newly annexed territories as part of Russia. The West would support Ukraine and provide security guarantees for its territory, and Ukraine's accession to NATO would be postponed. Economic sanctions against Russia would be eased and Russia would take part in financing Ukraine's reconstruction. Of course, this still needs a lot of flesh around the bones, but it does set some basic principles for summat of a compromise, and not an outright capitulation. It still has a major flaw, though, as it sounds more like something you agree on at the end of negotiations, and not something you put on the table on the first day. Parts of it are also biased in favour of Russia, who we know can't be trusted to respect any kind of deal, even one with loopholes favouring them. 15% of the Ukrainian respondents found that totally acceptable, and 47% somewhat acceptable, which surely means that they would want significant alterations before accepting it. I would too if I was in their shoes.
The difference between me and Putin is that I am right. I am defending my people, we are fighting for survival. I have no illnesses associated with power. And I have time, but he does not. He will definitely die soon.
(Volodymyr Zelenskyy)
© Jon Anderson, Steve Howe, Larry Groupé, 2001
Russia fought for that land in Ukraine and lost a lot of soldiers doing it, so Russia should keep it.
(Donald Trump, 12 February 2025)
So now it's official, and directly from the pig's mouth. Donald Trump is a Kremlin agent at the White House. Donald Trump has betrayed Ukraine because there is more dosh to be made for MAGA oligarchs off a deal with Russia. Like joint projects to drill for oil in the Russian Arctic, which they have started negotiating at the meeting in Riyadh that was supposed to be about peace talks, but actually never was. If you still needed evidence that the White House has now become a subsidiary of the Kremlin, you have it with the United States' refusal to use the wording "Russian aggression" is the press release concluding this year's G7 Summit, and then opposing a resolution in the United Nations using the same wording. Et fucking lacrimatus est Iesus. One question remains unanswered though. What the fuck is in Donald Trump's kompromat that the KGB and FSB have amassed since his first visit to Moscow in 1987, and his recruitment on Vladimir Kryuchkov's orders. But the Ukrainians kind of went, "back at you, fuckwit", when Lord Ashcroft's pollster probed them about their level of confidence in Western security guarantees.
The exact wording here was, "If Western allies including the US and the UK were to guarantee Ukraine's security as part of a peace agreement with Russia, but without Ukraine joining NATO, how much confidence would you have in these Western security guarantees?" I'm sure we should not take this as criticism of the UK, but of the US. And especially Trump's new doxa that Ukraine should not be allowed to join NATO because his new BFF Vlad The Butcher would feel offended. It is painfully clear that the Orange Baboon does not want to offer any security guarantees to Ukraine because that would contradict his campaign soundbites and go against what the MAGA mob expect. It was again quite obvious when Emmanuel Macron brought it up during his visit to Washington on the day of the Third Anniversary, and Trump pretended not to have heard, though his body language said that he had and didn't give a fuck. So it's totally up to us, and here I mean Europeans, to answer to Ukraine's priorities, as found by the Ashcroft poll.
What these priorities say is quite clear. The Ukrainian public expect the war to last, or they would not ask for more military equipment and stronger sanctions against Russia, that remain our most potent way of hurting their war economy. But they also see one step beyond, or they would not put NATO membership second and wish for allied troops on the ground as a security guarantee. This is indeed a smart quartet of top priorities, offering hints to what Keir Starmer's next moves should be. Not listening to voices that throw the whole British approach of the war into the bins, without offering any alternative other than blindly following Trump, is an obvious start. The hit piece published by The Hipstershire Gazette clearly shows the shortcomings of that position. It's totally wrapped up in repeats of Putinist propaganda and the faux-pacifist dogma that cost us so dearly in the 1930s. The conclusion, that our only contribution should be to make "Ukrainian voices relevant to the Trump-Putin lovefest", is as cretinously outrageous as it is morally offensive. Ukraine deserves better, and we should also not forget that they are really grateful for what we have already done.
The actual question included in the Lord Ashcroft poll was whether or not Ukrainians think their different foreign partners are doing enough or not to help them resisting the Russian invasion. If Keir Starmer has seen this poll, and he surely has got at least a digest, he has every reason to be happy. We come first in that beauty pageant, but it's not time yet to pat ourselves on the back as a lot still remains to be done. For once, I broadly agree with another more reasoned and sensible column in The Hipstershire Gazette, though I am less confident in anyone's ability to sway Trump into being more and better than just Putin's useful idiot. Of course we should work hand in hand with France, and be happy that Macron has shown some baws in openly confronting and contradicting Trump, which Starmer surprisingly did too, albeit in a much more subdued way. Now I must admit that Starmer's meeting with the Orange Baboon went better than I expected. Because it wasn't a total fucking disaster, which was admittedly quite a low bar. I'm waiting for the next step though. Will Starmer ditch the illusion that the UK can be summat of a bridge over troubled water between Trumpistan and a European Union Trump wants to destroy because it stands in the way of Elon Musk's business schemes?
There is obviously a need for more adults in the room when the US government is shaping its foreign policy. If these people don't realise how absurd they seem, they have lost touch with reality.
© Chris Squire, 2001
Negotiation is about leverage, who has most leverage, who has most to give and who is in most desperate need of deal. Part of reason we should not abandon Ukraine and give them nothing is because we want them to have the strongest possible negotiating leverage.
(Marco Rubio, 12 February 2024)
Thank Dog Lord Mikey has a significant workforce based in the Thirteen Colonies to pursue massive polling endeavours there. Naw, I'm fucking joking, mates, he doesn't though he could surely afford it. But he uses contractors, as the format of his data files betrays whom. That's a typical YouGov template, so their branch office at Park Avenue South, New York City, were obviously the ones doing all the heavy leg-lifting work for Mikey. We can only welcome this, as we definitely need to know how the Great America Public feel about Ukraine, now that Donald Trump is pulling a reverse JFK and going, "Ask not what you can do for Ukraine, ask what Ukraine can do for you". Trump has no problem with being seen as running the USA as a businessman, rather than as a statesman, because he considers it as the best way to get a Nobel Peace Prize. Which would be a fucking farce and discredit the Nobel Committee for the next seventy generations. Not that Trump cares, actually. But the Lord Ashcroft poll shows that the American public are quite circumspect about the prospect of an instant peace.
Trump's problem is that as many Americans think that the war will still be raging in 2026 as think it will be over before the Summer Break. This is a way to remind him that his campaign promise was to end it in 24 hours, then it turned into six months, and then we didn't know anymore. Whichever way you spin it, Trump has failed, which is the hardest thing to admit for a man who absolutely cannot stand even the concept of failure. I try to avoid cheap pub psychology, usually, but I will nevertheless venture that this trait goes a long way towards explaining The Atrocious Incident Of The Freaks In The White House, to which I will come back later. Elon Musk's instant comment on the fucking freak show, as pre-scripted as the whole staged thing, says it all. It was all about the American people. Of course it wasn't, nobody is stupid enough to believe one thing the Troll-In-Chief says, but let's assume for a while that it was. Then the Orange Baboon will have to deal with the fact that a massive majority of Americans see Russia as a threat.
Even a majority of Trump's own voters think that Russia is a threat to the security of the United States, to quote the question's exact wording. But being aware of the true nature of the Russian regime does not mean the American public have become more realistic on related issues. Because the alternative reality, that American interests are best served by a quick end to the war in Ukraine, followed by a normalisation of the relations with Russia, has also gained momentum. This is obviously fuelled by Putin-enabling media personalities like Tucker Carlson, who is now regularly acting as Putin's spokesman, and Elon Musk working hard to exacerbate the now firmly established distrust in the 'legacy media'. This is shown by the poll's question about which strategy the United States should now follow. The pro-Kremlin influencers' job is not fully done yet, as the American public is still split three ways. But what the White House will retain from this poll, if they have seen it, is that Trump's voters of 2024 want the war to stop at any cost, and that the younger parts of the electorate are heavily leaning towards it too.
Such results do work in favour of Trump's narrative, because he doesn't care about what the American public at large think, he has his eyes on his own voters only. He knows, despite of all the posturing and gloating, that he did not win the election in a landslide. Only the massive bias embedded in the Electoral College system made it look like one. He won by a tiny margin, the Republicans kept control of the House of Representatives by a tiny margin and even lost seats. Right now, with three vacant seats after the government appointments, they are reduced to a two-seat majority. Every vote is a risk, so the Orange Baboon has had to call wavering Representatives himself, yelling at them and threatening them, to pass an extravagant budget resolution on a knife edge. So he now is fixated on the 2026 midterms, as losing the House then is a distinct possibility, and he has to do anything to firmly lock in the MAGA vote of 2024. Make no mistake, besides pure narcissism, the key factor in now electoral self-preservation. It means he will act tough because that's what the core of the MAGA mob expect, and selling Ukraine to Russia is just necessary collateral damage.
The peace agreement with Russia over Ukraine would create an incredible opportunity to partner with the Russians geopolitically, on issues of common interest, and frankly, economically.
(Marco Rubio, 16 February 2025)
© Jon Anderson, 2001
Can you imagine FDR saying to Churchill, "we're not going to continue to help you until you turn over half of your coal and mineral reserves"?
(Chris Van Hollen, 17 February 2025)
Lord Mikey's hired hands at YouGov America have submitted their overseas panel to the same array of detailed interrogation endured by the British panel. It's not enough to be broadly unsure of whether you want peace or not, you also have to say in which precise direction you want your government to move. American replies to the same spectrum of options as the one submitted to the Brits shows a rather similar attitude generally, albeit with some striking discrepancies. Everybody loves Ukraine, and we all feel for them, obviously. But distance begets difference, and you don't see things the same way from the other side of the European Ocean, as we should call it now. Americans are far less supportive of military aid, offering NATO membership and harsher sanctions against the Russian Reich. Which is not surprising, given the mood inside The Beltway, but you could have hoped for more support for what are certainly our three best levers to bring Putin to heel. Support for offerings strong security guarantees to Ukraine and helping brokering a peace deal is roughly similar on both sides, though I'm quite sure we don't grant these the exact same meanings.
Of course, from where I'm sat, and I guess from a global British perspective too, the important factor is what our own public opinion think of Trump's shenanigans. Thank Dog we now have another poll from BMG Research to shed some light on this. Their first question is about the ongoing 'negotiations' between the United States and Russia, which are actually not negotiations. You can't call it that when the Orange Baboon is giving Vlad The Butcher everything he wants before he even asks, so long as the MAGA oligarchs get a free pass at pillaging Ukraine's natural resources the same way the Russian mercenaries pillage Africa. But bever mind the pedantics of semantics, the important point is that the Great British Public do not support this pantomime. Note that BMG has more diverse and inclusive crosstabs of political affiliation than the other pollsters, so we can see at last what goes on in the minds of SNP and Green voters. Which spawns the first two surprises in this polling, that SNP voters are more open to a fake peace than the Scottish average, and the Green voters are the most strongly opposed to it. Who'd have thunk?
Then, drilling right down to the heart of our domestic debates, does the average Brit think that Keir Starmer should be more supportive of Trump 'negotiating peace between Russia and Ukraine', or should he be more critical? Clearly, we want our Lider Maximo to be more critical of Trump's oven-ready strategy of capitulation. Of course the British Union of Putinists are the most supportive of submission, albeit not really massively. Could there still be some patriots in their ranks? Again quite surprisingly, Green voters are the most adamantly rejecting support to the American 'peace plan'. It's interesting to see that their rejection of far-right ideologues is stronger than their genetically-engineered 'pacifism'. Guess that's good to know for Keir Starmer, if he ever has to play the popular support card. He will probably need it if Trumpistan becomes actually hostile and tries to ambush and blackmail him. That's something I would definitely not put past Trump and Vance, based on what we have seen them do over the last two months. There was a real escalation this time, a pre-scripted one towards the most abject coercive behaviour, while pretending to be our friends and allies. Of course, the culmination and most shocking episode was Trump and Vance bullying Zelenskyy like a pack of demented rabid dogs in front of media from the whole world.
It was like your worst hallucination coming true and leaves the same questions open as before that fateful meeting. As the great Suzanne Moore pointed out, this was trademark abuser behaviour. Was this unexpected appalling show on Friday the 28th pre-scripted by Trump and Vance for the sole benefit of the MAGA voters, when Trump's favourability ratings are falling? Was it staged for the benefit of Europe, to show us that we should still submit to the United States' will? Is the Orange Baboon still a prisoner of his obsessive personal vendetta against Zelenskyy over Hunter Biden's case? Has he totally lost it, as in serious mental health issues? Or is it an explosive mix of all of the above? Whatever the answer, make no mistake. If Trump and Vance looked like scumbags, it's because that's what they are. That and Putin's accomplices. It will be interesting to see how the American people react to that in the next batch of polls. Trump may think he has played his hand well with his Silverback Alpha Male show, but he may well have overestimated its strength, and gone the one-notch-too-far that could cost him dearly. And not just in the traditionally Democratic states where pro-Ukraine demonstrations spontaneously erupted on the night of 28th, once people had recovered from the initial shellshock. We just can't tell yet, as all the polls we have were conducted before the shitshow. Time will tell.
Putin cannot be trusted. Putin is a war criminal and should be in jail for the rest of his life, if not executed.
(Roger Wicker, 17 February 2025)
© Jon Anderson, Steve Howe, 2001
We are ready to enhance our support for Ukraine. We commit to its independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of Russia's war of aggression.
(Foreign Office press release, 12 February 2025)
Is Keir Starmer now determined to make a name for himself in Ukraine, and not just be eclipsed by the shadow of Boris Johnson? A first hint was him going really martial in a column for The Telegraph, which sadly included multiple references to the USA, when he already knew when he wrote it that Trump is now playing on Putin's side. So that looked like a fucking false start. The Orange Baboon has already pretty much killed the 'special relationship', so why should anyone give a fuck about it? Time for your full Declaration of Independence, mate. We don't have to keep pandering to a man who has made clear his vision of the World Order is a power-sharing agreement with Russia over Europe's heads, so he can refocus his military resources against China, and a worldwide Licence To Loot for the Nazi-enabling oligarch who paid for his election. The Great British Public wouldn't mind. When asked to choose between supporting Ukraine and cuddling the United States, our choice is clear and it's Bye, Bye, Mister American Pie. Except, again, for the British Union of Trumputinists, the ones Keir should definitely least care about.
After the horror show at the White House, which had something in it of It because it was the clowns unleashing the horror, it is quite obvious that Keir Starmer had to stop equivocating and fully side with the European Union on all issues related to Ukraine. The EU is already acting to prevent the pillage of Ukraine's natural resources by the MAGA oligarchs. Emmanuel Macron's visit to the White House was not a walk in the park for Donald Trump, who found himself challenged on policy and factchecked when telling porkies again about the amounts of aid delivered to Ukraine. Watch and learn, Keir Starmer, that's how it's done. But Starmer's visit produced nothing, except perhaps more incentive for Trump to go all the way with the pre-scripted staged humiliation of Zelenskyy that has totally enraged Ukraine. The message was threefold, to Russia, to Ukraine and to the pesky Europeans. That anybody who doesn't suck the Orange Baboon's dick will be destroyed. Because he can. Or maybe he can't. Maybe it still depends on us, and by 'us' I mean all Europeans except Putin's cronies Orban and Fico, to tell Trump to fuck off and take matters into our own hands. There is definitely space for bolder moves, as two successive polls have shown that only a minority of Brits think we have provided too much military aid and weaponry to Ukraine.
Starmer then took much more convincing steps after the Barfight At The MAGA Oval, which were reportedly improvised on the spur of the moment on the night of the 28th. First moving a scheduled meeting with Zelenskyy one day earlier than planned, as a hors d'oeuvre to the European Summit on the 2nd of March. Then the very exceptional gesture of walking down Downing Street to meet and hug Zelenskyy, instead of waiting with Larry The Cat on the doorstep, as is customarily done. Finally granting Zelenskyy a Sunday Roast at Sandringham with King Charles, when Trump will be confined to the pre-orchestrated formalities of a state dinner. Well, true at the time of writing, as it still may be cancelled. When even The Mail shits in your boots, and The Telegraph turns it into an Abdication Apocalypse, you know how fucked you are. There was a distinct flavour of "Up yours, Donald" to all this. There was the same feeling when Starmer did the morning TV rounds just before the European Summit, and dubbed an incoming joint initiative with France, which is already in itself a massive rebuke of the USA, the start of a "coalition of the willing", a very transparent and ironic reference to George W. Bush's description of the unholy alliance that got us embroiled in the Iraq War. Starmer surely receives digests or the more meaningful polls, and must have felt on solid ground after yet another wide-ranging Ukraine poll from Ipsos, showing clear support for the policies pursued so far by the successive UK governments.
Ipsos tested the full package of economic, humanitarian and military aid to Ukraine, and economic sanctions against Russia and Belarus in one question. This is a rather sound way of assessing the Great British Public's state of mind, as we obviously have to combine all these actions for more efficiency. Starmer has considerable wiggle room as supporters outvote opponents by 42%, so he could go much further if needed without risking a major popular backlash. He is even in a better situation than the Ipsos poll hints at, as a later YouGov poll shows the public becoming more supportive of all specific options available to support Ukraine. We'll see the details of that a wee smitch later. This is also helpful on another front, as Starmer has more support from British public opinion than Macron from French public opinion. This may seem irrelevant when there are real issues to address in a tightly coordinated way, but this is also something worth considering in the longer term. If we really believe that the world needs a new Leader Of The Free World™, as Kaja Kallas has stated, will Starmer offer himself? He could do worse, honestly, especially if the alternative is Macron. No offence intended for the country of my birth, just pragmatism.
We cannot have another situation like Afghanistan, where the United States negotiated directly with the Taliban and cut out the Afghan government.
(Keir Starmer, The Telegraph, 16 February 2025)
© Jon Anderson, Chris Squire, Alan White, Larry Groupé, 2001
The UK is ready to play a leading role in accelerating work on security guarantees for Ukraine. This includes being ready and willing to contribute to security guarantees to Ukraine by putting our own troops on the ground if necessary.
(Keir Starmer, The Telegraph, 16 February 2025)
We haven't yet seen the end of the fallout from Vance and Trump's insane bullying of Zelenskyy. Far from it. There will be unintended consequences. Loads of. One Norwegian company has already decided to strike back, which could be an interesting start to a wider boycott of trade relations with the United States. Our grandparents did it for South Africa in the apartheid years, didn't they? It would be quite significant to use the same weapons now against the United States, and we should. And it would be fun to watch the US Navy's whole Atlantic Fleet piling up into Rosyth in a disorderly queue, begging for our oil because Norway won't supply them, and us charging them a 100% tariff on it. But, before it comes to that, we have the clear and present threat facing us, Russian imperialism. We know, from the ghoul himself, that Vlad The Butcher won't stop at Ukraine if we don't block him, with or without help from Trumpistan. Next stop is Narva, and then there will be no way to stop the flood. Fortunately, the Great British Public are aware of this, and are not confused about who the enemy is.
Of course, 20% being brainmushed enough to think that there is no Russian threat is worrying, but 70% correctly identifying the Russian Reich as a serious threat is a strong enough foundation to build a more aggressive strategy on. But Keir Starmer has a lot of convincing to do, possibly starting with convincing himself that we can do it, we must do it and it's time to do it. The Great British Public can help him make up his mind here, as they are clearly more supportive of helping Ukraine for as long as it takes than the American public. But this is of course not the only factor influencing Starmer's decisions. In this ever-changing world in which we're living, Trump lives and lets die. Starmer has a more humane perspective, even if he is prone to fuck up by indecision and has made quite a trademark of lousy communication skills. This is why such polling can be helpful if Starmer's spads let him see it, as it can only encourage him to stop obfuscating and tiptoeing around the real issue. Which basically is that the UK urgently needs to disentangle itself from the web of American influence, and accept that the keys to our future lie to the East of Lowestoft, in the messy Continental Europe.
But the Great British Public can, and hopefully will, still move on these scenarios, towards a stronger rejection of a hasty badly-drafted deal. Trump may have misread the room, and underestimated the impact of the ambush at the Oval. Or he doesn't give a shit, which is more plausible. However, we Brits love our underdogs, and Trump should have remembered another precedent set by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But not one of those I usually love to quote, a far less glorious one. FDR's official policy in 1940 was to try and accommodate the Nazi-backed Vichy Regime in France, because he held a dim view of the French Resistance and the leader of the Free French, Charles de Gaulle. Communists led by a mutineer, pretty much. After the USA entered the war, FDR even openly lobbied for De Gaulle to be ousted and replaced by somebody easily malleable by the Americans. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Churchill, who had a bumpy and sometimes conflictual relationship with De Gaulle, never budged and always supported him as the legitimate leader of the Free French. De Gaulle stayed and the rest is history, as the cliché goes. I digress here just to introduce another of YouGov's instant polls, that says the British public overwhelmingly blame the Orange Baboon for the spat, not Zelenskyy. Even Reform UK voters blame Trump, albeit more reluctantly.
Now there is also a more pressing challenge facing the UK and the European Resistance, a Trump-triggered extinction event for NATO. Now is not the time to wonder if it can happen, but when. We already have the breadcrumbs on the floor when one United States Senator calls for the USA to leave NATO, an obscure MAGActivist seconds it and doubles down by adding the United Nations, and Elmo thirds and trebles down. When Elmo says it, we're only days ahead of the Orange Baboon making it official policy, mark my words. Emmanuel Macron was widely ridiculed, including by our very own Boris Johnson, when he said six years ago that NATO was brain-dead, but now it looks like he was just prescient. This is a tricky situation for Keir Starmer, if he keeps cuddling both sides of the Atlantic. Will he dare pull a reverse Churchill and, if he has to choose between Europe and the open sea, turn his back on the open sea? Was the Lancaster House Summit a preview of the shape of things to come? Quite ostensibly, it was not a strictly European Summit, as it also included Canada and Turkey. The traditional family snapshot looked more like a New Model NATO, with Ukraine but without Putin's allies, the United States, Hungary and Slovakia. Leading experts who are always right say we would need ten years to build it and make it work. But, in the real world, we probably have no more than two or three months. So, move your arses, mates. Now.
We recall that the security of the European continent is our common responsibility. We are therefore working together to strengthen our collective defence capabilities.
(Foreign Office press release, 12 February 2025)
© Jon Anderson, Alan White, Steve Howe, 2001
Kickstarting work on a deep, ambitious new defence agreement with Norway shows the UK promise to step up on European security in action.
(John Healey, 20 February 2025)
On top of the Lord Ashcroft poll, we have the finishing touches to the overall picture from a few snap mini-polls conducted by YouGov, and a more comprehensive one from More In Common. There were no holds barred and no punches pulled here as they locked straight away on the most contentiously divisive question of all, the possibility of the UK joining an European Army. Which is of course a very distant prospect at best, and quite plausibly a non-existent one. The Continentals can't even agree about it, though it has been their very own elephant in the room since before Phil Collins was born, initially proposed by Winston Churchill. To be fair to them, the European Union have progressed to the stage of a Common Security and Defence Policy, but that's still some parsecs away from an actual common defence and army. It won't happen for the foreseeable future, so long as there are Russian plants in charge of sone EU states like Hungary and Slovakia, and possibly others later after the FSB and Elon Musk rig more elections. So it's probably wiser for Keir Starmer to keep away from that one, even if more Brits support us being part of a European Army than oppose it, save the usual rejection by the British Union of Putinists voters.
An obvious parallel plotline is whether or not the Great British Public would approve or not if Keir Starmer confirms his virtual commitment to being part of a peacekeeping force in Ukraine. A scenario that obviously has to involve an agreement with other European countries if we really want it to work. We're clearly not there yet, as Vladimir Putin is not a happy bunny with the concept, and is already lobbying for 'neutral' participants like BRICS countries, and definitely not NATO members. True to character, the SNP instantly started gesticulating to demand a vote in Parliament, which is constitutionally not required as foreign interventions are covered by the Royal Prerogative. It's only a very recent convention that resulted in votes being held about offensive action in Iraq in 2014 and Syria in 2015. But conventions are in no way legally binding, and Starmer would be wise to skip Parliament this time, just as Theresa May did in 2018 when further action in Syria was needed. We don't need to hear crap about it being "not our war", or "money better spent at home" again. Starmer should instead rely on popular support, which he already has, with a majority of Brits supporting involvement in a peacekeeping force and just a quarter opposing it, as shown by a brand new poll from Redfield & Wilton.
But we should be careful what we wish for. Volodymyr Zelenskyy has claimed a really effective peacekeeping force would need 200,000 troops. More reasonable estimates, from French anonymous 'close to the government' sources, say 100,000. Now let's face reality before its brick wall hits us. The British Army has a force of 104,000 including reserves. France has 142,000 also including reserves. The most optimistic estimate is that boots on the ground would be at most 30,000 each, and probably not even that. And we don't even know how many tanks we could send, as the number of actually operational ones is an Official Secrets Act matter, but it would probably be just around 25 from each country. Clearly not up to the task. Keir Starmer should also consider the alternative, or complementary, option offered by the European Sky Shield proposal, which amounts to enforcing the proverbial no-fly zone above Western Ukraine, protecting the civilian population and part of the infrastructure against further genocidal Russian strikes. Being involved in a peacekeeping mission, or in a solid protection of Ukraine, is also totally compatible with what the British public think should be the main missions of our armed forces, as found by the aforementioned Redfield & Wilton poll.
But these ends require means. It's quite a sign of the times that The Hipstershire Gazette's official editorial line is now one of full support to massive spending for the rearmament of the United Kingdom, even mentioning the European Union as the trailblazer to follow, after a generation of supporting the 'dividends of peace' myth. Their upgraded views on this are in sharp contrast with the way the New Model Labour government intends to manage it. They will increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP, but "the proper way". There are two major issues here. 2.5% is not enough and Starmer can't keep procrastinating, it should be 5% just like Poland is now committed to. The "proper way" won't work because it means sticking to the George Osborne Dogma of fiscal responsibility, austerity in plain English. We're already way past that stage even if Starmer and Reeves won't admit it. Yet. As usual, extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. The British people would never forgive a government that slashed benefits to fund the Royal Navy, and slashing foreign aid instead is not the cleverest move either. But we are smart and mature enough to see the wisdom in combining targeted tax hikes for the highest earners, a Zucman Tax as has just been passed in France, and the sale of seized Russian assets to make us ready to face the Russian threat. There's a path to do that without more borrowing. Just do it.
I am absolutely committed to spending 2.5% of GDP on defence. I’m really clear that a strong economy depends on strong defences and our national security being protected, so we will set out that pathway to 2.5% of GDP. We will do it in the proper way, but no one should be in any doubt about my commitment to spend 2.5% of GDP on defence.
(Rachel Reeves, 20 February 2025)
© Jon Anderson, Steve Howe, 2001
The scene at the White House yesterday took my breath away. I would never have believed that we would ever have to defend Ukraine from the United States.
(Frank-Walter Steinmeier, 1 March 2025)
I have already briefly mentioned Survation's poll of Ukraine, the first time they have ventured there, and also the first time a foreign pollster has surveyed a hypothetical future presidential election. Besides and beyond the voting intentions, there is a lot to unpack in that poll, about both the Ukrainian people's perspective on their own situation and about their views on the rest of the world. Their aforementioned findings about voting intentions are a bit surprising, not just because they are not in line with earlier polls, but also because they seem to contradict findings from the same poll. Survation asked their Ukrainian how favourable their view of eight prominent figures, Ukrainian and foreign, is and how much they trust them. The results definitely have a hilarious side, and won't be liked in the Thirteen Colonies.
Now look back and forth at the two charts and enjoy what you see. Ukrainians have a favourable view of Volodymyr Zelenskyy and trust him. But they like and trust Valerii Zaluzhnyi even more. So I guess it is a deep sense of loyalty and gratitude to Zelenskyy that propels him to the first place in voting intentions. But that's not the fun part, obviously. Trump and Musk's results are. Elmo is the 2nd most disliked and 2nd least trusted man in Ukraine, just below Vladimir Putin on the Podium Of Shame. The Orange Baboon comes third om both counts, just marginally below Elmo. In stark contrast, Emmanuel Macron is quite incredibly popular and trusted, which is quite a surprise considering his ambiguous attitude in the early months of the war. Donald Tusk and Keir Starmer, on the other hand, still have to prove themselves. It will probably be easier for Starmer than for Tusk, due to the ancestral feuds between Ukraine and Poland, sone going as far back as the days of the conquering Commonwealth.
In my opinion, there is one man missing from that poll. Mark Rutte, the Secretary General of NATO, who has made it clear he doesn't have any independent thinking and is only acting on Trump's orders. His most recent statement to the media is totally unacceptable, as he only relays Trump's demands without any filter. We need Trump-appeasers as much as we need Putin-enablers right now. We shouldn't accept having our hands tied by someone who takes his orders from the Oval Office, which is now the same as taking them from the Kremlin. Until NATO implodes, which probably won't take long now, they should be kept at arm's length, and decisions made only by the smaller circle of political leaders of the Coalition. Survation then went one step further, inviting their panel to a direct comparison between Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Donald Trump on a number of character traits. And it again did not go well for Trump, No surprise here.
Ukrainians support their president through cold rain and snow because he is seen as strong, patriotic and smart. But he gets lower ratings on honesty, probably because he was slow and appeared reluctant at tackling corruption before the war, and competence, and that's fair enough as he was notoriously unfamiliar with economics before the war. It's far worse for The Donald, whom Ukrainians see as dishonest, incompetent and not really smart. To be honest, I find it hard to disagree with them on this. Surely it would be even worse now if the poll was replayed, and even his mid-range rating as a strong leader must have degraded now that he has made the White House the Kremlin's echo chamber. Survation should have tested JD Vance too, the Darth Vader to Trump's Palpatine, as he seems to have more influence and latitude of action than Vice-Presidents usually enjoy. But they surely can add him to their list next time they travel to Ukraine, if ever,
He's losing his women and children. His cities are being bombed, and we're talking about his clothes? It was victim shaming, which is what Trump has been doing to Zelenskyy and Ukraine since before he got elected. It's unacceptable. It's inappropriate.
(Paul Rieckhoff, 1 March 2025)
© Jon Anderson, Steve Howe, 1971
The time has come to start considering a broad coalition of the willing for just peace in Ukraine. “Peace” on terms of the aggressor is called a capitulation and would only encourage all current and future aggressors. Free world must stand up to the evil.
(Petr Pavel, 1 March 2025)
Survation also polled their Ukrainian panel about which policy their government should pursue, which is more important than all the beauty pageants. They are not ready to surrender, even under pressure from 'friends', that admittedly had not reached its peak when the poll was conducted. But there is also a big question mark suspended over their resolve, that the decision has to depend on the military situation. This could work both ways. Right now the Armed Forces of Ukraine are holding their ground on Russian soil in the Kursk Oblast, and scoring moderate gains in beleaguered areas on the Donetsk front. Which would be like the right moment to stand firm against Trump's blackmail. But this is bound to last only so long as Ukraine doesn't run out of ammunition, which could happen two or three months from now if Europe does not step up with massively increased deliveries. How this turns out will be the key to maintaining Ukraine's resolve.
The direct consequence of any 'peace deal' engineered by Trump to serve his own interests would be a negotiation on the ultimate fate of the territories currently occupied by Russia by brute force, and illegally annexed. Not so long ago, even discussing this was the ultimate taboo in Ukraine, and now it's on the table. This only shows how desperate Ukrainians had become, even before Trump's latest move, facing the procrastination and indecisiveness of their Western 'allies'. The crosstabs are interesting here. Ukrainians from the East are the most likely to agree to concessions, surely because the fighting is happening there and they want it to end no matter what. Supporters of Petro Poroshenko, Zelenskyy's opponent on the right at the 2019 election, and Yulia Timoshenko, roughly the left-wing opponent, are both more likely to oppose concessions than Zelenskyy's supporters. This was to be expected from Poroshenko's supporters, as he always was strongly resisting Russian influence. This is more surprising from the Timoshenko side, as she supported a more conciliatory attitude towards Russia in the past. What a difference an invasion makes.
As time goes by, the real issue looks more and more like being which concessions Trump will force Ukraine to make to get his 'peace in 24 hours'. It's safe to assume that Trump will handle this the same way the European democracies responded to Hitler's claims on what was left of Czechoslovakia in March 1939. Live and let die. Let him have it because it's not our borders. Let Putin have all he wants because that's the safest way the MAGA oligarchs can lay their hands on Ukraine's natural resources, which are a-plenty in the illegally annexed territories. Sadly Volodymyr Zelenskyy now seems to have resigned himself to submission to Trump's whims, probably because he feels that support from Europe will be too little and too late to alter the course of events. But the Survation poll shows that the people of Ukraine are not necessarily fully enthused about seeing the USA play a major role in future negotiations.
Of course this was polled before Trump and Vance ganged up against Zelenskyy like a pair of hyaenas savaging an antelope while the vultures were circling overhead. More Ukrainians then wanted the European Union to have the top seat at the table than the United States, and almost as many wanted the United Kingdom in that seat too. Of course this is not enough to sway Trump away from his alliance with the New Model Soviet Union, so we may have to rely instead on Macron and Starmer's joint power of persuasion to avoid the worst case scenario where only Russian allies would sit at the table. But is it reasonable to entertain hopes that the Orange Baboon can listen to anything that doesn't fit the Vance-Musk pre-digested Weltanschauung? Plausibly not, even though we still have muscle to show. The European Union has 1.32 times the population of the USA and the same GDP, calculated on purchasing power parity. Add the United Kingdom and we together have 1.52 times the population and 1.14 times the GDP. Should that count for nothing? Surely not, and the recent chain of events, leading to Yalta 2,0 and the revival of the 'spheres of influence', should be the beginning of an European Awakening, by all means necessary.
They invited a guest, beat him, spat on him, and threw him out the door. We are at a very low level compared to what it was like at the end of the Soviet Union and during the Gorbachev era. We could go, see Gorbachev and talk to him.
(Vytautas Landsbergis, 1 March 2025)
© Jon Anderson, 2003
This war is a test of our resilience and courage, revealing both our strength and the loyalty of our true allies. The road ahead won’t be easy, but together, we will overcome every challenge.
(Valerii Zaluzhnyi, 1 March 2025)
The people of Ukraine may agree that the USA should play a major role in peace negotiations, or rather agreed two weeks ago, but they are not ready to accept anything at any cost. Especially not having their fate decided behind their backs and over their heads by the Soviet Union and the Soviet agents in Washington. Simply because they absolutely do not trust the outcome of a settlement negotiated between these two, and they have every reason to deeply distrust such a process. How can anyone ever trust a 'negotiation' where one of the parties has already conceded everything the other party wants, and beyond, even before talks started? Especially now, after Trump has delivered a State of the Union speech that could have been written by Josef Goebbels, nothing but sloganeering packed with deliberate lies about each and every issue he mentioned, As one American pundit predicted before it happened, it was 80% lies, 19% propaganda and 1% facts.
You may remember that the Soviet Union and Trumpistan already held preliminary talks in Saudi Arabia, of all places, which actually produced nothing except the blueprint for America's surrender. Ukrainians not only reject any conclusion from such talks, they consider them illegitimate. As should every country that values the rule of international law and the defence of democratic principles. Just imagine how we would have felt if, in a weird alternative timeline, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Adolf Hitler had negotiated the future of Great Britain and divided the Empire between themselves, in the autumn of 1940. Surely we would have been outraged and considered that totally illegitimate too.
But it could have been even worse, as we now have Alexander Lukashenko proposing to host talks in Minsk. Which would have been a good one if he had said it on on April Fools Day. Because, ye ken, we all know how reliable any paper signed in Minsk can be. I'm old enough to remember the last one, sponsored by Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron, and how Vladimir Putin sent Spetsnaz in disguise into Ukrainian territory to help FSB-controlled separatist terrorist militias, even before the ink had dried. Another of YouGov's snap polls shows that the British public agree that anything sponsored by Trump is to be handled with care, as we massively think that the Trump administration has handled the situation in Ukraine badly. Not that Trump and Putin care, but our support remains really important for Ukraine.
This does not exonerate us from actually acting to get things done properly. Thinking that the UK government handled the situation well does not men we shouldn't lobby them to do more and better. Wearing a Make Russia Small Again t-shirt, which I suspect would be more popular on the streets of London that on the streets of Edinburgh, definitely makes you feel good but that's about it, even if the proceeds go to the defence of Ukraine. The European Union announcing a €800bn, or £660bn, plan to help Ukraine is surely a step in the direction, even if the actual amount is just €150bn if you read the fine print that The Hipstershire Gazette does not mention but French media did. Revoking Hungary's voting rights so they can no longer block the EU's decisions to please their FSB handlers, as some MEPs have suggested, would be even better and you would have to kick out Slovakia too. But most of what the EU does is kicking the can of worms back to individual states, and their €800bn plan actually does just that. Again. That takes us back full circle to what we can do, and the first step is showing our government how much we support Ukraine. By 'our', I mean the one in London, which is still ours until further notice. And the ever-helpful YouGov says we are doing just that.
Even if the UK is the only country in the world supporting Ukraine, we should keep supporting them. They are on the front line of our defence. Their sons and daughters are fighting and dying for our freedom. We should be thanking them.
(James Cleverly, 1 March 2025)
© Jon Anderson, Chris Squire, Rick Wakeman, 1971
Putin launched his war not because he was worried about NATO, that's pure Kremlin propaganda, but because he is a ruthless opportunist, who had been in power for two decades, and who thought he could revive his political fortunes with a short, sharp war to rebuild the Russian Empire.
(Boris Johnson, 22 February 2025)
I was fully expecting YouGov to update their regular omnibus polling about Ukraine in time for the third anniversary, and indeed they have. YouGov hadn't polled the Great British Public since before Christmas, and a lot has happened in these two months. Donald Trump was anointed Leader Of The Free World™ and started selling Ukraine by the pound. Elon Musk fell in love with neo-Nazis and their blonde leader while being chased around the Twittersphere for child support. JD Vance thought that it was a smart opening gambit to lecture Europeans about what they can and cannot do. Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave Trump the finger, in the most courteously diplomatic way, surely not expecting the atrocious trainwreck that followed. And Keir Starmer kept sowing the seeds of confusion, because he was confused for a while, and apparently no longer is, Or just a little. All of this was bound to have an impact on how the British public see the situation, and it did. Then YouGov conducted their poll in the third week of February, so a lot of it may already be past its sell date by now. But it is nevertheless interesting to look at it for the trends it shows, all down the timeline since Invasion Day. Starting with how our stance on military aid to Ukraine has evolved.
It's reassuring to see that support for military aid is now up after a long period of going continuously down, Opposition has increased too, but the gap between the two is up as former undecideds are beginning to shift towards support. We can only hope that it lasts and grows. Of course, we have a fucking massive problem just landed in our lap. What should we do now that the United States have suspended all deliveries of military equipment to Ukraine, without warning anyone and much to the rage and despair of Ukraine? And instantly made it worse by cutting Ukraine's access to American intelligence, which is a key component of their war effort. Keir Starmer is totally right, we have now reached a crossroads in history and we must be sure we make the right choices and never have to regret the road not taken. It's going to be a bumpy ride before the tectonic plate settle in their new positions, and we have every reason to be worried. The Redfield & Wilton caught the mood of the moment, showing that an overwhelmingly massive majority of the British public are really concerned about what lies ahead, now that the United States have reneged on everything that built the foundations of the World Order we have known for the last 80 years.
There are multiple reasons for concern, but are there any for hope? I never thought I would say that, as this is the man I once called a piece of shit to his face on Twitter, but I fully agree with Ben Wallace here. Donald Trump wants Ukraine to abandon all hope, while we would otherwise be very close to a complete Russian collapse. Not of their military on the frontlines, but of their whole society and economy far behind the lines. That may still be achievable, despite the American treason, but only if we keep a massive flow of military aid coming. A good place to start would be paying for Ukraine's full connexion to Eutelsat, in anticipation of Elon Muck cutting their access to Starlink, as Eutelsat is as efficient but considerably more expensive. The real question thusly becomes whether or not we should ramp up our own aid to compensate for the American withdrawal. Of course, we have been asked already, by BMG Research this time. And you know what? We are not really sure. Possibly because it has to rest on a long-term cooperation between the UK and the EU, and we are not really confident in its sustainability. Or it might be because we have become aware that there are gigantic amounts of money involved, though part of this fear has been fuelled by the fake news generously distilled by Donald Trump and Elon Musk's bots.
The actual amount in play has nothing to do with the numbers Trump likes to throw around as pure propaganda. The reality is that the USA have supplied barely more military equipment to Ukraine than Europe so far. The actual amount is $67bn, or €64bn or £53bn at current exchange rates. Europe delivered €62bn, or £51bn. So, if the European wanted to compensate for a complete American withdrawal, they would have to double their contributions. There's an oven-ready way to do that, Seize the €258bn, or £213bn, of Russian assets currently frozen across Europe. Of course the Civil Service and assorted lawyers will say we can't do that because it violates 17 items of international law. But who gives a fuck when Russia has continuously violated the whole of international law for twenty years? Just tell the lawyers and Humphrey Appleby to fuck off, take the money and run. If the Russians sue us, give them the finger. Problem solved. Or, alternatively, stop grovelling about the consequences on business and enforce a genuine wealth tax for the duration of the current parliamentary term. Simulations of where you move the different cursors, rates and scope and whatnot, credibly say it could yield between £10bn and £30bn per year. That would plug a fucking big part of the hole left behind by Trump, wouldn't it?
Everybody can see that Volodymyr Zelenskyy is not a dictator, but a democrat courageously defending his country against an aggressor. He doesn't shoot journalists. He doesn't poison his opponents or send them to the Gulag. That's Putin.
(Boris Johnson, 22 February 2025)
© Antonín Dvořák, Chris Squire, 2003
We do not need a war, neither cold, nor hot, nor hybrid. But we will defend ourselves. When you attack, you will see our faces, not our backs.
(Volodymyr Zelenskyy, 24 February 2022, four hours before the Russian invasion)
Beyond military aid to Ukraine, which some are already trying to turn into a controversial issue, Keir Starmer also has a problem with military spending generally. On two fronts, the very principle of increasing it, and the way this increase is funded. Surely we could start by increasing the top rate on the top band of income tax to 60%. It wouldn't bring enough, but that would be a good symbolic start. And the Conservatives couldn't oppose that in good faith, as this was the rate enforced by Margaret Thatcher's first Budget all these years ago. Gotcha. Or bring back the corporation tax rate to 40%, where it was under... Edward Heath. IF Starmer refuses to increase taxes, then he corners himself into a debate about priorities, the dreaded 'tough choices'. This is a debate he can only lose, because public opinion will always want to safeguard what we could broadly call 'social spending'. And we have the last BMG Research poll to prove it. One out of five Brits want to prioritise military spending. One out of three want to prioritise welfare, education and healthcare. Case closed, Your Worship. If Starmer wants to do the right thing, which is to increase both social spending and military spending, he needs a double-digit amount of billions every year and the only way to get it is taxation, taxation, taxation.
Then came the oven-ready controversy about Starmer's decision to cut foreign aid to fund the military spending hike. I will contradict one of my foundational principles here, and tell you it is a complex issue. No bullshit, Sherlock. On the right, you hear voices saying that we owe "them" nothing and aid should be cut altogether. On the left, others clearly see it as some sort of reparations for colonialism, but start squealing like angry hippos about the return of colonialism through the out door at the suggestion that recipients should be more more strictly vetted and the use of the funds closely monitored by us. At the end of the day, indiscriminately slashing the aid is a mistake as we know that China is more than willing to replace us and extend her influence. But the government's own statistics say that we should be more attentive to where the money goes, and avoid some questionable decisions like sending aid to totalitarian and openly hostile countries. Afghanistan and Belarus, just to cherrypick two. But the debate is moot already, as the ever-helpful YouGov has found that two thirds of Brits support shifting billions from aid to defence.
The blunt truth is nevertheless that even this reallocation of funding is far from enough. It amounts to roughly 0.2% of GDP, while the funding needed for defence is more like 3%. It's enlightening to look at the chart of British defence spending as percentage of GDP since 1960, and how it crumbled under Wilson, under Thatcher and under Major. If we had stayed at the level of 1993, before the UK totally succumbed to the twin fallacies of 'the end of history' and 'the dividends of peace', that is 3.6% of GDP, nobody would have noticed, it would have been painless and we wouldn't be having these debates about 'tough choices' today. The extra funding would have been a mammothean £675bn over 30 years, enough to build a second Royal Navy and still have change for a second Royal Air Force and the maintenance of both. Too bad all the Western ruling classes fell for Francis Fukuyama's fairy tale of neo-liberal economics bringing peace, love, understanding and liberal democracy to the world, especially after it was brutally disproved by Russia and China even before it had had a chance. We probably had one last chance to take the other road in 2012, when Xi Jinping became leader of the New Model China and set it on a course to become the world's dominant power in all domains, but we missed it. Now, we're presented with the tab, it's extravagantly enormous, and we have no choice but foot it.
The target of 3% of GDP at the end of the next parliamentary term, which I have translated as 2032 pending further information, is still massively insufficient. Not just because Russia is already spending twice that and thrice next year, but because we are really bad at using it properly. For once, I have to agree with Owen Jones when he said that there is enormous wastage in defence spending. Probably because the British military, especially the Royal Navy, are shite at project management and sometimes even at the basic technicalities. That's how we got exploding battlecruisers, aluminium frigates that melt when hit, destroyers with engines that don't work in warm water and leaky aircraft carriers. Or how it takes us six years to build our most recent destroyers, while Japan needs only three to build larger and more capable ones. We have to do better next time, but what we know of the next generation of destroyers, the Type 83, gives us no reason to be optimistic. For one major reason, its timeline definitely rules out any joint European project for the rest of the century, or until the Russian invasion, whichever comes first. And it's bound to be massively over budget and schedule anyway, innit? That's not the direction to take if we really want to support Ukraine "as long as it takes and by any means necessary". Have to do better than that, and do it sooner.
As the President of Ukraine, I am not going to accept any Russian ultimatums. But we need security guarantees. I am protecting Ukraine. I can’t sell it away. I can’t sell our state.
(Volodymyr Zelenskyy)
© Jon Anderson, Steve Howe, 1972
To start, Europe must rid itself of the dangerous illusion that it is weak and stop acting like it.
(Sanna Marin, 19 February 2025)
Keir Starmer also has to be clear about sanctions against Russia and Belarus, as it is more and more painfully obvious that Donald Trump will lift at least part of the American sanctions very soon. Not just to appease his new BFF at the Kremlin, but also to please the MAGA oligarchs who are driven by nothing but opportunities for instant profit. This shifts the debate away form the efficiency of the sanctions, which is kind of a moot point as Vladimir Putin himself has had to acknowledge that they are indeed contributing to the degrading state of the Russian economy. It now becomes more a matter of political expediency, whether or not sanctions should still be used as a way to force Russia to adopt a more conciliatory attitude. YouGov's polling should strengthen Keir Starmer's resolve to still use that weapon, as support has increased for both options submitted to the British public.
The tricky part is that the UK could find itself on a collision course with the USA's strategy, which is now unclear as Donald Trump is embroiled in a debate with himself. One half of him thinks that he should sanction Putin again, whose instant aggressive reaction to the USA suspending operational help to Ukraine seems to have pissed off the White House. But the other half thinks that he would have done the same thing as Putin, just because he is willing to accommodate more Russian war crimes to send messages to Zelenskyy and satisfy his very personal grudge against him. But this should not determine British policy, unless we massively contradict our pledges of unwavering support for Ukraine. The detail of the most recent YouGov poll shows that Starmer has every reason to stand firm on sanctions as he benefits from a trans-partisan consensus, even from Reform UK voters.
The British attitude to the continuation, or the extension, of sanctions, also matters if you factor in support for them in continental Europe. YouGov have also updated their relevant pan-European polling this month, oddly excluding Germany from some of the key questions this time. We thusly won't know how Germans feel about sanctions this week, but we do know that the British public show far more resolve that the French, Italians and Spaniards. This is useful for Starmer, as an incentive to resist American pressure, if Trump finally makes up his mind and decides it is best to offer Putin even more concessions. Starmer needs to stand his ground here, because of the ricochet effect on the European Union, where this very issue is bound to be raised sooner or later. Probably not by Putin's representatives Hungary and Slovakia, who are already not enforcing any sanction anyway. But more plausibly by the Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who is ambivalent between her support for Ukraine, even suggesting to offer them NATO protection without membership, and her close proximity with Donald Trump. British support could offset this by offering more credibility to those within the EU who support the continuation of sanctions, like Emmanuel Macron or Friedrich Merz.
Now I can't leave you without mentioning summat from the country of my birth, that will surely prove to be hugely significant in the very near future. I guess you didn't watch Emmanuel Macron's televised address on the night of the 4th. I did, to get his exact words directly, before the British press interpreted and twisted them. And here you have it, complete with instant translation. Formally, it was an address to the people of France, but there is no doubt he was actually talking to three people sat a long way from Paris. Zelenskyy, Putin, Trump. Mostly Trump, actually, doing what others can't or won't do, because France owes nothing to the USA, has no special relationship with the USA, and cannot be blackmailed by the USA. The first key point was that Russia is a threat and will not stop at Ukraine, and on that I trust Manny more than Shitweasel Talcum X. Then came "the future of Europe cannot be decided in Moscow or Washington", a perfect appropriation of the Gaullist legacy of times past, and a clear message to Putin and Putin... oops, sorry... Trump and Putin. And what was really the best bit, to be played on a loop, "I want to believe that the United States will stand by our side, but we have to be ready for that not to be the case". That's the bit the others can't say out loud, but Manny is not feart of giving the Orange Baboon the finger deep up his fat arse. There's no "fool me once, fool me twice" equivocation here, it's fucking plain and simple, "by the way, Donnie, I don't fucking trust you". Guess Manny will have his Starlink connection cut overnight now. For all his flaws, and they are a-plenty, he talked like a true statesman here. Maybe it's not such a bad thing, all things considered, if he pushes Starmer off the spotlight and takes the leadership of the European Resistance. De Gaulle too was a fucking pain in the arse, after all.
Why not create a military coalition between Russia and America and divide Europe? Who needs it? I think it's a great idea. We'll set up our bases, without a hitch, at the usual points. Berlin, Paris, as in 1814.
(Sergey Soloviev, 19 February 2025)
© Jon Anderson, Bill Bruford, Steve Howe, Chris Squire, 1972
The best version ever recorded of the best prog rock song ever written
Слава Україні!
No comments:
Post a Comment