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Canada Standard
27-05-2025
- Politics
- Canada Standard
Israel and Ukraine fighting proxy wars for the West UK Tory leader
Kemi Badenoch has said Kiev is fighting Russia on behalf of Western Europe, and Israels war against Hamas serves Londons interests Israel's military operation against Hamas is a "proxy war" being waged on behalf of the UK, British Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has claimed. In an interview with Sky News on Sunday, Badenoch commented on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's recent claim that the UK, France, and Canada are on "the wrong side of humanity" for trying to pressure his country to end its campaign in the Palestinian enclave. She dismissed the widely held belief that Israel's actions in Gaza amount to genocide, arguing that the brutal military campaign, initially against Hamas, that has killed at least 60,000 Palestinians, is both justified and serves the interests of the UK. "Who funds Hamas? Iran - an enemy of this country. Israel is fighting a proxy war on behalf of the UK," Badenoch claimed. The Ukraine conflict is similarly a proxy war against Russia, being waged on behalf of Western Europe, she added. The Russian Embassy in London later reposted a clip of Badenoch's interview, saying the Conservative leader has "finally called a spade a spade." "Ukraine is indeed fighting a proxy-war against Russia on behalf of Western interests. The illegitimate Kiev regime, created, financed and armed by the West, has been at it since 2014," the embassy wrote on Facebook. Badenoch's own party was responsible for telling the Ukrainians to "keep fighting" when a potential peace settlement was on the verge of being signed in 2022, the statement noted. "The result has been an unmitigated disaster for Ukraine and its people, as well as an unprecedented security crisis in Europe." READ MORE: Ukraine will have to pay for new Patriots WaPo In March, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio made a similar admission when he said the Ukraine conflict is in fact a "proxy war between nuclear powers - the United States, helping Ukraine - and Russia." Moscow has repeatedly described the hostilities as a Western-led proxy war against Russia in which Ukrainians are being used as "cannon fodder." Russian officials have argued that the US and other Western powers intentionally escalated tensions in the region by disregarding Russia's national security concerns over NATO expansion in Eastern Europe and Ukraine's potential admission into the military bloc. Earlier this month, President Vladimir Putin said Russia is currently standing alone against the Collective West and is locked in an "existential war." (
Bloomberg
19-03-2025
- Politics
- Bloomberg
The British Right Is in Oddly Fine Fettle
The British Conservative Party is in an odd state. A conference on Monday on 'remaking Conservatism,' put on by Margaret Thatcher's favorite think tank, the Centre for Policy Studies, attracted more than 300 people, filling London's Guildhall. The speakers, who included the leader of the opposition, Kemi Badenoch, and the president of the Madrid region, Isabel Diaz Ayuso, were often upbeat. The room even united in joy when a couple of protestors who tried to disrupt Badenoch's speech were thrown out. It all had the feeling of a party waiting for power rather than one that just received the worst drubbing in its electoral history. The Conservative Party's fortunes have only deteriorated since that defeat. The Tories are in danger of being squeezed between a Labour Party that is moving sharply to the right, particularly on immigration and welfare reform, and a Reform Party that offers red meat to right-of-center voters. A recent poll asking who would make the best prime minister put the leader of Reform, Nigel Farage, ahead in 335 seats, the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, ahead in 291 seats, and Badenoch ahead in just six.
Yahoo
20-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
D*** Pics, Orgies and KGB Honeytraps: Truth About the U.K.'s Last Conservative Government
The reputation of the British Conservative Party as an unlikely redoubt of sex-mad libertines has been burnished after a series of lurid revelations by a senior lawmaker in The Times of London. Highlights include a member of parliament getting rescued at 4 a.m. from the clutches of 12 naked women in a brothel they had been taken to by KGB agents, and a special adviser to the government going to an orgy and 'taking a crap on another person's head.' The extraordinary revelations are contained in the unputdownable memoir of Simon Hart, who served as chief whip under the ill-starred Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who suffered a record defeat in the 2024 U.K. elections. Government whips are responsible for enforcing party discipline and, as such, are traditionally privy to jaw-dropping political gossip. Individual politicians also sometimes turn to whips as a last resort to extract them from sticky situations. Hart's book Ungovernable portrays a chaotic and ill-disciplined governing party, with individuals spiraling out of control as it approaches its inevitable doom. Hart oversaw a near-record 15 Conservative Members of Parliament resign, defect, or have the whip suspended, including Matt Hancock, a senior lawmaker who was suspended for making an unauthorized appearance on the TV reality show I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here. However it is the sexual peccadilloes of his colleagues which have inevitably attracted the most attention. In one incident, Hart recounts how a 'House employee' [as in the House of Commons] was fired after it emerged they had gone 'to a party dressed as [notorious sex offender] Jimmy Savile and ended up having sex with a blow-up doll.' On another occasion, one of Hart's team, described as a 'younger whip,' turns up to work 'with a broken rib, apparently the result of an energetic night with his new girlfriend.' Hart comments, 'Oh, to be young again!' Hart also gives an insight into how the party checks new candidates standing for election, saying that 'a fair few fail the vetting process' for sending 'd--- pictures.' He adds that one wannabe candidate claimed 'that a photo of his penis had been sent in error to a contact, rather than his doctor as intended.' The excuse was not believed and the person was not selected. He also describes how politicians are actively warned to be on the lookout for honeytraps, and says he received a security brief advising him and his team that on no account should they 'engage in a chat with any unusually beautiful Chinese women (or men, I guess).' In this context, one minister tells them, 'If you think you are punching above your weight, ask yourself why.' Prime Minister Sunak was voted out of Downing Street on July 5, 2024, after leading the Conservatives to an historic defeat at the hands of Labour's Keir Starmer.
New York Times
19-02-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
With Trump's Prostration to Putin, Expect a More Dangerous World
I'm not sure most Americans appreciate the monumental damage President Trump is doing to the post-World War II order that is the wellspring of American global leadership and affluence. He's shattering it. He's making the world more dangerous. He's siding with an alleged war criminal, President Vladimir Putin of Russia, and poisoning relations with longtime U.S. allies. The trans-Atlantic alliance is unraveling. 'We have Trump and his oligarchy of ignorant shoe shiners vandalizing the network of organizations, agreements and values — largely put in place by America since the Second World War — which have given most of us, including America, on the whole an extraordinary degree of peace and prosperity,' Chris Patten, the former British Conservative Party chairman and European foreign affairs chief, told me. Patten's tough language is a reflection of the distress in Europe, for he is a lifelong Americanophile, and now, as Lord Patten of Barnes, a model of British dignity and restraint. He added, 'I love America and was once happy to regard its president as leader of the free world. Not any longer. Where are the American values that I used to admire?' I wish I knew what to tell him. But this is a humiliating month to be an American. When I was a young reporter, we referred to countries like Poland and Romania as Soviet satellites; now Trump is doing Putin's bidding and seems determined to put the United States in the Russian orbit. Trump administration officials cozied up to Russian officials in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, this week over 'a lot of jokes,' as one of the Russians put it. The two sides discussed Ukraine, and thus Europe's future, while excluding both the Ukrainians and the Europeans. There is talk of adopting Russia's position on Ukraine and dropping sanctions against Moscow. This would be grotesque. I've covered the war in Ukraine, visited Russian torture chambers and interviewed Ukrainian children trafficked into Russia by the invaders. If only Trump and his aides had a fraction of the steel of one Ukrainian woman I interviewed in 2022, Alla Kuznietsova, who, even when subjected to electric shocks, beatings with cables and repeated rapes by Russian interrogators, refused to yield to them. 'We are grateful to Americans, but we just ask, please don't leave us halfway,' she told me then. 'Don't leave us alone.' Yet now Trump has collapsed and seems ready to abandon heroes like her. What we've seen in the last 10 days from American officials is appeasement of the most craven kind. As Neville Chamberlain's ghost watched, Vice President JD Vance lit into Europeans in a speech in Munich and then met the leader of an extremist right-wing party, the Alternative for Germany, which many Germans see as descended from Nazism. Some of its members have downplayed the Holocaust, employed Nazi slogans and allegedly plotted to overthrow the government. It is difficult to avoid the impression that the Trump administration is working to undermine democracy not only at home but also in Europe. As The Economist noted, what we've seen is 'Donald Trump's assault on Europe.' Trump is widely expected to pull some troops out of Europe. And NATO looks more and more hollow; does anyone really think that if Russia dispatched little green men to seize Latvian villages, Trump would dispatch troops under NATO's Article 5? It's at least as likely that he would ask Putin about putting up a Trump Hotel there. 'European leaders are waking up to the fact that not only is the U.S. abandoning Ukraine, but that the U.S. represents a threat to the future of democracy and freedom in Europe,' wrote Phillips O'Brien, an international relations scholar at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain put it this way: 'We're facing a generational challenge.' In fairness, Trump is right on a basic point: Europe should contribute much more to its own defense, rather than free-riding on American taxpayers. Europe is populous enough and rich enough that it could manage Russia on its own, but instead of managing a transition, Trump is close to switching sides. Trump says of the Ukraine war that Ukraine 'should have never started it' — when of course Ukraine didn't start anything. Trump might as well say that a mugging victim shouldn't have punched the attacker's fist with his nose. The Trump administration has lately sided with Moscow on one issue after another: Ukraine must cede territory, can't join NATO and should hold new elections just as Russia insists. (Meanwhile, there's no call for Russia to hold elections.) Trump even suggested that Russia should be readmitted to the Group of 7. In a falsehood-filled rant on Truth Social on Wednesday, Trump went further. He denounced Ukraine's elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, as a 'dictator' who had squandered money and had 'better move fast or he is not going to have a country left.' Trump's post had the tone of statements from the Kremlin. Trump embraced these positions of Putin without apparently negotiating much in return. Diplomacy is normally about give and take, but — as happens so often when Trump interacts with Putin — Trump has been all give. The Trump approach to international relations buttresses Russia in other ways. His demands for territory from Panama, Greenland and Canada reinforce the Russian position that superpowers can grab whatever they want. His sanctioning of the International Criminal Court and calls for the forced removal of Gazans mark an abandonment of the rules-based international order that amplified American soft power. Trump is making Putin a winner. Gabrielius Landsbergis, a former foreign minister of Lithuania, warns that if Trump continues to back Russia and Europe fails to step up, then 'threats to European security will grow immensely. Putin will get braver, meaning more war in Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and beyond.' The danger goes beyond Europe. Perhaps the greatest international relations nightmare in the coming years would be a war between the United States and China, beginning near Taiwan or in the South China Sea. President Joe Biden deterred Chinese aggression by working closely with allies in Asia and making it obvious that Russia was paying a steep price for its invasion of Ukraine. If Trump instead lets Russia win and also frays relations with our allies, then China is more likely to move on Taiwan. 'What awful times,' Patten told me. The post-World War II era has been a remarkable historical epoch of eight decades of prosperity and progress. But now, as the British foreign secretary remarked in August 1914, 'the lamps are going out all over Europe,' and we must prepare for a more dangerous world.
