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Telegraph
07-05-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Starmer's ‘thought police' turning off working class voters, says Labour lord
In his speech on Wednesday, he claimed Labour has isolated its core voter base by dismissing ordinary people who are simply 'in pain' by branding them as 'far-Right' or racist. He called for a 'cultural change' targeting the 'thought policing' of 'acceptable discourse' in order to win back the working class. 'It's been the case for the last 20 to 30 years that I would say that Labour culture has been a hostile environment for working-class people, because if you actually say what you think, you get condemned,' Lord Glasman said. 'And the inability to express the grief ... this is a huge part of the story, is that we see people in pain, and we call them far-Right or populists or nativists or racists or sexists, but no, they're just speaking.' He added: 'Obviously, the first part of the argument is that if we're a patriotic party that's pro-industry, pro-Army, pro-police, we will attract working-class support hugely. 'But there's got to be a cultural change where this thought policing of what is acceptable discourse, the power of HR departments, has got to be targeted ... to create a political space once more, in which the people who created our movement are allowed to speak.' He suggested that even Ernest Bevin, the former Labour foreign secretary, would be forbidden from standing for the party today because he would not be considered 'progressive' enough. A 'working-class insurrection' Last year's general election saw Labour win back dozens of 'Red Wall' seats that backed Boris Johnson to 'Get Brexit Done' in 2019. But any hopes of a working-class revival were dashed at the local elections on May 4, where Reform made huge gains in core Labour heartlands such as Durham and pipped Sir Keir to the post in Runcorn and Helsby. Lord Glasman said the 'only way' for Labour to get the better of Reform, which has declared itself as the new 'party of the working class', is to lead an 'insurrection' of his own. 'As Leonard Cohen says, everybody knows. Reform is a working-class insurrection against the progressive ruling class, and the only way to counter it is for the Labour Government to lead the insurrection,' he said. 'To celebrate the collapse of the era of globalisation, to embrace the space of Brexit, the renewal of the Commonwealth, the restoration of vocation, the primacy of Parliament, the integrity of our peace, the effectiveness of our Armed Forces, the protection of our borders, and the resurrection of Labour as the tribute of the working class.' 'Stain' on the political class Lord Glasman's 'Blue Labour' group, which leans Left on the economy but Right on social issues, has previously urged Sir Keir to go further on grooming gangs by launching a national inquiry into the scandal. On Wednesday, the Labour peer suggested perpetrators of historic child sex abuse should face show trials, referring to the purges of political dissidents carried out by the Soviet Union. 'Rape gangs systematically preying on young girls is what they call bang out of order. It is an abomination that must be purged from the body politic,' he said. 'The fact that it has been considered as s--- happens, rather than out of order, is a stain on me and the entire political class. It is time to resurrect more traditions from socialism, the purge and the show trial. 'The difference being that the accused in this case are not, by definition, innocent. It is a festering wound, it is still going on and it has not been stopped. The role of the televised trial is to witness the reason why it had not been stopped.' Dominant, not hegemonic Lord Glasman also compared the current Labour Government to the Soviet Union under Leonid Brezhnev, who led the Communist Party during part of the Cold War. 'When you win less than 34 per cent of the vote and gain 71 per cent of the seats in Parliament, it is more reminiscent of the Soviet Union under Brezhnev than the renewal of social democracy. 'The party is dominant, but it is not hegemonic.'
Yahoo
14-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Opinion - The UK is reassessing its nuclear deterrent because of Trump
The first seven weeks of President Trump's second term have unbalanced fundamental strategic assumptions that the United Kingdom and Europe have relied on for decades. It is too early to say with confidence whether these are passing tremors or a more lasting realignment, but we are living in a different world from the one that existed before Jan. 20, and we will be doing so for some time. These geopolitical shifts have been acutely unsettling for Britain. There is a lot of cant about the 'special relationship' between the U.S. and the U.K., which has never been a straightforward bond, nor one of equals. Nevertheless, for more than 80 years, it represented a basic connection from which much else could flow. Suddenly, in 2025, political, diplomatic and military leaders in London are wondering if they can make any assumptions at all. One of the most shocking conversations that can now be heard, even if only in whispers and corners, is about the U.K.'s strategic nuclear deterrent. When the British government decided in 1946 and 1947 to develop its own atomic bomb, the foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, arriving late to a cabinet committee meeting, went to the heart of the issue. 'We've got to have this thing,' Bevin said, referring to the bomb. 'I don't mind it for myself, but I don't want any other foreign secretary of this country to be talked at, or to, by the secretary of state of the United States as I just have in my discussions with Mr. [James F.] Byrnes. We've got to have this thing over here, whatever it costs. We've got to have the bloody Union Jack on top of it.' Cynics will tell you that Britain's nuclear weapons are not independent in practice and that America could effectively veto their use. It is a nuanced picture: The Royal Navy has four Vanguard-class nuclear-powered submarines, each capable of carrying 16 Trident ballistic missiles; each missile can have up to eight nuclear warheads (though the U.K. has only around 225 warheads in total). The submarines, missiles and warheads are all being replaced over the coming years. The Vanguard-class boats, like their eventual successor the Dreadnought class, are built in the U.K., as are the warheads. The Royal Navy crews are wholly independent and under the authority of the British government, and each boat carries handwritten instructions to the captain from the prime minister in case the very worst happens. The warheads are designed and manufactured by the Atomic Weapons Establishment, which is ultimately owned by the Ministry of Defence. On the other hand, Lockheed Martin makes the Trident missiles, and they are stored and maintained communally with those for the U.S. Navy's Ohio-class submarines at Kings Bay in Georgia. The new Dreadnought-class boats will share a missile compartment design with the American Columbia-class, and the two countries are developing their new warheads in parallel. So the British nuclear deterrent at least relies on American support; if that were for any reason withdrawn, Britain would be seriously compromised. For nearly 70 years, this interdependence gave no cause for concern. The U.S. and Britain signed a mutual defense agreement on nuclear weapons in 1958 — Harold Macmillan, the prime minister who negotiated the treaty with President Dwight Eisenhower, called it 'the Great Prize' — that underpinned the bilateral relationship and allowed the U.K. to punch above its weight globally. There is no immediate reason to think that Trump might seek to disrupt the long-standing alliance. Yet last week, former British ambassador to Washington David Manning told a House of Lords committee that American withdrawal from the relationship or from NATO is no longer 'inconceivable.' 'I think we now have to address them,' he said. 'It doesn't mean that they will happen, but I think they are on the table.' Trump's suspension of military aid and intelligence-sharing with Ukraine has been a wake-up call. The president showed no hesitation in using his military leverage to impose his will. It was not just stopping supplies of arms and equipment — Ukraine lost access to real-time satellite images and signals data, severely limiting its targeting and early warning capabilities. Its U.S.-supplied missile systems simply stopped working. Britain's relationship with the U.S. is, of course, much closer and of longer standing than Washington's bond with Kyiv. Nevertheless, two things are clear. The first is that some of the U.K.'s most important defense capabilities — including the nuclear deterrent, the F-35 Lightning fighter aircraft and the Five Eyes intelligence alliance — are almost impossible to disentangle from the U.S. The second is that, as far as Trump is concerned, history is bunk. Every day, every hour is its own miniature Year Zero, and 70 years of cooperation will mean nothing if the president sees a way to get what he wants. There are some hard yards of demanding diplomacy ahead, and a rupture between Washington and London that could devastate Britain's military power and reach is neither imminent nor likely. But for the first time in generations, it is not inconceivable. Eliot Wilson is a freelance writer on politics and international affairs and the co-founder of Pivot Point Group. He was senior official in the U.K. House of Commons from 2005 to 2016, including serving as a clerk of the Defence Committee and secretary of the U.K. delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
14-03-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
The UK is reassessing its nuclear deterrent because of Trump
The first seven weeks of President Trump's second term have unbalanced fundamental strategic assumptions that the United Kingdom and Europe have relied on for decades. It is too early to say with confidence whether these are passing tremors or a more lasting realignment, but we are living in a different world from the one that existed before Jan. 20, and we will be doing so for some time. These geopolitical shifts have been acutely unsettling for Britain. There is a lot of cant about the 'special relationship' between the U.S. and the U.K., which has never been a straightforward bond, nor one of equals. Nevertheless, for more than 80 years, it represented a basic connection from which much else could flow. Suddenly, in 2025, political, diplomatic and military leaders in London are wondering if they can make any assumptions at all. One of the most shocking conversations that can now be heard, even if only in whispers and corners, is about the U.K.'s strategic nuclear deterrent. When the British government decided in 1946 and 1947 to develop its own atomic bomb, the foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, arriving late to a cabinet committee meeting, went to the heart of the issue. 'We've got to have this thing,' Bevin said, referring to the bomb. 'I don't mind it for myself, but I don't want any other foreign secretary of this country to be talked at, or to, by the secretary of state of the United States as I just have in my discussions with Mr. [James F.] Byrnes. We've got to have this thing over here, whatever it costs. We've got to have the bloody Union Jack on top of it.' Cynics will tell you that Britain's nuclear weapons are not independent in practice and that America could effectively veto their use. It is a nuanced picture: The Royal Navy has four Vanguard-class nuclear-powered submarines, each capable of carrying 16 Trident ballistic missiles; each missile can have up to eight nuclear warheads (though the U.K. has only around 225 warheads in total). The submarines, missiles and warheads are all being replaced over the coming years. The Vanguard-class boats, like their eventual successor the Dreadnought class, are built in the U.K., as are the warheads. The Royal Navy crews are wholly independent and under the authority of the British government, and each boat carries handwritten instructions to the captain from the prime minister in case the very worst happens. The warheads are designed and manufactured by the Atomic Weapons Establishment, which is ultimately owned by the Ministry of Defence. On the other hand, Lockheed Martin makes the Trident missiles, and they are stored and maintained communally with those for the U.S. Navy's Ohio-class submarines at Kings Bay in Georgia. The new Dreadnought-class boats will share a missile compartment design with the American Columbia-class, and the two countries are developing their new warheads in parallel. So the British nuclear deterrent at least relies on American support; if that were for any reason withdrawn, Britain would be seriously compromised. For nearly 70 years, this interdependence gave no cause for concern. The U.S. and Britain signed a mutual defense agreement on nuclear weapons in 1958 — Harold Macmillan, the prime minister who negotiated the treaty with President Dwight Eisenhower, called it 'the Great Prize' — that underpinned the bilateral relationship and allowed the U.K. to punch above its weight globally. There is no immediate reason to think that Trump might seek to disrupt the long-standing alliance. Yet last week, a former British ambassador to Washington David Manning told a House of Lords committee that American withdrawal from the relationship or from NATO is no longer 'inconceivable.' 'I think we now have to address them,' he said. 'It doesn't mean that they will happen, but I think they are on the table.' Trump's suspension of military aid and intelligence-sharing with Ukraine has been a wake-up call. The president showed no hesitation in using his military leverage to impose his will. It was not just stopping supplies of arms and equipment — Ukraine lost access to real-time satellite images and signals data, severely limiting its targeting and early warning capabilities. Its U.S.-supplied missile systems simply stopped working. Britain's relationship with the U.S. is, of course, much closer and of longer standing than Washington's bond with Kyiv. Nevertheless, two things are clear. The first is that some of the U.K.'s most important defense capabilities — including the nuclear deterrent, the F-35 Lightning fighter aircraft and the Five Eyes intelligence alliance — are almost impossible to disentangle from the U.S. The second is that, as far as Trump is concerned, history is bunk. Every day, every hour is its own miniature Year Zero, and 70 years of cooperation will mean nothing if the president sees a way to get what he wants. There are some hard yards of demanding diplomacy ahead, and a rupture between Washington and London that could devastate Britain's military power and reach is neither imminent nor likely. But for the first time in generations, it is not inconceivable. Eliot Wilson is a freelance writer on politics and international affairs and the co-founder of Pivot Point Group. He was senior official in the U.K. House of Commons from 2005 to 2016, including serving as a clerk of the Defence Committee and secretary of the U.K. delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.
New European
26-02-2025
- Politics
- New European
The end of Nato... and a new beginning
'I am very curious to see how we are heading towards the Nato summit at the end of June,' he said. 'Whether we will still be talking about Nato in its current form or whether we will have to establish an independent European defence capability much more quickly.' This week, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation has never looked closer to death. To make sense of what is unfolding, we need to look back to its birth. Contrary to critics' claims, Nato was not spawned by America in a bid to dominate the globe. Its true father was a very different figure: a man who had once created Britain's Transport and General Workers' Union. Ernest Bevin's time as a trade unionist had made him a ferocious anti-communist. As Labour foreign secretary from 1945, he watched the USSR's colonisation of Eastern Europe and its backing of communist rebels, particularly in Greece, with mounting alarm. It was vital, he decided, to coax the Americans to stay in Europe. Children watch an RAF aircraft during the Soviet blockade of Berlin, 1948 Lord Ismay, secretary general of Nato, inspects Portuguese troops in 1954 Ernest Bevin signs the treaty creating Nato in Washington, April 4, 1949 The treaty was signed by Belgium, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and the US Photos: Hulton-Deutsch/Corbis; Bettmann ; AFP; Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Like Britain, the US was occupying defeated Germany, but the idea that it might stay in Europe jarred against America's foundational worldview. The way to overcome this was the new, shared fear of Soviet expansionism. With Britain's economy exhausted, Bevin persuaded the US to take the strain in resisting communism in Greece and Turkey, in line with the emerging US doctrine of 'containment'. In January 1948, he pushed for a 'western union'. Weeks later, communists seized power in Czechoslovakia. Bevin told the US ambassador a joint military strategy was vital: the next two months might be 'the last chance of saving the west'. After Bevin made the same case to US secretary of state George Marshall, the president, Harry Truman, agreed to talks. That June, the Soviets blockaded West Berlin, triggering the cold war's first great crisis. As a huge operation got under way to feed two million people by airlift, the North Atlantic Treaty took shape. By spring 1949, Bevin was on BBC radio reassuring listeners that the agreement he was about to sign did not seek to interfere in the Soviet bloc. But it expressed a collective determination to resist 'the right of any power with aggressive intent… to bring us into bondage'. Britain was joined in founding Nato by nine western European states, Canada and, crucially, the US. That autumn, it emerged that Stalin had the Bomb. From there Nato expanded, first gradually, then suddenly. West Germany joined in 1955, triggering the creation of the Warsaw Pact. France left in 1966, not to re-join for decades. It was only later that Nato ballooned. US Marines take part in a Nato naval exercise in Denmark, 1952 An F-15E Strike Eagle takes off on a mission against targets in the Balkans, March 1999 US president Richard Nixon attends a Nato meeting in Belgium, February 24, 1969 Ethnic Albanians greet American Nato troops in Gjilan, Kosovo, June 1999 Photos : FPG/Hulton Archive; Bettmann; Jeffrey Allen ; Ami Vitale/Getty During the cold war, the alliance never fired a shot in anger, but it did in the decade that followed: to maintain a no-fly zone in the Bosnian war, then in its mission to stop Serbia's 'ethnic cleansing' of Kosovar Albanians. More recently, it has even played a role outside Europe. And ever since 1990, it has grown eastward. Russia complains that this broke western leaders' assurances. But the claim that this was imperialist American expansionism is as much of a reversal of the truth as calling Volodymyr Zelensky a dictator. In the early 1990s, a wary Nato viewed the idea of new Eastern European members as destabilising. It was these states themselves that clamoured to be let in. Does anyone still wonder why? Ukraine had wanted to join for years, but had not yet succeeded when Russia invaded. In response, Finland and Sweden rushed to join. This exacerbated the very phenomenon to which Russia objects – the alliance's presence on its border – and made the Baltic a Nato lake to boot. Now, the largest member is turning away. This should not be a surprise; Donald Trump pronounced Nato obsolete in 2017, before walking the comment back. He has long objected, with reason, to the failure of many members to stump up the expected 2% of their GDP. Only 23 of 32 managed it last year, and that was the best ever. No wonder America tires of seeing its taxes go to protect a continent that often attacks it as imperialist. Soldiers from the Royal Welsh Battlegroup in manoeuvres on the Estonian-Latvian border in May 2022 Finnish soldiers take part in a Nato exercise in March 2024 A French soldier keeps watch in 2004 in Afghanistan Photos: Yoray Liberman; Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP; Jeff J Mitchell / Getty If the US withdraws its assistance, can Europe save Ukraine alone? Some estimates give it around six months, partly because of the loss of US intelligence and satellites. As the historian Timothy Garton Ash has pointed out, it would help if the air defence systems Europe has promised Ukraine actually arrived. Chatham House analyst Orysia Lutsevych notes that Kyiv produced 1.5m drones last year, and has dropped its recruiting age to 18. And there are steps Europeans could take swiftly, like sending Ukraine the $150bn it holds in frozen Russian assets. Defence expert Garvan Walshe suggests Norway could donate its profits from energy price spikes caused by the war. But the bigger question is whether Nato could face down a Russian invasion of one of its members without America (the treaty's Article 5 provides sufficient leeway that the US could stay at home). Russia is expanding its military for 'a potential conflict with Nato', according to Estonia's Foreign Intelligence Service. Moscow reportedly has more troops than when it invaded Ukraine, is investing in drone production, and is looking to China for components to avoid sanctions. Some analysts suggest the alliance, which has more troops than Russia, would manage in a short war, but that in time it would sorely miss US capability, not least in sheer scale. Perhaps, as Lutsevych suggests, one solution would simply be to buy the equipment the US once contributed. Underneath all this, there runs the question of the American nuclear umbrella. For the moment, that doesn't seem to be going anywhere, but already Merz is mooting the idea of exploring a German-French-British collaboration to replace it. Whether or not its current form survives, however, the principle driving Nato is not finished. Talk among western members about catching up with the Baltics and Poland and meeting their spending commitments is growing urgent. Since JD Vance's diatribe, Denmark has announced significant increases; the UK is getting there. The accession of Sweden and a heavily armed Finland brings much-needed additional strength. More money will take time to feed through – and is nothing without unity and resolve. But America's nationalistic retreat at least seems to be prompting a return to the collective determination to defend democracy that Bevin proclaimed back in 1949. Phil Tinline is the author of The Death of Consensus: 100 Years of British Political Nightmares; his next book, Ghosts of Iron Mountain: The Hoax that Duped America and Its Sinister Legacy, is out in March
