It will take a missile hitting the BBC to shake the cosy stupidity of UK politics

War changes everything

Illustration from a 2021 Daily Mail campaign against defence cuts

Europe is living through the most dangerous moment since the end of the Cold War in 1989. It may be the most dangerous moment since Franklin D. Roosevelt agreed with Winston Churchill to commit the United States to the defence of Europe in 1941.

The American alliance is now in serious doubt. And Europe, which has enjoyed a free ride on the back of US power since the end of the Second World War, could soon be on its own. Russia has invaded Ukraine and its propagandists routinely threaten to take the war to the rest of Europe. If Donald Trump wins the US presidential election, America won’t be interested in intervening.

As Trump is already making clear.

The French European Commissioner Thierry Breton described on Tuesday how he witnessed a confrontation between Trump and the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at the Davos meeting of the powerful in 2020.

“You need to understand that if Europe is under attack we will never come to help you and to support you," Trump told her. "By the way, NATO is dead, and we will leave, we will quit NATO”.

Trump concluded by presenting her with a bill for American defence services. “You owe me $400 billion, because you didn’t pay, you Germans, what you had to pay for defense.” (I loved the narcissistic “me” in that outburst. Germans owed Trump personally, not the American taxpayer.)

If Trump wins, as he well might, there is no way that the US will arm Ukraine or threaten war if Russia thinks of attacking the Baltic States or Poland. Republicans in Congress are showing us as much by their willingness to block President Biden’s plans to send aid to Ukraine.

Now no one denies that their hatred of the Democrats is so great that anything Biden supports they will oppose. And you only have to watch Tucker Carson’s praise for Putin to notice the thrill among some on the US far right at seeing their hero persecuting Russia’s gays and liberals.

Yet, horrible though Europeans may find it to admit, there is a serious argument for America pulling back from Europe and concentrating on China. Just because Donald Trump says something does not mean that it is wrong. And even if Trump loses, his ideas may still triumph.

As US military and manufacturing power declines, Americans have every right to ask why they should be the world’s policeman.  

As I write, US warships are trying to keep the Suez Canal open. An American isolationist could say that the US does not need Middle Eastern oil; the shale revolution means the US has its own supplies. As pertinently, the main beneficiary of free trade through the canal is America’s rival China, which wants the sea lanes open so it can ship its goods to Europe.

Why shouldn’t the Europeans or the Chinese fight the Houthis, and earn the loathing of Arab supporters of Palestine? Why shouldn’t the Egyptians? It’s their canal, after all.

If Trump wins, we know what the answer to these questions will be.

Or, rather, we ought to know, but somehow we don’t.  The start of 2024 here in the UK is like the start of 1914. Everything carries on as normal with little understanding of how easily complacent assumptions can fall apart

Listening to the star political interviewers I think it will take a Russian missile hit on Broadcasting House to make them understand what world they are living in.

The standard questions BBC, ITV and Sky interviewers ask are the same questions they asked 30 years ago.

If left-wing politicians are in the studio, they  want to know

Will Labour commit to not raising income tax?

Will Labour promise to match Tory spending cuts?

Will Labour absolutely promise not to even think  of raising any other taxes that might harm an overpaid BBC  presenter on a six-figure salary with a side hustle on the corporate –speaking circuit?

If they are questioning Conservatives they ask

How will you pay for the National Health Service?

Will you reverse this mean withdrawal of funding or that cruel benefit cut?

Perhaps I am doing the BBC and Sky journalists a disservice. But I have not heard one ask how we will cope with the huge increase in military spending we are likely to need and the spending cuts and tax rises it will require. They just trundle down the same worn out tracks, asking the same worn out questions, as if nothing ever changes.

Here is what they, and we, ought to be worrying about.