Boris Johnson has just got up in the Commons to announce Britain’s response to the ongoing Ukraine crisis. Vladimir Putin last night ordered troops into two breakaway regions of eastern Ukraine run by Moscow-backed separatists, prompting fears that the balloon is about to go up. There are a lot of grim faces in Parliament today as MPs meet to ponder the future of the region. Gulp.
Johnson told the House that he was announcing sanctions against five Russian banks – Rossiya, IS Bank, General Bank, Promsvyazbank and the Black Sea Bank – and three Russian high net-worth individuals. While many across Parliament want the PM to go further, it’s by no means the worst response to the ongoing situation in the Baltic. Mr S has had some fun rounding up the crankiest, most craven and downright disturbing reactions to Russia’s actions in Ukraine thus far…
1. Young Labour
Keir Starmer may be acting hawkish on Russia but his party’s youth wing is far from it. Even last night, as Russian troops mustered to march into Eastern Ukraine, Young Labour’s chair Jess Barnard went on the BBC to push for the West to ‘negotiate’ the country’s region. She implied that Putin’s actions did not yet amount to an invasion, saying that ‘If you are accepting that you can’t negotiate and that you think an invasion is inevitable then you’re essentially accepting that hundreds of thousands of people die’ – ignoring, of course, the responsibility for who exactly is pushing for an invasion.
Young Labour also claimed that ‘we are especially concerned in this instance to see Keir Starmer pushing not only for further engagement with NATO, but celebrating it’ as ‘NATOs acts of aggression both historical and present are a threat to all of our safety.’ Has the party really changed from the bad old days of Jezza Corbyn?
2. Kamala Harris
You know you’re in trouble when Kamala Harris comes to town. The gaffe-prone US Vice President has handled the Ukraine crisis with her trademark tact and diplomacy by unleashing a veritable word salad when she rocked up at the Munich Security Conference to discuss the ongoing situation. In response to a question about how the Biden administration sees the situation’s ‘endgame’ playing out, a seemingly-unprepared Harris said:
I mean, listen, guys, we’re talking about the potential for war in Europe. I mean, let’s really take a moment to understand the significance of what we’re talking about. It’s been over 70 years. And through those 70 years… there has been peace and security. We are talking about the real possibility of war in Europe.
Such comments do of course ignore the Yugoslavian Civil War, Russia’s actions in Georgia and the Crimea and, er, the Cold War which lasted more than 40 years up until the beginning of the 1990s.
3. Stop the War Coalition
Ah, Stop the War – the campaign group which never met an anti-Western antagonist it didn’t like. The group has promoted a number of ridiculously one-sided statements in recent weeks, suggesting equidistance between Russia and Ukraine. One such ‘open letter’ argues that that it is ‘the policies of the British government which have poured oil on the fire throughout this episode’ – quite a claim when one side has 165,000 troops on the Ukrainian border and has occupied part of the other country for the last eight years. Not so much useful idiots as just, simply, idiots.
4. Craig Murray
The former British ambassador turned SNP pin-up has been at it again. Murray was found to be in contempt of court last year after writing about Alex Salmond’s trial in spite of a court order forbidding publication of the names of women who had testified against the former First Minister. And now the crankmeister-general, who suggested the Israeli security services were behind the Salisbury poisonings, has compared the intimidation of Ukraine to the western efforts to stop ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. He wrote on Twitter:
I should be very interested if any of the mainstream media journalists going war crazy today, can explain to me the difference in international law between what Russia is doing in Donbass and what NATO did in Kosovo.
Cue a deluge of respondents telling the divorced sexagenarian why he is wrong.
5. Jeremy Corbyn
No list of cranks, cronies and comrades would be complete without the Magic Grandpa himself. Jeremy Corbyn is doing his level best to ensure he never regains the Labour whip, asking in the House of Commons yesterday if Ben Wallace would support a ‘reduction in the NATO presence on the border’ to ‘secure peace in the region’ – implying that Britain is, somehow, responsible for 165,000 Russian troops on the border.
His vanity cause – sorry, pressure group – the Peace and Justice Project has gone even further, sharing a Stop the War petition on Twitter urging ‘the entire anti-war movement to unite on the basis of challenging the British government’s aggressive posturing and direct its campaigning to that end above all.’ Talk about gaslighting.
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