Watch: JK Rowling’s favourite BBC presenter

To the Beeb, which is once again making the news rather than breaking it. BBC presenter Martine Croxall caught the attention of viewers on Sunday as she read out a news report about a heart health study from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Reading the autocue, the presenter hesitated as she got to a sentence about protecting vulnerable people from extreme weather. It transpires that her script had described those at risk as those with pre-existing health conditions, the elderly and, er, ‘pregnant people’. Rolling her eyes, Croxall corrected the description on air – ‘women’ – before continuing on. Good to see some accuracy on BBC News, eh?

It wasn’t long before the clip became widely circulated on Twitter and caught the eye of renowned author and women’s rights campaigner, JK Rowling, who reposted the footage with the caption: ‘I have a new favourite BBC presenter.’ As reported by the Times, it is understood that the rather baffling wording of ‘pregnant people’ came from the authors of the study rather than the BBC. Indeed the Corporation does not have specific guidance on the use of gender-neutral terms like these, which have become more commonly used as trans rights activists urge people to move away from using ‘gendered language’ when discussing pregnancy and childbirth. It’s a kind of doublethink that not even Orwell would have recognised…

After the Supreme Court backed the biological definition of a woman in April, the Beeb insisted it was assessing how best to implement the judgment. It is not clear quite yet how the ruling will affect the public service broadcaster’s editorial guidelines and style guide – but perhaps Croxall’s correction is a sign the BBC is moving, at long last, in the right direction.

Watch the clip here:

Israel is right to strike Evin prison

Israel announced today that it has launched an unprecedented strike against regime targets in central Tehran, including the notorious Evin prison. Evin is infamous for holding foreign hostages and dual nationals, many of whom are detained by the regime as part of what human rights groups call ‘hostage diplomacy’. It has long been associated with arbitrary detention, torture, forced confessions and inhumane conditions, especially for political prisoners and those accused of spying or threatening national security.

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The facility is run by the Islamic Republic’s Ministry of Intelligence and the Revolutionary Guards, serving as the central site for imprisoning those accused of anti-regime activity. Foreign and dual nationals are often arrested on vague charges such as ‘espionage’ or ‘collaborating with hostile states’. In many cases, these charges are unsubstantiated and used as leverage in international negotiations, as was the case with British Iranian dual national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. Conditions inside Evin are harsh, including solitary confinement, denial of legal access, threats against family members and psychological and physical abuse.

These strikes mark a significant widening of Israel’s military focus, from largely nuclear, ballistic missile, and aerial defence targets, to those which represent the regime’s ideological and repressive core: its prison system, security headquarters, and propaganda symbols. It suggests a strategic intent not merely to deter or disrupt, but to help bring down the theocratic dictatorship that holds both its own people and foreign nationals in a state of constant fear. We should be clear-eyed and unambiguous: this is a welcome development. Israel is striking not only to defend itself but to undermine one of the most repressive systems on Earth. If Evin’s walls are breached and its victims walk free, that will be a day of liberation, for Iranians and for the foreign hostages whose only crime was to enter a country run by sadistic, ruthless hostage-takers.

Earlier in the week it was reported that French President Emmanuel Macron had called on the Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian to release the two French citizens of Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris, denouncing their ‘inhumane detention.’ France, of course, is not alone. Citizens of the United Kingdom, Sweden, Germany, Belgium, Austria, Canada, the United States and others have also been taken by the regime in Iran – journalists, activists, academics, tourists – all swept into a system of arbitrary detention that has become a defining feature of the Islamic theocracy’s foreign relations. Kohler, a literature teacher, and her partner Jacques Paris, a retired mathematics teacher, were arrested in 2022 while visiting Iran as tourists. Authorities loyal to the regime accused them of espionage and broadcast a forced confession video shortly after their arrest. The French government has consistently rejected the charges, insisting the pair were innocent travellers.

After the US struck Iran, Macron called for the most European of demands: ‘de-escalation and maximum restraint’ and ‘a return to the diplomatic path’, but Israel’s latest approach might prove more productive. These detainees remain imprisoned, almost always with little to no contact, enduring conditions their families describe as torture. Their relatives have grown increasingly frustrated, warning that high-level diplomacy has failed to secure even basic humanitarian relief, but Macron’s demands have at least draw overdue attention back to the issue of foreign nationals imprisoned without due process.

Iran’s regime strategy of hostage-taking serves multiple aims. It provides leverage in negotiations. It intimidates dissidents and dual nationals abroad. And it signals to the world that the Islamic Republic does not recognise the basic norms of sovereignty, legality or human dignity. To speak of Iran under the Islamic regime as a state actor among others, merely difficult or obstinate, is to misunderstand it. It is an adversarial power that does not merely reject the rules-based international order, it seeks to undermine and replace it with a logic of fear and submission.

The stories are harrowing. Ahmad Reza Djalali, a Swedish-Iranian academic, sentenced to death on fabricated charges, kept in solitary confinement for years. Olivier Vandecasteele, a Belgian humanitarian, given 28 years following a sham trial. Nahid Taghavi, a German-Iranian women’s rights advocate, whose health is failing in prison. The mutilated corpse of Jamshid ‘Jimmy’ Sharmahd was recently returned to his family after the German‑Iranian journalist and software engineer had been abducted by Islamic Republic agents from Dubai in July 2020, and reportedly held in Evin prison, enduring years of torture and the denial of medical care. He was murdered in October 2024, with neither the USA nor Germany having made appropriate efforts to free him and the other hostages.

The regime in Tehran does not act in isolation. It is emboldened by years of impunity. Western governments have, for too long, attempted to resolve these abductions quietly, bilaterally and often secretively. The impulse is understandable: protect the hostages, avoid provocation, preserve diplomacy. But it has failed. Indeed, it has encouraged more detentions. The Islamic regime in Iran has learned that the West will negotiate, will relent, will pay. And so it has continued.

The nuclear file is not separate from the human rights file. A regime that tortures academics and tourists cannot be trusted with uranium enrichment. A state that broadcasts forced confessions cannot be relied upon to honour international agreements. The Islamic Republic regime poses a strategic and moral threat not just to its neighbours, not just to the West, but to the world.

It is in this light that the boldness of Israel’s ongoing actions must be understood. Confronted with an existential threat, surrounded by proxies of the Islamic Republic, and under direct threat from a regime that openly declares its intent to destroy it, Israel has acted with clarity. The broader international community must now catch up, if not for Israel’s sake, for its own, and in defence of the principle that civilians are not bargaining chips.

The Islamic republic has proven itself time and again to be a hostile regime waging asymmetric war against the civilised world. The time for unity, for strength, and for moral clarity has come. The prisoners in Evin, in Kerman, in undisclosed cells across Iran, deserve nothing less.

Abortion, assisted dying and Britain’s dangerous new politics

‘Now, splendidly, everything had become clear. The enemy at last was plain in view, huge and hateful, all disguise cast off. It was the Modern Age in arms.’ After last week, I feel like Evelyn Waugh at the time of the Nazi-Soviet Pact in 1939. The politics of ‘progress’ has found its fulfilment in the union of two total malignancies: the campaigns to abort babies at full term and to kill old people before their time. Here is our enemy, all disguise cast off.

I’ve been accused of disguising something myself: my Christian faith. And it’s true that while I’ve never hidden it (see my maiden speech) I didn’t parade my faith as the basis of my objection to assisted suicide. You don’t need religious arguments to show this Bill is bad, and many atheists have been brilliant in the battle against it. You just need to actually read the Bill, and the statements of all the professional bodies who work with the elderly and dying. I’m appalled that so many MPs – judging by their asinine speeches – have plainly not done this.

But now that the Bill has passed the Commons I guess I can come out of the closet and say to the militant anti-Christians who were pushing it: you’re not wrong. I do also object to euthanasia on religious grounds – because the case for euthanasia is itself a religious one. Nothing else explains the failure of its supporters to engage with the detail of the Bill, or the practicalities of implementing it. Support for assisted suicide is an article of faith – faith in the capacity of individual human beings to play the role of God, towards themselves and others.

Christians by contrast think human beings are fallen – weak, selfish, dangerous – so we don’t trust them with absolute power. That’s why over the centuries, especially in England, the idea developed that the law should protect us from each other, and even from ourselves, and certainly from the state.

In objecting to assisted suicide, I was trying to defend this old fashioned idea that the law should protect the vulnerable. And in abandoning this idea we are opening the door to a terrible dystopia.

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Not just in the moral sphere. The things our country needs more than anything are more children, and more care for our aging population. The Commons voted this week for the opposite: death to both groups. It’s the revenge of the middle-aged against their dependents. We are ushering in a dangerous new politics, a sort of hedonic utilitarianism in which the convenience of adults is paramount even over the lives of the young and old. This is the pagan philosophy, with its cult of strength, which Christianity banished but is now returning.

Maybe I’m exaggerating, but these are apocalyptic times. As the world beyond Britain blows up, as technology rewrites everything, and as our own security, economy and society are increasingly, desperately, precarious, how do we feel about junking the ideas that created and sustained the peace and prosperity of these islands for 1500 years? What’s the alternative story we’re going to tell ourselves, in place of the one about us being individually, uniquely valuable but also chronically prone to wrongdoing?

The opposite story – that we’re perfect moral beings but that if we’re weak or unwanted we will be killed – feels less appealing to me, and certainly less useful to the challenges of the times.

If we are to withstand our enemies, bring our society together, and tame the technium (somehow ensure that human values govern the new age of machines), we are going to need values that are up to the job. I don’t think humanist atheism or progressive liberalism or whatever the new religion should be called, is up to it. Christianity is. Only Christianity is.

Reform can go further in its plan to woo back non-doms

We will hear plenty of familiar criticisms of the plan unveiled by Reform yesterday to bring non-doms, as wealthy foreigners who enjoy a special tax regime in the UK are known, back. It will make Britain a magnate for tax dodgers and money launderers. It will increase inequality. And the only jobs it creates will be as servants of the super-rich. In fact, however, the only problem with the Reform plan is that it doesn’t go far enough. The party should be a lot more ambitious as it prepares for a potential government. 

It will certainly be a major change. After a decade over which all the political debate has been about how to impose higher taxes on the rich, Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform, will this week set out plans to bring them back. A new ‘Britannia Card’ will allow both foreigners and returning expats to pay a flat fee of £250,000, in return for which their worldwide income would be exempt from most UK taxes for 10 years. The money raised would then be distributed in the form of a ‘Britannia worker’s dividend’ to low-paid employees, with a bonus worth an estimated £600 to £1,000 a year. 

There are legitimate criticisms of the Reform plan. It may be complex to implement, and earmarking the income generated for a ‘dividend’, while politically clever, may prove too fiddly. The tax system needs simplification, not yet more complex allowances. And yet, it has the potential to change the economic argument.

It is already clear that the Labour-Tory consensus on driving out the non-doms has been a disaster for the British economy, while the Starmer government’s determination to put up taxes on the rich has led to an exodus of wealth and talent. Reform has recognised how damaging that has become, worked out that the UK needs to attract wealth, and recognised that the entrepreneurs and business owners who have left the UK need to be bought back. Indeed, extending the tax break to returning British nationals may well prove the most significant part of the package. 

But Reform could afford to go even further with their plan. The £250,000 flat fee may well need to come down if the UK is to compete with similar deals available in Italy and Greece or the zero taxes levied in Dubai and the Caribbean. A much lower annual threshold may well generate more revenue overall. And it should extend the offer to foreign entrepreneurs, with a far lower rate of Capital Gains Tax to start-ups who want to move from their high-tax bases in Paris, Stockholm or Madrid to a far more lightly taxed London, Cambridge or Bristol.

The important point, however, is this. As the non-doms and the wealthy flee the Chancellor’s Rachel Reeves’s increasingly punitive tax regime, she will now have to defend her decisions against a very clear alternative. As the disaster of taxing success becomes clear, that will become harder and harder – and Reform’s alternative will look a lot more attractive. 

It’s not foolish to believe Putin will attack Nato

Many in Europe may still believe that a Russian invasion of one or more Nato countries is unlikely, if not absurd. This view seems convenient, but it is increasingly divergent from reality. Confidence in the alliance’s principle of so-called collective security is, sadly, becoming not a deterrent but an incentive to aggression by Moscow.

The idea floating in the air in Europe seems to be the following: ‘Russia is bogged down in Ukraine. How can it threaten Britain or the Baltic states?’. This is rhetoric from another era. War is no longer what it used to be. And neither is Russia.

While Western armies rehearse parades and calculate brigade potential, the Russian military-industrial complex is betting on the mass production of FPV drones, electronic warfare systems and swarms of unmanned aerial vehicles. Today, 95 per cent of those wounded in Ukrainian hospitals have mine and explosive injuries, more than 70 per cent of them sustained from drone strikes. Artillery and armoured vehicles are becoming a thing of the past. So are most of the defence approaches adopted by Nato. Ukraine is on the front line of this new war.

Contrary to expectations, it is Ukraine that today has perhaps the most combat-ready army in Europe. As former CIA director John Brennan said in an interview with Sky News: ‘Compared to other armed forces, [the Ukrainian military] outperforms virtually any army in the world, including the United States.’ Not because we have more weapons, but because we have adapted. Europe has not yet done so; would only a crisis force the continent to evolve?

The most dangerous illusion today is to underestimate Moscow’s goals. The Kremlin is not waging war for new territories. The Russians’ goal is not Donbas or even Kyiv. Their goal is a new map of Europe, where the Kremlin once again writes the rules. Putin’s ambitions are geopolitical. That is why no truce will suit them. A ceasefire is not part of Moscow’s strategy because its goal can only be achieved by continuing the aggression against Ukraine. Earlier this month, Russia’s deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov directly repeated Putin’s 2021 ultimatum to Nato: the conflict will not end until the alliance retreats from Eastern Europe.

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There is a widespread belief in the West that if Russia risks ‘testing’ Nato in the Baltic states, it will receive an immediate and harsh response. I would like to believe that. But ‘immediate’ is not what we saw in 2014 in Crimea, between 2014 and 2022 in Donbas, or even in the first days of the full-scale invasion. Confidence in deterrence, alas, becomes a vulnerability in itself.

The future invasion of the Baltic states will not be a copy of the Ukrainian campaign. It will not start with tanks and will not be accompanied by declarations. It will be unexpected: with communication blackouts, drone strikes on infrastructure and civilian convoys in uniform without identification marks. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania may simply wake up as part of Russia. Without a single shot fired by Nato.

The operation will take no more than several days. Nato troops stationed at Adazi in Latvia (about 5,000 men) would not even be able to stop a convoy of civilian minibuses. A political decision in London or Brussels to open fire on ‘unidentified persons’ may not come in time. Or it may not come at all. Yes, to effectively deter Russia, it is not necessary to spend 5 per cent of GDP, as Nato chief Mark Rutte is pushing for. FPV drones cost less than nuclear submarines and are more effective.

But what definitely does not work is to mistake wishful thinking for reality. Where the Baltic states are incapable of defending themselves, Poland is vulnerable to Kaliningrad and Belarus, and the rest of Europe is only building ammunition factories and dual-use border surveillance systems with a view to them being ready by 2027 and beyond.

This is not a strategy. It is a window of opportunity for the Kremlin. And for its masters in Beijing. China and Russia will simply divide Europe into zones of influence. Putin will get his Warsaw Block 2 from the countries of Eastern Europe. And China will get influence over Western Europe, which it will then ‘defend’ from invasion by barbarians from the East.

In fact, Beijing is already preparing to adopt US President Donald Trump’s strategy on Ukraine: ‘the best defence of Western Europe is Chinese business on your territory’. Economic absorption will replace a tank offensive. And for the European elites, it will prove even more tempting.

Russia is not betting on numerical supsuperiority on the element of surprise and its nearly unlimited tolerance for a high number of casualties. It is also banking on the psychological unpreparedness (enhanced by unwillingness) of Western leaders to give the order to destroy any ‘civilian’ invaders hiding behind Vilnius or Narva.

The capture of the three Baltic capitals, the cutting off of the Suwalki corridor and the blocking of Nato’s response are not fantasies. These scenarios have already been modelled. The next step in Russia’s plan is simple: wait for Polish troops to approach the Suwalki corridor and slam the trap shut. This territory is within firing range of Kaliningrad and Belarus, and Nato’s logistics are impossible here.

Don’t think that a hypothetical operation in the Baltics would be something unique: it would be a direct continuation of what Ukrainian troops experienced during their offensive into the Russian territory of Kursk. The large-scale use of drones and the strategy of disrupting logistics have already been tested by the Russian army during their attempts to de-occupy the region. Nato headquarters should study these cases not as exceptions but as the future of war. And they should already be planning their counter-operations based on the Ukrainian model.

This development can only be stopped by shifting from reactive defence to proactive deterrence. For example, by creating a Ukrainian-Polish military contingent focussed on the Grodno region of Belarus. And by rethinking Belarus itself: not as a neutral zone, but as the vanguard of a possible invasion.

The United Kingdom is not just the NHS and pensions. It is also Winston Churchill. And the union for freedom. Today, Europe is once again falling asleep, refusing to acknowledge the new reality. General Waldemar Skrzypczak, former commander-in-chief of the Polish army, said in an interview with Polsat News: ‘If Ukraine loses, we will be next.’ He is wrong about only one thing: the invasion processes in Ukraine and the Baltic states will run parallel.

And it is not about Russia’s strength. It is about Europe’s weakness, including its unwillingness to cooperate. If you do not want war to come to Dover, you must act now. Because the war has already begun. It is just that not everyone has heard it yet.

Defence minister refuses to answer Iran question three times

It seems the Labour lot has got themselves in quite a tizzy over events in the Middle East – and this morning saw an excruciating interview in which the defence minister couldn’t answer the most straightforward question about Iran. Luke Pollard gave a car crash interview earlier today on Sky News, where the Labour minister appeared stumped over a simple question about Britain’s stance on Donald Trump’s decision to bomb Iran. If he can’t answer on this, what does he know?

Pollard squirmed as Sky’s Wilfred Frost quizzed him three times about whether the Uk government is ‘disappointed’ in President Trump’s move to strike Iran. Asked whether No. 10 is ‘disappointed ultimately that the US felt it necessary to attack Iran over the weekend’, Pollard decided to, er, obfuscate. Rather than explain to viewers the position of Sir Keir Starmer’s government, he replied:

Well the US felt it necessary to take action to alleviate what they felt was a severe threat to their security and regional security. Our focus as a country has been to get Iran back to the negotiating table, for them to negotiate in good faith, and that is the priority.

To stop Iran getting a nuclear weapon – and they should never be able to possess a nuclear weapon – we need not only for the nuclear facilities to be disrupted but also for the knowledge and awareness within the Iranian regime to be locked out so they can’t ever develop nuclear weapons again in the future. Once they’ve started on that path they possess the knowledge which means they could go back to it.

That may be the case but it’s not quite answering the question…

When Frost pushed again, Pollard insisted that is is ‘not for me to comment on the particular US action’. But as a government minister, he can absolutely comment on Labour’s stance. The Sky presenter thought so too, telling the defence minister: ‘Forgive me, minister, but it is specifically your role to comment on military action when it happens around the world so we know what our government thinks about it. Is our government pleased or disappointed that the US took this action?’ Third time wasn’t a charm in this case – with Pollard once again declining to respond directly. Quelle surprise…

Pollard’s poor performance comes less than a week after his colleague, Treasury minister Emma Reynolds, experienced a car crash of her own after she couldn’t tell LBC’s Nick Ferrari both exactly where the new Lower Thames Crossing road is and how much the total bill will come to. Where on earth are they pulling these ministers from?

Putin spies an opportunity in Trump’s attack on Iran

Is Donald Trump’s decision to join attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities an embarrassment, a provocation or an opportunity for Russia? The honest answer is that it is all three, but likely more of an opportunity than anything else, if Moscow is willing to play it cool.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi is in Moscow today to meet with Vladimir Putin, and before he set out, he was trying to sound bullish, asserting that ‘Russia is a friend of Iran’, and that he expected concrete measures in support. Yet one can question how far the two countries were ever truly allies, so much as frenemies who shared a series of common problems and antagonists.

Iranian assistance in the early years of the Russian invasion of Ukraine was crucial in closing a dangerous gap in Russian production of drones and missiles. But this was not aid, like the support provided to Kyiv by the West, but trade. Russia had to pay for what it got, and not just monetarily. After the 7 October 2023 attacks into Israel by Hamas, Moscow was in effect forced to abandon its previous efforts to maintain a balance between Tel Aviv and Tehran and side with Iran’s clients. 

Moscow is an active participant in Tehran’s civilian nuclear programme, which inevitably fed through to its military one, but it never wanted to see a nuclear-armed Iran. Furthermore, the two countries, while sharing know-how on sanctions-busting and other dark arts of their struggle against the Western world order, were also geopolitical competitors in the Middle East and even Central Asia and the South Caucasus, once considered Moscow’s backyard.

Hence the complexity of Moscow’s response to the current crisis. It is undoubtedly an embarrassment to see Russian-supplied air defences swept aside so easily (even if they were not the latest systems) and not just the US but also Israel assert the kind of air dominance that they were never able to impose over Ukraine. 

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It is also considered by some in Moscow to be a provocation, not so much because they care about Iran, but because as the Israelis and now even Donald Trump talk about this in terms not simply of a pre-emptive response to a nuclear threat but a campaign for regime change, this hits a particularly sore spot for them. Putin and his hawkish cronies have long believed that the US has been behind a long-term campaign of ‘hybrid war’ projects to topple regimes to which it is opposed – many of which were also Russian allies – from Iraq and Libya to the Arab Spring risings and the Colour Revolutions of post-Soviet Eurasia. Indeed, Putin directly portrayed the 2011-13 Bolotnaya protests in Russia and the 2014 Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine as such regime change campaigns.

There is a sense that it becomes harder for Moscow to confine itself to the usual platitudes about the need for restraint and the dangers of escalation in this context. So far, though, it is doing its best. 

There have been fiery words from the usual sources. Former president Dmitri Medvedev caught the headlines by suggesting that ‘a number of countries are ready to directly supply Iran with their nuclear arsenal’. These commentators’ role is precisely to produce a toxic smokescreen, behind which the real movers and shakers can get away with caution. The Foreign Ministry, for example, has simply condemned the US attacks with a warning that ‘a dangerous escalation is underway, one that threatens to further destabilise security both in the region and globally.’

The truth is that there is very little Moscow can do beyond gesture politics, especially given that it was caught by surprise by Trump’s decision. It is neither able nor willing to project meaningful force in support of Tehran. Even sending the latest S-500 air defence systems would both diminish Russia’s own defences against Ukrainian attacks and take too long to bring into operation. Although Russia and Iran signed a strategic partnership this year, it includes no obligation of mutual military assistance.

This is why the war is also an opportunity for Moscow. With its defence-industrial complex now working at full tilt, it is no longer dependent on Iran, and can afford to think much more sharply about its own interests. There is little real loss in prestige, as no one seriously imagined Putin could do anything to shield Iran, and the potential that the West will have to become increasingly committed to a long-term crisis in the Middle East is growing. As one nationalist Russian commentator on social media chortled, ‘every extra air defence missile for Israel is one less for Ukraine.’

In the global south, the US can be portrayed as a thuggish pawn of Zionist interests and an untrustworthy interlocutor. Sceptical audiences in Europe can be regaled with warnings that they risk being sucked into Trump and Netanyahu’s war. More generally, for all that there is obviously no real comparison between Kyiv and Tehran, the Russians will claim that they, too, were simply making a pre-emptive attack in Ukraine to protect their own security. However ridiculous the parallel may sound, there will be some who buy it. 

More practically, turmoil in the Middle East pushes up oil prices, and that restocks Putin’s war chest. It gives Moscow more credibility with other Arab states, which are so important to it both for managing oil prices and also as gateways through which to launder money and bypass sanctions. And although Trump rejected Putin’s initial offer of mediation, for the Russians it raises the delicious vision of their being able to step in at some point and be the peacemakers and do Washington a favour on which they can collect. It’s an ill wind.

The Isis threat to Syria hasn’t gone away

Just as things were starting to get better in Syria, an attack against the Christian community has shaken the country. In the suburbs of Damascus, a suspected Isis member entered the Mar Elias Church during Sunday mass, opened fire on the Greek Orthodox worshipers and then detonated a suicide vest. So far, the Syrian Health Ministry has confirmed at least 20 dead and 52 injured.

As I arrived at the scene, armed members of the security forces were closing off the premises, trying to herd away the anxious locals who had gathered. Rubble and shattered glass on the streets, inside pools of blood. The Syrian White Helmets were picking through the broken furniture and looking for unexploded ordnance with a dog. A dazed priest was picking up scattered religious items from the floor.

‘I was at home a few streets down when I heard the attack,’ said George, a local living in the area. ‘Then I heard the explosion – different from the ones coming from Iranian missiles that are being intercepted in our skies these days. As I arrived, I saw the chaos and smelled the blood. I couldn’t go in. I’m Greek Catholic, they are Greek Orthodox, but I’m sure I know the dead, some are probably my relatives. What can I say? Right now I don’t feel anything.’

Speculation about the attacker’s identity quickly spread among those gathered. ‘He was Chechen or some other Caucasian!’ exclaimed Maria, another resident in the neighbourhood. ‘I know a radical previously came to convert people in this church, and the security threw him out. It must have been a revenge for that.’

Syria’s Interior Ministry confirmed that Isis was behind the attack. The police and plainclothes members of the new security, armed with Kalashnikovs, were quick to react, setting up many checkpoints around the city. Cars were searched and pedestrians tapped down.

This was the worst attack that Isis carried out since the fall of Bashar al-Assad. Following the implosion of the previous regime, Ahmad al-Sharaa and his group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), took over the government. Despite coming from a radical Islamist background and once being allied to Isis, the new administration promised to protect minorities, including Syria’s sizeable Christian communities. They claim many Isis cells have been busted, planned attacks thwarted, but this one slipped through.

It is a step back for Syria, a grim reminder of the 14-year-long civil war that ravaged the country. The biggest challenge to Interim President al-Sharaa was to unify the countless armed groups of various ideologies, ethnic and religious denominations. Considerable steps have been achieved, like striking deals with the Kurdish-run Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Turkey-backed Syrian National Army (SNA). Isis, however, is still a headache and is here to stay.

The real reason J.K. Rowling’s critics hate her

It’s weird to think there was a time when I disliked J.K. Rowling; it seems as odd to me now as disliking words, or fun – she’s so obviously A Good Thing. (Never to be confused with a ghastly National Treasure – see Dawn French, the anti-Rowling.) Irony of ironies, I disliked this woman who shrugs that she has ‘received so many death threats I could paper the house with them’ because I thought she was a wimp – a ‘softy’ even, to use the childish parlance.

If asked for evidence, I would probably have pointed to her rabid Remainerism (‘I’m the mongrel product of this European continent and I’m an internationalist’ – who isn’t, dearie? Doesn’t mean you need to suck up to an unelected coterie of waddling Strasbourg geese) and the fact that adults read her books to such a wide extent that editions were specially produced with ‘grown-up’ looking covers so as not to embarrass the addle-pates if they indulged their woeful habit in public. That’s not her fault, of course – any sensible writer is going to grab all the readers they can get – but it did add to my general mulish suspicion that she was helping to infantilise the nation.

Two things changed my mind and made me a super-fan; I read a Robert Galbraith novel and I read that Rowling had given away so much money that she is believed to be the only billionaire to have become a mere multi-millionaire through her own personal generosity. Considering what greedy, grasping rotters the vast majority of people in the arts and entertainment are, that’s such a unique and eye-catching fact. So she wasn’t soft at all, it transpired, but a tough broad who could write excellent adult novels and was confident enough to chuck her money around like a sailor on shore leave.

Then Rowling entered her hardcore talking-back era, growing wittier by the week as she sharpened her teeth on her detractors, and my admiration went off the scale. Every time she delivers the best comeback (‘Whenever somebody burns a Potter book the royalties vanish from my bank account – and if the book’s signed, one of my teeth falls out’) I think she can’t get any better – and then she does. 

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You certainly couldn’t call her a softy any longer. Though he meant it as a slam, the ghastly Stephen Fry summed it up well when he said of her last week:

She has been radicalised, I fear, and it may be she has been radicalised by Terfs, but also by the vitriol that is thrown at her. It is unhelpful and only hardens her and will only continue to harden her…she started to make these peculiar statements and had very strong, difficult views…she has crowed at the success of legislation in Scotland and elsewhere…I am sorry because I always liked her company. I found her charming, funny and interesting – and then this thing happened and it completely altered the way she talks and engages with the world now.

It’s interesting that Fry talks as though Rowling has experienced some sort of mind-warping trauma for simply adopting the practice of not caring what others – especially strangers – think of one, which is a by-product of being secure in one’s own sense of self. This has, of course, been recognised as a reliable way of achieving serenity, from the ancient Stoics to the recent Let Them Theory – but if a woman can achieve this kind of emotional security, it panics a certain sort of insecure man immensely. Thus, ‘a hard man’ is a term of admiration, whereas ‘a hard woman’ is lacking something, that certain softness, that sugar and spice and all things nice, that makes a woman a woman. Or rather, that renders a woman a castrated #BeKind Transmaid.

I think there’s more to this than meets the eye; come on, if Stephen Fry can play pop psychology Top Trumps, so can I. You know that old saying, ‘Women want to be her, men want to be with her’ often used of desirable and successful women? I think I’ve spotted a variation. In the case of J.K. Rowling, (many) women want to be with her – and (many) men want to be her. Specifically, many men in the arts and entertainment world who have perhaps conducted themselves in what many people might consider a grasping, greedy way might hate the way Rowling’s extreme philanthropy makes them look/feel. She’s a survivor of domestic violence, too, which might have factored in a bit of envy from ‘Boy’ George, 64, who famously imprisoned a much younger man, handcuffing him to a wall and beating him with a metal chain. It’s telling that he chose to call her a ‘bully’ – as well as rich and bored – leading one to recall the ineffably vulgar schooldays line about flatulence, ‘He who smelt it dealt it.’

Who else probably envies J.K.R.? We can’t pass over that trio of toe-rags Radcliffe, Watson and Grint (sounds like a firm of bent lawyers) who will forever be consumed by the fact that it could have been literally any half-decent child actors in those roles and the films would have done every bit as well – talk about surplus to requirements. Another actor called Pedro Pascal called her ‘a heinous loser’ – nurse, the screens and the straitjacket! 

I’d wager that all of J.K.R.’s famous critics envy her money – no one is as greedy as the rich – but even more than that, as they crouch atop their relatively modest fortunes like resentful dung beetles, they envy her the ease, the generosity and yes, the nobility which has seen her go from billionaire to a mere multi-millionaire, like them. One gets the impression that whereas J.K.R. has the psychological bandwidth – which probably comes from real confidence in her own creativity – to dispense with vast amounts of cash, there is a bottomless pit of neediness inside her critics which leads them to grab at, say, advertising campaigns the way they do.

They certainly don’t need the money. But when, like Radcliffe (thought to have around £100 million) and co., you know that you really are nothing special and were just tremendously lucky, it’s bound to make you feel insecure, no matter how much you’ve got in the bank. Look at the vast amount of voiceover work (like his female equivalent, Dawn French) Fry has done – that can only be greed. Surely there’s only so many video games his lovely young husband can play with?

Cross-dressing men in general want to be Rowling, as they tend to look like navvies done up as prossies, whereas J.K.R. is wonderfully elegant with her wand-like body and Modigliani face and clever way with a big hat and a lovely bit of scarlet lippy – the brazen hussy! But we inevitably come back to Fry as the bellwether (not to mention the bell-end) of J.K.R.-envy. I once, some time ago, labelled him ‘a stupid person’s idea of a clever person’ – but the degradation of his intellectual ability in the years which have passed since then has been a remarkable, Biden-level catastrophe for his thought processes. So more than anything else, he envies Rowling because she is that rare thing in a po-faced world; she is a wit. And it’s been a damn long time since Fry – his once-glittering brain eaten alive by becoming the genital equivalent of a Flat Earther – was one of those. The poor poppet!

Is Britain ready to defend itself against Iranian reprisals?

Operation Midnight Hammer, America’s air and missile strikes against Iran at the weekend, did not involve the United Kingdom. Although the Prime Minister was informed of the military action in advance, there was not, so far as we know, any request from the United States for British approval, participation or support, and Sir Keir Starmer continues to call for a de-escalation of the conflict.

There had been a great deal of suggestion that the UK might be drawn into action against Iran. The most likely scenario was thought to be a request from Washington to use Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia, the maritime and air base America leases from Britain in the Chagos Islands, for the B-2 Spirit stealth bombers which struck the nuclear facility at Fordow. In the end, the aircraft conducted their attack from their usual home at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri – but this is not an irrefutable alibi which will be accepted by the régime in Tehran.

Decades of standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the Middle East with the United States means that Britain is seen as America’s close and almost inevitable ally in the region. Our participation in the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 set the pattern in that regard. For Iran’s leadership, however, Britain has a special and outsized villainy: it has not been forgotten that the United Kingdom was the driving force behind what it called Operation Boot and the CIA referred to as TP-AJAX, the overthrow of Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in August 1953 to protect the interests of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.

This means that when Iran now threatens retaliation for the US strikes at the weekend, Britain and British interests are effectively on the front line. The Defence Secretary, John Healey, announced on social media on Sunday that:

The safety of UK personnel and bases is my top priority. Force protection is at its highest level, and we deployed additional jets this week.

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There is no shortage of British targets in the Middle East for Iran to strike at. The UK naval support facility in Bahrain is the base for Operation Kipion, the long-standing air and maritime security mission in the Gulf and the Indian Ocean, the UK joint logistics support base in Oman has a dry dock large enough to accommodate the Royal Navy’s Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers and the Omani-British joint training area provides the British Army with a base for expeditionary warfare. There are also RAF units stationed at Al Udeid air base in Qatar and growing facilities at Donnelly Lines at Al Minhad air base in the United Arab Emirates.

Slightly further afield, British Forces Cyprus, more than 10,000 military and civilian personnel, occupy sites across the UK sovereign base areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia in Cyprus; since the current crisis between Israel and Iran began nearly two weeks ago, additional assets have been deployed so that there are now 14 Typhoon aircraft based at RAF Akrotiri.

The government must think wider still. Last week’s attack by Palestine Action agitators at RAF Brize Norton has proved that military installations in the UK are not immune from international events. There is also the threat of potential Russian espionage against sites in Britain where Ukrainian military personnel were being trained. Iran is a much diminished military power, but we must still regard its reach as global: Saturday’s protest march in London by supporters of the blood-drenched Tehran theocracy proved that the Islamic Republic finds no shortage of useful idiots.

What the activities of Palestine Action at RAF Brize Norton also demonstrated was that the security of military facilities is inadequate. The recent Strategic Defence Review warned of ‘attacks on the Armed Forces in the UK and on overseas bases’ and advised that the Ministry of Defence must ‘have additional capabilities for the protection of bases and CNI [critical national infrastructure] in the event of crisis or conflict’. We should not imagine that such a ‘crisis or conflict’ is in the far-distant future; indeed, it may already have arrived.

Last week anti-Israel activists were able to breach the perimeter at Brize Norton, ride electric scooters across the runway and damage two of the RAF’s 14 Voyager tanker aircraft at a potential cost of £30 million, in addition to compromising the immediate capability of the armed forces. The government has ordered a review of security, and that must be urgent and comprehensive.

The UK is vulnerable. This is not news, or should not be, but we have preferred to ignore it until recently. The likelihood of Iran seeking to retaliate against the United States and its allies merely focuses the mind. The government needs to establish what additional protection military bases at home and abroad reqrequire and how it can be provided – and then it must get on and do it. This cannot wait for quieter times. The front line is everywhere.

Iran isn’t going to back down

Multiple American presidents have vowed to never allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon. This weekend President Trump made good on that promise. He undertook targeted, surgical strikes against the Islamic Republic’s nuclear programme after the regime repeatedly rejected diplomatic offers. This is a watershed moment which will change Iran, the region and the US position in the world.

In the immediate aftermath of the US military action against nuclear facilities at Natanz, Fordow, and Esfahan, Iranian media and officials sought to downplay the strike. A source told Press TV, an Iranian state outlet, that ‘air defences… were activated and the attack was successfully thwarted, except for minor exterior damage at the entry and exit points.’ It added, ‘all three sites had long been evacuated and the enriched uranium had also been relocated to a safe location.’ An Iranian lawmaker was quoted as saying the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant was not seriously damaged – that there was mostly surface and superficial damage, and no one was killed there. Iran’s Nuclear Safety Centre announced that there were no signs of contamination recorded. Other officials stressed Iran retained the right to self-defence and to respond.

Such statements likely mask extensive damage and allow the regime to reduce internal pressure to respond immediately. But that does not mean Tehran will not respond. It plays a long game, and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has built his career on resisting the United States, will have to do so. There have already been signs of dissatisfaction in the Iranian leadership ranks with the erosion of Iran’s deterrence. Before Saturday’s strikes by the United States, the losses in Iran’s proxy and partner network had already led some Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders to pressure the supreme leader to change Tehran’s nuclear doctrine.

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All in all, since 2023, Iran has seen is proxy and partner network badly disintegrate, its missile and drone programme damaged, its nuclear programme attacked, and its military leadership decapitated.

The devastation the regime has faced over the last week will only amplify calls for the pursuit of nuclear weapons. Others in the system will counsel the regime to temper its response so that it has the time, space, and resources to rebuild internally with a succession looming. Khamenei will have to thread the needle between responding to save face without losing his head in the process, as the regime’s survival has historically been its primary imperative.

Tehran has options to respond. It can do so symbolically, like how it attacked US forces in Iraq after President Trump’s targeted killing of IRGC Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani. It could unleash the remnants of its Axis of Resistance against American forces and personnel in the Middle East. President Trump has been willing to risk more than any of his predecessors in the use of force against Iran, and with his recent threats against the supreme leader, Tehran will weigh his unpredictability heavily in its calculations.

Iran also retains capabilities in the maritime sector and has threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz. However, this may be a step too far for Iran as it could provoke a regime ending response and risk losing political support internationally. It may also alienate China which will be an important lifeline economically and politically for Tehran as it navigates this new terrain.

Iran may also opt to bar international inspectors from the country and trigger the withdrawal process from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Terrorism remains another means of retaliating against the United States, with Tehran seeking to develop contingency options over the years to foment terrorism in western capitals should certain red lines be crossed. Iran, through its Intelligence Ministry and the IRGC’s Intelligence Organisation, has cultivated relations with criminal gangs around the world. Hezbollah also still has an foreign operational capability with Talal Hamiyeh, the head of its Unit 910, remaining at large. Over the years, Hezbollah has sought to preserve these terror options in the West. In 2015, British authorities busted a Hezbollah cell stockpiling tons of ammonium nitrate, more than was used in the Oklahoma City bombing. The regime has spent resources surveilling Jewish institutions around the world should it be attacked. Iran may step-up its cyberoperations as well, seeking to penetrate US critical infrastructure.

Khamenei and his system have signalled that they would rather absorb a military strike than commit to zero enrichment in Iran. The supreme leader feels concessions on this would pave the way for more pressure to be exerted on the Islamic Republic and this could lead to the regime’s downfall. In this respect, the Islamic Republic’s enmity with the United States will continue as long as Khamenei or a like-minded successor is in his chair. There are likely no happy endings with the Islamic Republic in power as core pillars of the regime’s grand strategy is countering the United States and eradicating the State of Israel. Those will not change even after the American strikes.

The United States has fundamentally reset the US deterrence equation in the Middle East after this military strike. The late commander-in-chief of the IRGC Hossein Salami in October 2019 once boasted that the American military option was no longer on the table. President Trump has put it back on the table in a big way.

Let teenagers drink!

There’s not one thing I don’t love about the street in Hove where I live, with the sea at one end and the restaurant quarter at the other; if I had to fetishise a non-sentient thing, like those women who ‘marry’ rollercoasters, I’d be kinky for my street. (‘Avenue’, rather.) One of the lovely things about it is that I can see a section of Hove Lawns from my balcony – the manicured green spaces which differentiate our seafront from Brighton’s in one of many ways. (We smell nice, for a start.) Even better, I can hear Hove Lawns, which was always pleasant for me but – now I’m a cripple – keeps me connected to the beat of the neighbourhood I adore.

Recently they hosted a 12-hour tribute band festival and a Soul 2 Soul show in the same weekend – that was fun. But the sound I love to hear from the Lawns more than any other is that of teenagers taking their messy ease, which a few hundred school-leavers do there towards the end of June every year to celebrate the conclusion of exams.

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Not everyone feels this way. You’d think that it might be crochety old folk (like me – an OAP next month) who object to teenagers having a moderately rambunctious time on the Lawns, but it was in fact the People’s Republic of Brighton & Hove Council who allowed the cops to go in last week and lurk purposefully – as indeed they had in previous years. Our local paper, the Argus, reported ominously:

Ahead of the event, Sussex Police said it had deployed additional resources to patrol the area following a recent rise in youth disorder, including multiple reports of violence during large unsupervised meet-ups. A spokesperson for Sussex Police has since confirmed that a 16-year-old girl was arrested for being drunk and disorderly, later being de-arrested after being taken home to parents. Officers also supported a number of teenagers who appeared to be intoxicated and in a vulnerable state.

Considering the police’s failure to protect girls from the late 1980s onwards – when the danger came from groups of adult men from certain privileged minority groups – it seems a bit rich that they now rush to ‘support’ teenagers drinking with their friends. Really, what is the beef with kids getting drunk and getting off with each other? We’re forever hearing about the loneliness and anxiety epidemics sweeping this teenage cohort. Then when they get out of their bedrooms and off their computers, it’s treated as some sort of public order moral panic. It’s not just outside my window that it’s happening; last month in Cornwall, according to Cornwall Live:

Police have announced a crackdown on teenage parties taking place on a beach in St Austell after reports of anti-social behaviour and disorder. There will be targeted patrols by police and site security along the beaches and surrounding area. Site security officers will check bags of young people entering the site, if suspected of being under 18 years old, and any alcohol found will be confiscated. There will also be communication with secondary schools to identify information leading up to these gatherings. Information was also shared at the meeting of a number of parents being seen by security staff in the car park supplying young people with alcohol. The police have called on parents to ‘act responsibly’.

When French parents give their pre-teen children alcohol, it’s bum-sucked by the liberal establishment as being in some way the height of civilised behaviour; back in Blighty, slipping a bottle of strawberry cider to a 16-year-old son or daughter is irresponsible.

Here, as in Cornwall, the kids are repeatedly accused of lethal-level littering, leaving the Lawns besmirched with discarded alcohol bottles and pesky vapes – but once again the two-tier policing angle rears its ugly, hypocritical head. You should see the state of most of our public spaces after Pride weekend, when you could keep Sodom, Gomorrah and Babylon going for a year with the amount of drugs and sex aids left lying around. Whole neighbourhoods are annexed and it becomes near impossible to cross the city in a car due to the number of partying pedestrians raving in the roads. But no one would ever dream of telling the precious QWERTY-folx not to make a nuisance of themselves; no, when they leave garbage all over the show, it’s joyous.

This city has also been notorious for the laughable state of its alleged ‘refuse collection’ over the decades, most recently leading to a report in the Argus which noted rubbish left uncollected for six weeks, much to the delight of the local rat population. This is due to the long-standing inefficiency of various grandstanding, virtue-signalling councils, who prefer to spend our tax on ridiculous spectacles like the i360 tower – which earlier this year was discounted more than £50 million so the clowns could sell it. But perhaps the most laughable duplicity can be seen in the way that Hove Lawns is repeatedly mired in the eyesore convoys of mobile homes belonging to travellers; in a city where parking is only slightly less difficult than teleporting, the freedom given to these repeat visitors is remarkable. A spokesman for the council chuckled indulgently last year: ‘We are aware of the unauthorised encampment on Hove Lawns and our traveller liaison team will be visiting the site alongside Sussex Police.’ I wouldn’t put it past them to have handed every last traveller a goody-bag – when of course what they should have done was run them out of town and restored the Lawns to those who pay for their upkeep.

Brighton & Hove City Council website tells us that ‘Hove Lawns were used for promenading by the fashionable set into the 20th century. The West Brighton Estate Lawns were originally for private use by those living to the north. Hove Council took over their maintenance in 1948, when they became accessible to the public.’ Now Hove Council is long gone, swallowed by an ever-peckish Brighton. Kids whose parents pay ever-increasing council tax can’t let off steam in public parks without being bothered by the filth; travellers who don’t pay a penny can do what they like in them. Much as I love this city – not just my street – when it comes to examples of Broken Britain, I’ve got a whopper right on my doorstep.

Hot weather is overrated

Having spent more than half my life living in Scotland, I found weather was probably the most common topic of casual conversation with colleagues. This is because Edinburgh, where I worked as a physician, is freezing for 11 months of the year, and Glasgow, where I was a consultant anaesthetist, rains for the same period. Hot weather was as unrequited a desire as George Clooney walking into the surgical theatre coffee room.

When we were blessed with the one month that the sun shone weakly down on us for a few minutes, we basked. Never mind that the warmth was so faint we had to take a woolly jumper everywhere – out we would come in our summer garb, turning to the distant orb like sunflowers, insisting on sitting outside in pubs and cafés while shivering. I’ve noticed that in the Côte d’Azur, where it is genuinely roasting much of the year, the citizens are the opposite, donning fur coats well into May because they are so used to being lightly griddled that even a temperature of 25°C seems chilly to them.

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When I started spending more time in London, I was gleeful. Back to proper seasons! How easy it was to put up with the winter snow when you knew you’d be sun-kissed for at least three months of the year.

Maybe it’s an age thing, though. Despite the sun making me feel happy, I would rather observe it from a well-ventilated room than sit in it. Part of this is fastidiousness: I like being freshly showered and fragrant, and the trouble with hot weather is the narrow line between soaking up the heat with reverence and wishing you could take all your clothes off and go into the shower.

The problem is exacerbated if you don’t drive and can’t use the tubes: since I am now a double amputee, on the rare occasions that I am fit to go out, we travel by bus. There is no greater leveller than London buses – you may get on a prince but you will leave a damp and irritable pauper, wishing you could afford to take taxis everywhere. Buses to and from the centre of London are almost always packed, and the new cycle lanes that take up most of the road near where I stay, Chiswick, mean that buses crawl along in the same single lane as all cars. It takes four times as long to get anywhere. As for low traffic emissions – pull the other one. A gridlock of vehicles with their engines on for hours creates far more pollution than the previous fast-moving two lanes of traffic did.

The problem is compounded by the fact that many seats in public life are plastic. I spend at least three days a week travelling to and from hospital and sitting on hard plastic chairs in waiting rooms. I can of course choose to remain seated in my wheelchair, which is what I do most of the time now, but wheelchair seats – like the chairs (and mattresses) in the NHS – are all made of easy-wipe plastic. Convenient for cleaning, not so pleasant if you have to sit for hours. The seats on buses are no better, being made of brushed acrylic that feels as if you are sitting on a freshly coiffured dog: itchy and non-breathable.

When I was young, I would soak up the sun and turn a deep brazil nut brown. But the education about melanoma (and, more vainly, wrinkles) finally permeated my brain and, since SPF makes my eyes stream, I don’t bother wearing it and therefore avoid the sun. I’m also very wary of my almost translucently white Scottish husband. His legs look like spaghetti before cooking, and his torso like a sheaf of A5 paper. He also has a couple of moles at his collar, and I scrutinise them suspiciously every time he lingers in the sun and comes back pink. He too is not keen on SPF, but, not having the Persian genes, his skin protests loudly whenever he goes out in the sun, turning the colour of a raw pork sausage.

When I was earning decent money, I bought clothes, usually from Asos, which is cheap enough that you don’t feel bad if you never wear the items. Summer dresses were my favourite fix – the idea of floating around, skirt billowing in the breeze, is always very pleasant but in practice a crisp cotton dress will only waft alluringly on the breeze for a few minutes before it becomes creased and covered in grass stains and bus seat juice of the day (it would be good if it were juice – often it is body fluids).

Add to this the numerous insects that appear in summer, and it’s enough to make me long for the extortionate central heating bills in Scotland. I’m phobic of spiders, and heat seems to imbue their long, hairy legs with extra power to climb into my flat and scuttle around. Sometimes I imagine them crawling into my ears as I sleep and laying hundreds of eggs. Wasps and midges are a pain, and I always feel upset when I see bumblebees lying on the pavement, looking as if they need CPR.

Then there are the inevitable invitations to barbecues. They are fine if you are carnivorous, but even though I eat fish and occasionally chicken, the stench of food smoking away on a barbecue makes me feel nauseous, and the added heat is a torture for whoever is flipping the burgers.

Being by an outdoor swimming pool used to be my favourite way of enjoying hot weather. This never happened in Glasgow. I enjoyed it on a couple of holidays, but after I lost a leg, I realised that I would be forever turning in circles like a shark. However, I do prefer summer food to winter. I love cherries and berries and gazpacho, and a cool glass of white wine with the air from the window circulating is pretty blissful. Perhaps summer, like so many other things – pop concerts, theatre performances, movies, political arguments – is best enjoyed in your living room.

The tyranny of mobility scooters

I live in a small cathedral city in southern England. The chances of having my mobile phone snatched from my hand by an opportunistic thief, or my Rolex watch wrenched from my wrist by a brutish thug are still mercifully small. But another menace to life and limb has recently emerged here: the mobility vehicle mob.

It is almost 47 years since the first modern mobility vehicle was delivered to a customer in July 1978. In the past half-century, they have become a now ubiquitous nuisance on our streets and pavements. Originally intended to aid those genuinely unable to walk, such as the elderly or physically handicapped, mobility vehicles have become merely an easy means of transport for the lazy and terminally indolent. These are the people who are perfectly able to walk but are simply too idle to move under their own steam.

I first became aware of the misuse of these vehicles a decade ago, when another Sussex town where I then lived was terrorised by a whole family of able-bodied mobility scooter users. They lived in a converted former public convenience and sped around the streets and pavements at high speed, using their vehicles as high-velocity weapons to force pedestrians out of their way.

Since then, the army of scooter users has become a veritable horde, blockading the streets and obliging pedestrians to leap nimbly aside to avoid being struck by their cumbersome vehicles as they glide by.

The able-bodied scooter users are doing a disservice to those genuinely in need of vehicular assistance by appropriating their scooters for lazy use. Whether holding up road traffic or barging us walkers out of their way on the pavements, those who misuse scooters are just another manifestation of an increasingly sedentary and selfish society.

They are also a visible sign of our national demographic decline. A country with a significant section of the population preferring to ride rather than move their limbs is one that has no future and is clearly on the way out. Many of the users are grossly obese and in need of a good long walk.

Yet the problem is insoluble. No one would wish to introduce an scooter licensing system or a sort of health means test under which only the old or disabled would be permitted to purchase these vehicles. Such a system would be both impractical and a further erosion of freedom in an already over-regulated community. The road ahead for the lazy and the selfish to ride roughshod over the rest of us looks wide open.

Farage’s latest hero? Benjamin Disraeli

At 9 a.m on Monday morning, Nigel Farage will march into a central London venue to make one of his most audacious speeches yet. Since returning as leader of Reform UK last May, he has trodden carefully when it comes to policy. Farage quickly canned the party’s manifesto after the election, preferring to focus on a few key areas: lifting the two-child benefit cap, hiking the annual income tax personal allowance to £20,000, cutting council waste, abolishing Net Zero and renationalising steel.

But his next move is more original in its thinking. Farage will announce a new policy for ‘non-doms’: British residents whose permanent home for tax purposes is outside the UK. Rachel Reeves’ first Budget abolished this status in April, claiming it would raise £2.7bn a year by 2029. Yet amid a wave of reports about a ‘flight of the rich’, Farage senses an opportunity to try to retain such wealth in the UK while making a political pitch to the poorest in society too.

He will float a new one-off £250,000 ‘landing fee’ for the super-rich, renewed every ten years. Non-doms would be exempt from inheritance tax, instead only paying income tax on a remittance basis. The cash generated by this card-based scheme will be redistributed to the poorest 10 per cent of full time UK workers. Between 6,000 to 10,000 are expected to be issued annually, according to internal estimates. In a low-uptake scenario with 6,000 cards issued, the party expects to generate a £1.5bn fund, resulting in a tax-free annual divided of £600 per worker.

Farage hopes to do three things with this speech. The first is a straightforward political attack on Rachel Reeves. The Clacton MP intends to savage her record in office and dub her ‘the worst Chancellor in living memory.’ This fits in with Reform’s plans to frame the next election as a straight fight between them and Labour. The second is to show that the party is serious when it comes to policy. Both Farage and Zia Yusuf have been heavily involved in its conception; a ten-page document of graphs and workings will be handed out to journalists at Monday’s press conference.

But the third aim is the most ambitious. Unlike Reeves, who has sought to play voters off against non-doms, Farage wants to show that the fortunes of the rich and the poor in this country are bound together by fate. In this, he follows in the tradition of Benjamin Disraeli, who wrote in the 1840s of the gulf that had opened between the ‘two nations’ of England. It was the Tory premier who identified a natural sympathy between his party and ‘the radical masses’.

Farage, similarly, shares the belief that ‘the working classes of England are proud of belonging to a great country’. His speech will be delivered close to the statue of Disraeli in Parliament where crowds once gathered to lay primroses at his feet; the Reform UK leader hopes to elicit a similar metaphorical reaction on Monday too. The non-doms announcement will be relentlessly scrutinised by the Institute for Fiscal Studies and others, who warned Reform’s personal allowance changes would cost the Treasury between £50 to £80bn a year. Yet Farage is willing to face criticism if it enables his party to claim territory that others regard as unfavourable.

His strategy has echoes of Boris Johnson’s Brexit coalition in 2019: pro-banker, yes, but, crucially, pro-worker too. Farage and Yusuf have spent many hours discussing how best to capitalise on the theme of a ‘battle of resources’ in a country which, for many of their voters, seems to reward the old, the comfortable and the immigrant at the expense of the young, the struggling and the native. Reform might have ditched its ‘contract with Britain’, but expect talk of the social contract to be a staple of its future pitch.

Iran is isolated against the US and Israel

America’s entry into the war against Iran is the latest step up an escalation spiral that began in October 2023. What started with an attack by a Palestinian Islamist organisation on a poorly defended Israeli border, and then became a fight between Israel and a series of Iran-supported Islamist paramilitary groups by the end of 2023, and then extended to limited exchanges between Israel and Iran itself in April 2024, and then turned into war between Iran and Israel, has now become a confrontation pitting the US and Israel against their longest standing and most powerful adversary in the Islamic world.

So what are the implications of this latest turn, and what may happen next?

While prediction remains unwise regarding the current US president, the notion that the Trump administration will be dominated by isolationism can be laid to rest. In Washington a few weeks ago, I found that much of the talk behind the scenes was worried assessments concerning the rise of isolationism and of individuals professing such views at the top reaches of the administration. People with past associations with hawkish or pro-Israel circles were having trouble getting confirmed for posts. Vice President J.D. Vance and Donald Trump Jr, I heard, were the most senior and influential members of the rising camp. 

An old friend of mine who has interviewed the President on a number of occasions cautioned against despair. His advice: don’t take too much notice of the people around Trump. Pay attention to Trump himself, and to what his track record suggests regarding his views on Israel. Possessing no special insights of my own, I hoped he was right. It appears he was.

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Over the last two years, much ink has been spilled regarding a supposedly emergent axis of anti-western states. This axis, as usually depicted, is headed by China, with Russia, Iran and North Korea as members.

Cooperation between these countries has indeed measurably increased over the last half decade. Chinese purchase of Iranian oil to foil Trump’s strategy of ‘maximum pressure’ on Tehran during his first term is one example of this growing operational closeness. Yearly joint naval exercises between the Chinese, Russian and Iranian navies, the role of Iranian Shahed 136 drones and North Korean ground troops in the Ukraine war, the provision of advanced air defence systems by Moscow to Tehran all support this view.

But while the eventual emergence of such an axis may be likely, it is also the case that no such crystallised alliance currently exists.

Russia is bogged down in its own forever war in Ukraine. There are no indications that Moscow supports Tehran’s ambition for a nuclear weapon, and still less that Russia would jeopardise its own interests, security or relations with other states in support of this goal. Moscow is a rival but not an enemy to US-aligned Israel, and clearly prefers to maintain this ambiguous status, which brings some benefits.

As for China, while rumours have abounded regarding mysterious Chinese cargo planes reaching Iran in recent days, Beijing’s interest in the region and its growing influence depends on stability and relations with all sides. The mood music from China has shifted over the last two years, with increasingly harsh criticism of Israel. Beijing has strongly condemned Jerusalem’s pre-emptive action against Iran. But China has also sought to build diplomatic leverage on the basis of strong commercial ties with all major regional powers. It has no interest in involving itself in conflicts.

What all this means is that Iran currently finds itself isolated. Now at war with both Israel and the US, it has no major power interested in fighting alongside it. This is no doubt a matter for concern and consternation on the part of the mullahs. It’s a blessing for the rest of us.

So, isolated and faced with attacks by powers enjoying massive technical advantage, what are the options now available to Tehran?

Tehran could, of course, agree to a new nuclear deal which sees the final abandonment of uranium enrichment on Iranian soil. This would represent a historic victory for the US and for Israel. As of now, Tehran may not yet feel that the regime faces existential danger. Short of this, surrender appears unlikely.

If it wants to opt for defiance, Iran has a number of means of possible pressure. It will need to consider carefully, of course, if it wishes to use them, and thus invite further US retribution.

Tehran still has its proxies, even in depleted form. The Houthis are likely to recommence attacks on US flagged vessels on the Gulf of Aden-Red Sea route now.

The Iraqi Shia militias are relatively unscathed from the last 20 months of regional war. The US has bases in Iraq, at Erbil and ain al-Asad. Iran itself or its client militias might attempt missile or drone attacks on these facilities, or on the remaining US presence in northeast Syria.

Theoretically, Tehran could order its once powerful Lebanese Hizballah proxy back into the fray. But to do so would be to risk the final decimation of an organisation that has already been battered by Israel.

US bases throughout the region could potentially be targeted by Iranian missiles. Iran might also seek to hit at US allies in the Gulf, and their oil producing capacity as it did in 2019. But Israeli attacks on launch sites and supply chains throughout Iran in recent days have significantly reduced Iranian capacities in this regard.

Iran could block the Strait of Hormuz, through which one fifth of global petroleum exports are shipped. This is a potent threat, which would cause oil prices to rise. But this would also almost certainly precipitate a full US entry into the war.

Finally, of course, Tehran could accelerate efforts toward the testing of a nuclear weapon.

All these potential courses of action bring with them the likelihood of increased global isolation, and increased US counter measures. These, in turn, would lead to deteriorating internal conditions in the country, which could hit at the regime’s legitimacy and stability.

Then again, acceptance of defeat, and surrender might have a similar effect. Supreme Leader Khamenei and his isolated regime have few good options at present. Whichever one they take, they are likely to be privately cursing the memory of their brother and comrade Yahya Sinwar, deceased former Hamas leader, whose decision to launch the massacres in October 2023 has led directly to Tehran’s current predicament.

Keir Starmer is not having a good war

This is not been Keir Starmer’s finest week on the world stage. At the G7 on Tuesday, the Prime Minister breezily dismissed talk that the Americans would shortly join Israeli’s attack on Iran. ‘There’s nothing the President said that suggests he’s about to get involved in this conflict,’ he insisted. ‘On the contrary, throughout the dinner yesterday, I was sitting right next to President Trump, so I’ve no doubt in my mind the level of agreement there was.’ Within hours, Trump left Alberta to return to the White House Situation Room and approve the final attack plan for Iran.

Then there was the row over whether US bombers would launch from Diego Garcia, the British military base on the Chagos Islands. Yet legal advice from Lord Hermer – Starmer’s choice of Attorney General – ensured that there was confusion about the legality of Britain’s potential involvement in the conflict. Unsurprisingly, the American assault ended up being launched from Missouri instead. This was followed by Whitehall briefing about ‘de-escalation’ and diplomatic options – even while Washington was preparing to attack. Starmer himself said that ‘the principle is that we need to de-escalate this. There’s a real risk of escalation here that will impact the region.’

It is only, now, on Sunday morning that Sir Keir Starmer has had to give the US his belated support for the bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities. He posted on X that the White House has ‘taken action to alleviate the threat’ and is urging Iran to negotiate– a very different line to that adopted on Tuesday and then on Thursday. Jonny Reynolds, the Business Secretary, told Sky that the UK was informed in advance of the US assault.

But at every stage, Britain appears to have been out of step publicly with what the Americans were doing privately. Most concerning is the timing of Starmer’s suggestion on Tuesday that there was ‘no doubt in my mind’ that Trump would not bomb Iran. It came just as America was trying to convince Iran that they were serious about intervention, in a last effort to bring them to the negotiating table.

The Iran assault appears to be more evidence for my colleague Tim Shipman’s thesis in this week’s Spectator cover. Until now, foreign affairs have been a refuge from Keir Starmer’s domestic travails. But international events threaten to torch the government’s economic plans and widen fissures between Labour’s leadership and much of its parliamentary party. They now also risk exposing the PM as flat-footed and fumbling, adept at summitry but lacking judgement in a crisis.

Nigel Farage is looking unstoppable

Opinion polls are notoriously a snapshot rather than a prediction, but the latest Ipsos survey of more than 1,100 voters should put a huge spring in Nigel Farage’s step, and terrify both the Tories and Labour, who are placed nine points behind the surging populists.

The poll states that if a general election were held tomorrow, a Reform government would be elected on 34 per cent of the vote, putting Reform leader Nigel Farage in 10 Downing Street as Prime Minister with a massive majority. Labour would be reduced to 25 per cent, and the Tories to just 15 per cent and a pathetic rump of just ten seats or so in Parliament. The remaining Westminster crumbs would be divided between the Lib Dems (11 per cent) and the Greens (9 per cent) giving each only a handful of seats.

The poll gives the highest ever level of support for Reform, a party which has just five MPs in the present Parliament and didn’t even exist five years ago. This is very bleak news indeed for the Conservatives, and again raises the possibility that Britain’s once natural party of government is facing total extinction.

This Ipsos poll offers little comfort to Labour either, whose current Commons majority would be completely demolished. Moreover, the poll claims that Sir Keir Starmer is ‘enjoying’ a record low level of popularity, with just 19 per cent of people happy with the Prime Minister’s performance – less even than the 22 per cent who were satisfied with Gordon Brown after just a year in office.

With Starmer facing a substantial Labour backbench revolt against the government’s planned welfare ‘reforms’, the new poll apparently justifies Farage’s recent strategy of appealing to natural Labour voters, as well as to those Tories who have already defected to Reform, disappointed by Kemi Badenoch’s lacklustre leadership.

The fieldwork for the poll of 1,180 voters was carried out before the recent hiccup over the short lived resignation of Reform’s chairman Zia Yusuf, before the abrasive entrepreneur returned to the party after just two days – albeit in a new role overseeing party finances.

But such internal spats are unlikely to dent the rebel party’s surging popularity, and neither of the two major old parties have come up with convincing policies to counter Reform’s revolt.

Trump is making the world a safer place

Strength works. It’s a foreign policy lesson that sounds too simple to be true and too unequivocal to be wise, and yet there is much truth and a good deal of wisdom in it. Strength does not mean wanton thuggery or hubristic swagger, it must be considered, well-regulated and guided by reflection and sober analysis. But when it is properly deployed to clear and realistic ends, strength can achieve results that negotiation, compromise and avoidance cannot. Strength, when put in service of just goals, can sometimes be the preferable moral option, checking threats, risks and baneful intentions.

Donald Trump’s decision overnight to bomb Iran’s nuclear weapons programme is an almost textbook case in the effectiveness and virtue of strength. While we wait to learn just how much damage has been done to the Islamic Republic’s uranium enrichment facility in Fordow, its sister plant in Natanz, and the nuclear technology and uranium storage site in Isfahan, it seems likely that, at a minimum, Tehran’s plot to get its hands on nuclear weapons has been severely disrupted. The prospect of a nuclear-armed fundamentalist Shia state that proclaims ‘Death to America’, bankrolls terrorism against the West, and has designs to dominate the Middle East was a scenario too grave for any further delay. Trump has done what his predecessors ought to have done but for various reasons, not all of them excusable, did not. 

At some point, US and European foreign policy elites are going to have to reckon with the fact that Trump keeps succeeding where they have repeatedly failed, and does so by disregarding the assertions they state with unshakeable certainty. It was Trump who recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital while brokering normalisation agreements between Israel and Arab states, a remarkable feat of balance and balls. It was Trump who tore up Barack Obama’s naive and dangerous Iran deal and took out terror chief Qasem Soleimani. It was Trump who declared Communist China’s systematic destruction of the Uyghurs a genocide and who convinced India and Pakistan to back down from their recent stand-off. Now it appears to be Trump who has prevented the rise of a nuclear Iran.

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You can decry his hostility towards Ukraine and its struggle to restore national sovereignty and expel foreign invaders. You can deride absurdities like his proposal to annex Canada or his decision to rename the Gulf of Mexico. The man is a pinless grenade tossed into one global crisis after another. It’s impossible to know when he’ll detonate and what the fallout will be. But sometimes he explodes in a way that hits the right target, takes out a threat that would yield to nothing else, and in doing so makes the world a safer place. This is one of those times.

There will be blowback — there always is — and this could involve attacks by Iran or its proxies on US military bases, armed forces personnel or political leaders, but that is no reason not to have acted. A regime that kills and kidnaps Americans and funds front groups that do the same must be confronted. Trump’s strikes might have wounded the tyrants in Tehran but they and their rule will have to be ended to remove the threat to the United States. Iran’s preferred system of government is Iran’s business, but that government cannot promote, fund or conduct terrorism against the United States, its allies or its strategic or commercial interests. ‘Death to America’ must be met with ‘Death to the Ayatollah’. The strikes will suffice for now. They have not destroyed the regime but they have done the next-best thing: humiliated it.

Strength works. It works even if the United Nations condemns it, the European Union wrings its hands, and the British foreign office pleads for restraint. It works despite what the academics say, what the NGOs demand, and what the journalists pronounce. It works whether the anti-American left howls, the isolationist right seethes, or Tucker Carlson cackles at the very thought. Strength works and, for some reason, leaders and policymakers have decided to allow Donald Trump to be the man who teaches the world that lesson once more.

What Iran will do now

The fact is, no one knows where this war ends. Overnight, the United States entered the conflict, bombing a series of targets across Iran. What happens next is difficult to predict. All we can really say for certain about this situation is where it began. And that was on 1 February 1979, when Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran – by courtesy of Air France – from Neauphle-le-Château, where he had been resident since his expulsion from Najaf in Iraq a few months earlier.

Khomeini had inveighed against Israel and Zionism (not always distinguishing either from Jews in general) for decades. Once he seized power in Iran, he made it a defining characteristic of what became the Islamic Republic to call for the destruction of both. As one distinguished commentator on Iran has said, the three pillars of the state he created have been ‘Death to America’, ‘Death to Israel’ and the Hijab. The hijab may be slipping. America is far away. But Israel is always there.

For four decades, this was the guiding principle of Iran’s foreign policy. To establish Iran as the true protector of the oppressed of the earth – the mustaza’fin – and therefore to assume its proper role as the guardian not just of true Islam but of all peoples who want to see an end to imperialism and western hegemony, Israel must be destroyed. Khomeini used to proclaim it. His successor, Ayatollah Khamenei, has done so with monotonous regularity, followed by his senior military and security commanders (and lots of useful idiots in the West). And that is why Iran has devoted so much effort to building up an array of helpers, partners, allies and proxies who share the same aim. The IRGC, Hezbollah, the Houthis, the Iraqi Shia militias aligned with Iran – with monotonous regularity, they all repeat the same phrase: Marg bar Isra’il in Persian and Mawt li-Isra’il in Arabic.

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Some people think this is all for show. They say the real purpose of Iranian policy – the construction of a network of aggressive, corrupt and bellicose partners throughout the region and ultimately the nuclear programme with all its studied ambiguities but clear intent – is regime survival. But regime survival, as Khomeini construed it and Khamenei developed it, is predicated on positioning Iran as anti-Zionist. If they had really wished to guarantee its survival, they would have devoted much more effort to building a proper national economy, rather than the gangsterism we see. Iran is weak because it is corrupt.  It is corrupt because it is revolutionary. It is revolutionary because it is Islamist. And to be Islamist is to hate Israel.

So this conflict has been coming for years, as papers I wrote for Policy Exchange predicted. I’ve seen people I normally respect – and rather more I don’t – say it was unprovoked. Have they been paying attention? The Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023, followed by those of Hezbollah and the Houthis and indeed Iran’s two waves of missile launches in 2024 were simply the culmination of an often covert and sometimes semi-deniable decades-long war being waged between the two sides. You can argue about causality and sequencing. But it is obtuse to imagine that contemporary conflicts follow a pattern of formal declaration, mobilisation, execution and settlement. This is not 1756, the beginning of the Seven Years’ War. The condition of modern geopolitics is not some Platonic idea of international law but conflict in the interests of power pursued in different spaces and dimensions, overt, covert, grey, cyber, intelligence, informational, political, economic and so forth – and not always simply between states. 

It happens that Israel is very good at all these things. Iran is quite good at some of them. But it is no match – it turns out – for its opponent. I myself overestimated Iran’s ability, with its proxies and partners, both to deter Israel and to inflict serious damage in return. That was partly because Israel – particularly in its covert operations but also in its ability to execute complex battle plans – has not simply learnt the lessons of the last two decades much better than I thought but also (and unusually for Israel) kept quiet about it. Its ability to deliver spectacular intelligence – and special-forces-led operational success in particular – is an object lesson to Britain, which has seemed more inclined in recent years to run down its core hard power assets in favour of a flabby welfare state which makes politicians feel good but does nothing for the nation’s security.

Iran may still prove to have some cards to play. Its stocks of missiles and launchers have clearly been heavily degraded. It has no land forces it can realistically deploy. Israeli intelligence has thoroughly penetrated the Iranian state and its allies. And Hezbollah and Hamas have taken such a beating they no longer count. The Houthis are just a nuisance. But Tehran still has ballistic and cruise missiles which can do serious damage in a country as small and tightly packed as Israel. If Palestinians or Israeli Arabs also suffer, well that’s just too bad. It can also seek to attack shipping in the Gulf or even try to close the Straits of Hormuz. It tried this in the 1980s, of course, and failed. But in those days we and our Nato allies had proper navies – in particular minesweepers – which quickly resolved the issue. I doubt that the Straits could be closed fully or for long even now. But insurance rates would rise sharply. And so would oil prices. Iran could also attack US bases in the Gulf – Al Udeid Air Base for example or the Fifth Fleet in Bahrain – or the residual US presence in Iraq and Syria. It could sponsor terror attacks on Israeli or US targets more widely. It could even seek to attack energy installations in Saudi Arabia or the UAE, as it did in 2019: that is what the Arab Gulf states – which have economic development not millenarian fantasies on their minds – really fear.

So how does this end? There has been much talk of the famous ‘cup of poison’ that Khomeini said he was forced to drink in 1988 to end a war with Iraq he had needlessly prolonged for five years. Is Khamenei inclined to take the same toxic cocktail? Tehran’s public position remains inflexible and bellicose. But there have been reports that it has made private overtures to some of the Gulf states – presumably Oman and Qatar – about opening a line of communication with Washington. It’s hard to see where that goes as long as Iran rejects the stated US position of zero enrichment. That may, of course, become moot if the US and Israel completely destroy Fordow, Natanz and the multiple other sites associated with the Iranian nuclear programme.

That would remove the nuclear threat for a generation. But we would still be left with the issue of what happens within Iran immediately afterwards. The basis of the regime is that it would never allow the humiliations of the Qajar and Pahlavi periods to happen to Iran again. Left alone, it is therefore almost certain that it would seek to reconstruct a nuclear programme: after all, it has had the aim of weaponisation for at least 25 years and perhaps longer, whatever apologists might say. It would be hard to do so but not impossible. The regime might also dedicate itself once again to promoting global terrorism and subversion. None of that would help the Iranian people as a whole, a majority of whom almost certainly want to lead a more normal, peaceful and prosperous life. But if the Ayatollahs and the IRGC continue to believe in the righteousness of their cause, then it is hard to see them changing course. Unless, of course, there is a change of leadership or a change of regime. If there is to be either, it can only come from within Iran. This has happened multiple times in Iranian history. And the idea of Iran is so powerful and deep-seated that it cannot be destroyed – even by malign Islamists. The possibility that there is something better on the other side not just of this conflict but of the Islamic Republic itself, something that does more justice both to the talents and aspirations of the Iranian people and to the magnificence of their culture and history is perhaps the one thing that gives hope.