Hamas

It was moving to watch Keir Starmer announce this week, from a corridor in Downing Street, that his government has decided to recognise a state of Palestine. Starmer took this bold action at the same time as his French, Canadian and Australian counterparts. But as with Emmanuel Macron, Mark Carney and someone called Anthony Albanese, he seemed to be labouring under a number of misunderstandings. The first was that it makes any difference. Starmer and his counterparts overseas appear to be under the misapprehension that the creation of states still lies in their hands. I had thought that the present generation of leftists looked down on imperialist western powers making

Successful political leaders hold in their minds some idea of what Mrs Thatcher called ‘Our People’. In this context, I do not mean the whole population of the country they seek to lead, or the core of the party they belong to. I mean that group of people with whose aspirations they most wish to identify. In making that identification, they combine direct self-interest – getting their floating vote – with a wider view about who are most important for the nation’s future prosperity and good order. In the Thatcher era, such people were the famous C2s, first-generation home-buyers, millions who could expect not only to earn but also to

Israel and Hamas signed a ceasefire agreement. Though the ancients would have employed oaths, the practical ancient Greeks often ensured there was a flexibility about them: the real world might intervene. For example, treaties between city-states were agreed between opposing generals. Hostages were exchanged, oaths sworn and the terms of the treaty widely inscribed on stone and bronze pillars, but it was citizens who oversaw the treaty’s maintenance. In a Greek democracy, however, there was no saying how, under the influence of different leaders, policy might change and annul a treaty at a stroke. Then again, though treaties could be sworn to last forever, ‘circumstances’ were very unlikely to remain

I feel some sympathy for the British royal family because of the ghastly people they are forced to meet. The late Queen had to greet Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu, Idi Amin and Robert Mugabe. This week the King and Prince and Princess of Wales had to meet the Emir of Qatar and his wife. True to form, the state media in Britain managed to miss every major problem with this. The BBC did say that there might be protests around the visit because of Qatar’s record on ‘LGBT rights’. But more troubling is that Britain should ever have welcomed the leadership of such a sordid, terrorist-supporting statelet. It’s troubling that

Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of 7 October, went to meet his maker last week. Having spent a year being pursued through the underground tunnels of Gaza that he had built, he finally put his head up above the surface in the Tal al-Sultan area of Rafah. The world that had told the IDF not to go into Rafah was once again proved wrong. Sinwar was killed in an exchange of fire by a 19-year-old Israeli soldier who was not even in uniform on 7 October. People inside the ICC were annoyed by the way Khan made himself a sort of ‘world policeman’ A couple of days after Sinwar’s demise, I

When it was recently announced that 40,000 people, the great majority civilians, have been killed in the Gaza conflict, I checked the media coverage. Almost all – Sky, CNN, the Guardian etc – correctly reported that the figure came from the Hamas health ministry. All, however, implied acceptance of the figure’s accuracy by the prominence they gave it (except for the Guardian, preposterously plus royaliste que le roi, which said the Hamas figure ‘does not tell the full story of Palestinian losses’). The classic example was the BBC. The story led the six o’clock news on Radio 4, the serious programme with the bongs of Big Ben, always considered the gold

Home Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said she had found a £21.9 billion hole, and a black one at that, ‘covered up’ by the Tories in the finances Labour inherited. ‘The biggest single cause of the £22 billion fiscal hole was Reeves’s decision to give inflation-busting pay rises to public sector workers,’ the Financial Times reported. Junior doctors were offered an average rise of 22 per cent over two years. The Chancellor told the Commons that the government was cancelling: the universal winter fuel payment; the cap on the amount people must spend on funding their social care; A-level reforms; and a tunnel near Stonehenge. Jeremy Hunt, the

Home A general election shook the nation’s political snowglobe. Sir Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader, was able to stop stunts for the camera after making a bungee jump at Eastbourne. Before the election, Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister for the time being, commented on Channel 4 footage of a Reform UK supporter talking of him in racially abusive language: ‘My two daughters have to see and hear Reform people who campaign for Nigel Farage calling me an effing Paki. It hurts and it makes me angry.’ Reform UK made an official complaint against Channel 4 to the Electoral Commission, claiming that the supporter filmed was an actor. England beat

On Tuesday night I was body double/understudy for the brave, brainy, beautiful Rachel Riley, at a packed ‘support Israel’ evening. The keynote speaker was the brave, brainy, beautiful lawyer Natasha Hausdorff. I was slightly out of my depth but I hope I provided some light relief. Natasha was dazzling in defence of beleaguered democracy, but the facts are sombre and the audience went home a little more concerned about our future in the diaspora. Anti-Semitism is known to be a light sleeper. I fear it may become insomniac. I’ve been arguing vehemently with my brother Geoff about everything and nothing for 75 years. Inevitably, these days, our arguments are about

Soft left Sir: I read with a certain wry amusement in Yascha Mounk’s piece that ‘activists’ occupying Columbia were demanding the university administrators should supply them with food and water (‘Preach first’, 11 May). How times have changed. In winter 1976 I was the president of the student body at Edinburgh University. A group of ultra-left activists occupied a building of the social science faculty. The administration sent two members of staff to speak to me in the hope that I might be able to dislodge them. I explained very patiently to them that given my own unashamed Conservatism, there was unlikely to be any meeting of minds on this