With Israel, the US is caught in a world of contradictions

Ever since a 2,000-pound bomb demolished Hezbollah’s headquarters in Southern Beirut last Friday and killed Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the organization since 1992, there was an expectation among the commentariat that Iran would retaliate. The scope of that response, however, was very much in dispute. The Iranian government was reportedly divided about whether to respond at all, with the newly-elected president, Masoud Pezeshkian, taking the position that an attack against Israel would likely ruin his foreign policy agenda — he offered the West the thinnest of olive branches during his time in New York for the UN General Assembly meetings — and give the Israeli government an excuse to strike inside Iranian borders. 

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, however, seems to have concluded that sitting on his hands and letting Israel’s ferocious assault on Hezbollah continue without lifting a finger wasn’t an option. This isn’t exactly surprising — Hezbollah is Iran’s crown jewel in a network of anti-Israel militias designed to keep the pressure on Israel and bolster Iranian deterrence in the Middle East. Tehran has relied on Hezbollah to bail out Syrian president Bashar al-Assad from defeat during Syria’s civil war, train allied militias like the Houthis as it fought off a Saudi-backed air campaign in Yemen and support Hamas by sustaining near-daily rocket launches into northern Israel. The string of assassinations within Hezbollah’s command structure over the last two weeks hasn’t eliminated Iran’s favorite non-state partner in the region but has certainly degraded it.

Sure enough, Iran’s response occurred days after Nasrallah was killed (a senior Iranian commander was also killed in the bombing). According to US National Security adviser Jake Sullivan, nearly 200 Iranian ballistic missiles rained down on Israel in the dead of night. Israel’s air defense system put up a hell of a fight but couldn’t shoot down every single projectile. Amateur videos showed some of the missiles hitting Israeli soil. Tel Aviv and Jerusalem were both targeted in the salvo. Miraculously, at the time of writing, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) haven’t registered a single casualty, demonstrating the country’s exceptional preparatory measures. When the attack was over, Iran’s mission at the United Nations warned Israel to stand down and that if it didn’t, a “crushing response will ensue.”   

If Tehran is hoping this threat will deter Israel from retaliation, it will likely be disappointed. After the Iranians sent drones and missiles into Israel last April, Israel used military force about two weeks later to hit back. That strike, against several targets in a single Iranian air base near the city of Isfahan, was extremely limited and no doubt designed to end the tit-for-tat before it got out of control. The Israeli airstrike inside Iran was so insignificant in Tehran’s eyes that it was barely worth addressing. The drama fortunately had an anti-climactic ending. 

Even so, it’s exceedingly difficult to believe Israel will hold its fire this time. If the Israelis retaliated for the April attack, one must assume the Israelis will retaliate for this attack as well. You can bet the Iranians are working off that assumption; reports suggest that Iran has already closed its airspace diverted all civilian flights. Khamenei, mindful of what happened to his buddy Nasrallah, is in a secure location. The IDF is talking about revenge, with the military’s chief spokesman stressing, “We will act at the time and place of our choosing.” It’s likely not a matter of if retaliation will happen but rather when.

For the United States, this entire situation is a bit dicey. There are more than 40,000 US troops stationed in the region, and many of those bases — particularly in Iraq and Syria — are easy pickings for Iranian-backed militia groups who could presumably join the fray if Israeli bombs begin falling on Iranian soil. Defense secretary Lloyd Austin has sent thousands of additional personnel, increased the number of US fighter aircraft in the region, cancelled a planned withdrawal of the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group and put more air defense systems in place as a precautionary measure. The enhanced force presence is meant to dissuade Iran from attacking US interests, but could also have the counterproductive effect of convincing Israel to escalate more than it otherwise would — the exact opposite of what US officials want to see.  

President Biden will get on the phone with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to counsel restraint, just as he did after Iran’s first missile attack in April. Ideally the Israelis wouldn’t respond at all; as difficult as this would be for Netanyahu to swallow politically, it’s the quickest way of putting this saga to an end. Yet Biden understands that this probably isn’t a scenario Netanyahu will consider. Instead, he will try to sell him on as limited and precise an operation inside Iran as possible. Given the Israeli premier’s penchant for taking risks and habitual ignoring of Biden’s reservations, nobody can say with certainty whether Netanyahu will seriously listen. 

The US is caught in a world of contradictions. It wants Israel to de-escalate but backs Israel up when it chooses to escalate. It aims for a diplomatic resolution to the war between Israel and Hezbollah but quickly accedes to an Israeli ground operation in Southern Lebanon. It hopes to avoid a war with Iran even if as its strategy, which includes deploying more US military forces to the region, undermines that objective. And it’s praying for Netanyahu to respond proportionally even as Netanyahu grows exceedingly confident that his superpower partner will back him up come hell or highwater. 

Badenoch’s feud with Farage continues

The Tory leadership race is ramping up — and so is Kemi Badenoch’s anti-Reform rhetoric. The contender for the top job hasn’t held back on her views of Nigel Farage this week, and the back and forth looks set to continue…

The Reform leader has been rather uncomplimentary about Badenoch of late — tweeting furiously on the eve of the Conservative Party conference:

Kemi Badenoch has spent weeks positioning herself as tough on immigration. But in 2018 she campaigned in parliament to increase legal migration, and was the biggest champion for students bringing in dependents. I don’t believe a word that she says on anything.

Ouch. 

In retaliation, during her leadership interview with GB News’s Christopher Hope on Monday, the wannabe leader blasted Farage’s right-wing rabble — remarking that the party’s leadership are not ‘real conservatives’ or ‘serious people’. Despite Jacob Rees-Mogg cautioning the Tory frontrunner that ‘it’s a mistake to dismiss [Farage]’, Badenoch has now launched a further attack on the Reform MP today.

Taking to Twitter, the Tory leadership hopeful posted a link to a 2022 article written by Farage himself – about the last Conservative leadership contest. In it, the Reform leader writes: 

Of those left in the contest, only Kemi Badenoch has the genuine conviction to talk about legal and illegal immigration, completing Brexit by leaving the ECHR and ending the poison that has been taught to our children in schools. Her manner is refreshing in comparison to what we have become used to in Westminster politics.

How times change…

Badenoch is of course rather keen to remind Farage about his change of heart, posting an acid-tongued dig on Twitter: 

I preferred Nigel’s earlier work. He used to talk about me as the only one with conviction to tackle illegal and legal immigration… but since seeing me as the next Conservative leader and a threat to winning back Reform voters, he’s stopped doing so. Oh well…

Crikey. The gloves are coming off…

Jenrick reveals daughter’s middle name is Thatcher

It’s the second day of the big Tory leadership interviews at party conference and Robert Jenrick is on the main stage. Making his case for why he should be elected leader of the Conservative party, the former minister slammed the state of the Home Office as being ‘in ashes’, promised he would ‘re-enact’ a version of the Rwanda scheme if he were to become Prime Minister and said he ‘would like’ to cut the top rate of tax. How interesting…

But it wasn’t just domestic policy that the Tory leadership contender discussed this afternoon. In a rather, er, amusing announcement, Jenrick revealed that his daughter’s middle name is ‘Thatcher’ – in a touching tribute to the former PM. Talk about commitment to the cause, eh?

Speaking to GB News’s Christopher Hope, Jenrick was first quizzed on how his family would handle him securing the top job. ‘I’ve got three young girls,’ Jenrick told the crowd, ‘and they’ve all been reading the papers, watching the news. And one of them said to me the other day: “Does this mean we’re going to get free tickets to Taylor Swift?”‘ Never one to resist a pop at his political opponents, the Tory candidate informed them: ‘No, that’s only for leaders of the Labour Party.’ Burn…

And on the subject of Jenrick’s daughters, Hope probed the wannabe leader a little more:

CH: I guess your daughter knew what was coming – because what’s her middle name?

RJ: Oh, you’re embarrassing her now. It is Margaret Thatcher… It’s Thatcher. She was born the year that Margaret Thatcher died. I respect strong women… I thought it was a good way of reminding her of a good prime minister.

It’s certainly one way to prove your conservative credentials. Can any of Jenrick’s rivals beat that? Stay tuned…

Robert Jenrick’s critics must calm down about his Star of David idea

Is Robert Jenrick plotting to surrender our sovereignty to the Israelis? Is the Tory leadership frontrunner engaged in some nefarious scheme to plaster our ports with the flag of the Jewish State? You could be forgiven for thinking so following the swirling hysteria that greeted his comments about having the Star of David at Britain’s entry points. ‘He wants to make us an outpost of Israel!’, every time-rich radical with the Palestine flag in his social-media bio wailed online. It’s poppycock, of course.

Jenrick made his remarks at a gathering of the Conservative Friends of Israel at the Tory conference in Birmingham. Sporting a sweatshirt emblazoned with the words ‘Hamas are Terrorists’ – cue meltdown among the left’s Hamasniks – he proposed displaying a Star of David at ‘every airport and point of entry to our great country’ to show ‘we stand with Israel’. Before you knew it, fuming tweeters were conjuring up a hellish vision of Britain smothered in a foreign flag like some tragic colonial stooge.

They need to calm down. Jenrick’s comments were not brilliantly delivered, sure. But it is pretty clear he was only talking about having the Star of David symbol at e-gates, not fluttering from every pole in every port. He was recounting how, during his stint as immigration minister, he pushed for citizens of Israel to be able to enter Britain through our e-gates. Which would entail the Star of David being displayed at those gates. That’s it. A small, practical symbol to let visiting Israelis know which queue they should join, not the bending of Britain’s mighty knee to a distant state.

A source close to Jenrick clarified his comments when the storm blew up. It was a ‘rhetorical flourish’, he said, relating only to the use of e-gates. What was truly disturbing was not Jenrick’s proposal to grant ease of entry to our friends from the Jewish nation – a good idea, if you ask me – but the hopping-mad response to it. It is a testament to the activist set’s outsized dread of Israel that they were so swiftly consumed by visions of Britain bowing down to that beastly nation. It revealed more than they realise about their own biases.

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The Jenrick-bashers essentially told on themselves. They exposed their own fear of Israeli power. Across social media, the frantic cry went up: our political class is loyal to a foreign entity! In the deeper recesses of virtual blather, there was talk of Britain’s treacherous leaders selling the country off to those highest of bidders – the Jews. That all this heated babble was provoked by a modest proposal to add a symbol to our e-gates is so telling. To some people everything involving Israel is by definition dodgy, if not dangerous.

Some now fear there might be an ‘Israel Test’ at Britain’s borders if the Tories get back into power. Alongside Jenrick’s e-gates suggestion, Kemi Badenoch has raised concerns about ‘the number of recent immigrants to the UK who hate Israel’. ‘That sentiment has no place here’, she said. Perhaps arrivals to our once great nation will not only be required to show their passports but also to negotiate their way through vast formations of Israeli flags while chanting ‘I love Israel’.

Again, let’s calm down. Badenoch is quite right to draw attention to the problem of migrants coming to Britain who ‘buy into Islamist ideology’ and thus ‘do not like Israel’. As she points out, this is ‘not all Muslim immigrants’. But it is some. And as a sovereign nation that is surely keen to know who is moving here, and whether they hold extremist views, that is something we should talk about, no? It is not racist to wish to protect Britain’s Jews from the harms of the Islamist ideology. Quite the opposite.

Here’s my question: might a so-called ‘Israel Test’ actually be a good idea? Of course it would have to be carefully deployed. Tourists and short-term visitors should not be asked what they think about Israel – it’s not our business. But people who want to make a home here – would it be so bad to inquire into their views on Israel? Visceral hatred for Israel is often a marker for a broader reactionary worldview. For anti-Jewish animus, even anti-Western animus. A free state is surely within its rights to ask aspiring migrants: ‘Do you hate us?’

It’s a tough time to be Scottish

Hard-working Scots could be forgiven for resorting to a stiff drink tonight as they contemplate an extraordinary triple attack on their living standards. The minimum unit price of alcohol has risen by 30 per cent, peak-time rail tickets have nearly doubled, and the energy price cap has just gone up by 10 per cent or £149. Oh, and many pensioners have also lost their winter fuel payments thanks to Rachel Reeves, ‘the pensioner freezer’, as the Labour chancellor is being called, even by some in the Scottish Labour party.

But that hike in the minimum unit price of alcohol, which adds insult to injury, is entirely down to the Scottish government. At a time when families are struggling, it seems entirely the wrong moment to punish moderate drinkers for one of the few compensations for living in our harsh Scottish climate. Beer and wine will cost up to 67 per cent more than in England.

It’s not as if there is any firm evidence that the MUP actually works. Deaths from alcohol rose again last year and are now at the highest level in 15 years. The latest figure, 1,277, is up 25 per cent in the last four years. The Scottish government claims that ‘hundreds of lives have been saved’ by MUP, but this is speculative. It is based on modelling by Public Health Scotland, who claim even more would have died had MUP not been introduced in 2020.

That’s a strange counterfactual on which to base public policy. Deaths are down even as they have, er, gone up.

Drug deaths in Scotland have also increased despite the liberalisation of the laws on possession. But no-one would dare to say that, well, they could’ve been even higher and therefore lives have been saved. That kind of logic only attracts ridicule. It looks like the Scottish government has been manipulating facts to fit the policy. In England, for example, where there is no minimum unit price, deaths from alcohol are 40 per cent lower per 100,000 than in Scotland.

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Indeed, the only people cheering are the smugglers. A box of 18 cans of Strongbow cider that sells for about £14 in England will now cost around £22 in Scotland. That’s a nice little earner for anyone with a van willing to hop over the border.

The Scottish government is also implicated in the late Scottish train robbery. Commuters between Glasgow and Edinburgh, already harassed by delays and cancellations, found yesterday that their £16.20 anytime return ticket had nearly doubled to £31.40. This is because the Scottish government has abandoned its much-heralded, country-wide abolition of peak fares. The newly-nationalised rail network found it just didn’t attract enough people out of their cars to make the reduction commercially viable. The restoration of peak fares will, of course, force yet more people into using their cars.

It’s a cruel blow. Though not as cruel as the ever-rising cost of heating bills. The new cap of £1,717 is only an average. Many Scottish homes already pay considerably more to keep warm. According to the ONS, Scottish bills are 40 to 50 per cent higher than in London.

People are wondering where all Scotland’s supposedly cheap-as-chips wind energy is going. Britain is a world leader in renewables, yet bills just keep going up. The new price cap is still £300 more than before the Ukraine war. Some nationalists claim that Scotland’s green electricity is being stolen by the English. But that’s not how the energy market works. Everyone in the UK is paying the same inflated unit price as the Scots. Just don’t expect GB Energy to make any difference. The reality is that renewable energy is not going to reduce bills for a long time, as most analysts admit.

Ed Miliband’s attempt to accelerate the decline of the North Sea oil and gas industry will make Britain even more reliant on expensive imports. That will also push bills higher.

Well, it all helps the transition to net zero, apparently. But tell that to pensioners in Scotland who are braced for a miserable Christmas, deprived even of the consolation of a glass of Scotland’s national drink or perhaps that snifter of Buckfast Tonic Wine.

There is a heartless streak of joyless puritanism in Scottish public life. Finger-wagging scolds telling folk how to live their lives. Unfortunately, many of them are embedded in the Scottish National party.

But this week’s triple whammy on the cost and quality of life in Scotland will surely only hasten their electoral demise.

Labour’s childcare confusion has gone on for too long

For parents with young children, it’s been a game of grandmother’s footsteps. First they heard from the new Labour government that they will open 300 new state nurseries in England to cater for the 30 hours of free childcare that families with children aged nine months and upwards are eligible for. Now they hear Naomi Eberstadt, high priestess of New Labour’s early years programme Sure Start, proclaim the home, not the nursery, as the best place for a child under one.  

The ‘yes but no but yes’ approach of policy makers risks further confusing working parents. The 30 hours of free childcare was the previous Conservative government’s response to the UK’s crisis-level economic inactivity. It might prove tricky to meet the mental health needs of the millions who had dropped out of the labour force, their thinking was – far easier to place babies as young as nine months in a state-run nursery to free their parents to find, or return to, a job. The impact on that baby’s life chances might be felt in the future, but that would be another government’s problem.

From the outset however, the free childcare policy has faced obstacles – in the dearth of provision (only a third of councils have enough childcare places) and, tragically, in the poor quality of care found in over 650 nurseries across the countries. With infants not yet able to talk, the failures of a childminder only surface when children come to harm.

And so the childcare system continues to disappoint. British parents face the highest childcare costs of any OECD country, with an average family spending more than a fifth of their income on childcare. Yet the system delivers little choice to parents, few rewards to providers, and leaves employers feeling short-changed.

These multiple failures are born of an unresolved question: what is childcare for? To enable parents to work or to ensure the best start in life for children? To reduce inequalities or to boost the Treasury’s takings in taxes and NI contributions? Policy makers seem stuck in a blindman’s bluff where they stumble from one ideal to the other.

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They should heed the neuroscientists and approach childcare through a different, long term lens. The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) argues that government should prioritise the early years when the baby’s brain is developing and parents are more likely to be financially struggling. If parents – even those on low incomes – can be present in their infant’s earliest years, that baby will enjoy healthy cognitive development and grow to have better health, better relationships, and greater success at school and work. Without that committed and continuous one-on-one presence – such as when left to the not-so-tender mercies of minders with up to three other charges in their care – infants will flounder. 

Parents sense this, even if they ignore the science. In a survey for the CSJ by pollsters Public First, 81 per cent of parents with young children said they believed parents should be supported to spend more time at home with their children. Meanwhile, 61 per cent (62 per cent among Labour voters) wanted the government to give them a budget to spend on raising their children, rather than vouchers or subsidies for approved childcare providers.

Meeting such a demand would call for the £13 billion that constitutes our child benefit bill to be redirected towards supporting families in the first years of their child’s life. Front-loading child benefit payments so that they target families with children under the age of five would give parents with two pre-schoolers up to £7,400 a year, while reducing the annual cost to the taxpayer from £13 billion to £10 billion.

Admittedly there would be losers in this new scheme: parents with older children would find they have less support than young families – but then, the neuroscience confirms this trade-off is necessary. Investing in children in their first 1,001 days is key to prevention. A solid foundation, with positive emotional interaction (‘attachment’ was the buzz word once), stimulus to think and question, and an income above the poverty threshold can prevent risks down the line – from school exclusion through to mental health issues and joblessness.

This is especially true of children in low income households, when learning skills in their earliest days can prevent the attainment gap that affects so many. The savings inherent in this preventative approach are significant: think of the cost of school exclusions (£2.9 billion last year), or the average cost of a place as an in-patient in a child and adolescent mental health (CAMH) unit (£61,000).

For too long, parents have been watching, despairing, from the sidelines, as a succession of governments take turns at playing the childcare card to win votes – only to then lose interest. Enough’s enough. The new Labour government should resolve to give parents what they want (more time with their children) when they want it (in the early years). Such a bold proposition doesn’t have to come at an extra cost. Parents – and their children – will prove why this is a win-win solution.

Rees-Mogg takes aim at Badenoch over Reform remarks

It’s day three of the Conservative party conference, and so far the blue-on-blue has been kept to a minimum — not least thanks to the ‘yellow card’ threat, Mr S is sure. But one Tory grandee and former MP isn’t holding back on his thoughts on the future of his party following a disastrous election result — and Jacob Rees-Mogg had some firm words for Kemi Badenoch in particular… 

In conversation with the Telegraph’s Daily T podcast this morning, Rees-Mogg first criticised the four leadership contenders for not focusing enough on issues like net zero or the economy, before slamming his party’s ’appalling failure’ on immigration over the last 14 years. ‘We promised tens of thousands in the 2010 manifesto, which we knew was a lie actually,’ he told his audience, ‘because we knew we had no control over EU migration.’ He went on:

We had 1.4 million people net come in in the two years to June 2023. We can say the most wonderful things and people will think Nigel [Farage] will do it properly and we won’t because we’ve failed before. So I don’t think trying to steal our clothes back from Reform is likely to work. We need to show we are changing by recognising that Reform is real and trying to bring them into a tent. That may mean that some people may leave the tent in the other direction, but that is something we must accept because we are the Conservative party, and not the Liberal Democrat mark two party.

Strong stuff. Then he turned his guns on Badenoch, after her remarks on Tuesday that Reform’s leadership are not ‘real conservatives’ or ‘serious people’. ‘It’s a mistake to dismiss him,’ Rees-Mogg fumed. ‘I think to say Nigel Farage is not a serious politician ignores the evidence. We would not have had Brexit without Nigel.’ Continuing his tirade, the ex-Tory MP insisted:

Without the success he made of the UK Independence party, of the Brexit party, of pushing us down to our lowest share of the vote in the 2019 European elections in our history, going back to Queen Anne, our worst result ever. We would not have got the referendum in the first place – which David Cameron offered to neutralise Ukip, to neutralise Nigel – we would not have won the referendum because we would not have appealed to the Labour voters who eventually came over to us, who Nigel appealed to.

He hasn’t done it just because he swigs beer and smokes fags. He’s done it because he is a formidable figure.

That’s her told…

Farage may not be at Tory conference himself this year to defend his name, but evidently Rees-Mogg has that covered…

Why Hezbollah miscalculated – and Israel attacked

In the early hours of Tuesday morning, the IDF spokesman’s office issued a laconic statement, according to which Israeli forces have commenced ‘raids… based on precise intelligence against Hezbollah terrorist targets and infrastructure in southern Lebanon. These targets are located in villages close to the border and pose an immediate threat to Israeli communities in northern Israel.’

With this terse announcement, Israel signalled that its 18-year policy of restraint and reaction on its northern border was definitively over, and that the door has been opened to something new. 

How did we reach this point? The last war between Israel and the Iran-supported Shia Islamist Hezbollah organisation came to an official end on August 14, 2006. UN Resolution 1701, which ended the war, forbade Hezbollah from any armed presence south of the Litani river. 

For most of the intervening years, Israel pursued a cautious, even hesitant policy on the border. It made no serious attempt to intervene as Hezbollah rapidly brushed aside the terms of 1701 and the UN force detailed with implementing it, and began to construct a fearsome, open military capacity extending down to the Blue Line of withdrawal and the border fence. 

Without the 7 October attacks from Gaza, and Hezbollah’s decision to join Hamas’s war effort on October 8, it is likely that this situation would have been maintained. It has taken a year of fighting to destroy Hamas’s conventional military capacity in Gaza. Even now, the organisation is still able to launch sporadic attacks on Israeli forces. If the northern border had been quiet, it may be assumed that any calls in Israel for opening a ‘second front’ would have been quickly dismissed. 

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It is likely that Hezbollah assumed that difficulties in Gaza and/or the fear of casualties would prevent a determined Israeli response to their daily missile and drone attacks. Hezbollah takes a particular pride in its claimed deep knowledge of and understanding of Israeli society. In reality, however, this supposed knowledge mainly consisted of the conceit that Israeli society’s (undoubted) sensitivity to casualties would prevent it from launching a determined response. 

This perspective is based on a long-standing Arab nationalist and Islamist view of Israel. It may have its roots in a traditional Islamic disdain for the Jews as a defeated and for a long period non-martial people. In the case of Hezbollah, the theory that Israeli sensitivity to casualties could lead to military results was applied in the insurgency of the 1985-2000 period and produced the desired result – the unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Israel’s ‘security zone’ in south Lebanon, in May 2000. 

This success has led to subsequent miscalculation. In 2006, a Hezbollah raid led to a three-week war and large-scale destruction in Lebanon. Subsequent to that war, Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah said that had he known in advance of the Israeli response, he would never have ordered the initial attack. This did not, however, prevent him from ordering the ‘support front’ on October 8, a decision which cost him his life, led to the severe degradation of his movement, and may now have triggered a renewed Israeli land invasion. 

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant is the main driving force behind the current government’s uncompromising stance toward Hezbollah. Gallant’s own involvement with Lebanon goes back to his own experiences as a naval commando in operations in the country in the early 1980s.

A couple of years before he became defence minister, I participated with Gallant in a delegation from Israel to meet with officials in France. I still remember the suddenly electric atmosphere in the meeting room on a sleepy Paris afternoon, as the future defence minister began to lay out his views and plans for the destruction of Hezbollah in Lebanon, in the bluntest and starkest terms. Gallant has been the most determined voice for a wide-ranging operation into Lebanon since October 8. He was blocked from ordering such an operation, by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in the very first days of the war. Now, largely thanks to the miscalculations of the deceased Nasrallah, he has the chance to apply his plans. 

What has happened so far? There are currently two regular IDF divisions poised for action on the northern border. These two divisions have different capabilities and job descriptions and it is worth paying close attention to who is doing what, in order to keep a sense of the unfolding operation. The two divisions are the 98^th airborne, and the 36^th armoured. The 98^th brings together Israel’s airborne, reconnaissance and commando units, including the regular 35^th (Paratroopers) Brigade. As its name suggests, its specialties include rapid, pinpointed actions. It has been a central force in Gaza in recent months, engaged in the clearing out of remaining Hamas resistance. 

The 98^th appears to have been the force responsible for what the IDF describes as the ‘limited, localised, and targeted ground raids’ against Hezbollah positions along the border which have so far taken place. 

The stated purpose of the IDF’s mission is to create the conditions which will enable the return of the over 60,000 Israeli internal refugees displaced from their homes along the northern border since 8 October. The dimensions and extent of the unfolding Israeli action have not been revealed and are not currently clear. It is doubtful, however, that Israel will suffice with clearing Hezbollah positions from the immediate border area. 

The 36^th Armored Division, whose components include the First (Golani) infantry brigade and the 188 Armoured Brigade, was one of two regular divisions which took part in Israel’s initial, rapid thrust into Gaza. It has been in the northern border area since early 2024, training for operations into Lebanon. Its presence implies that a broader and deeper push into Lebanon is a distinct possibility. 

It remains to be seen what arrangement might follow the Israeli manoeuvre – whether it will mean the establishment of an Israeli controlled buffer zone in the area south of the Litani or (as currently appears more likely) some new power dispensation involving the return of the Lebanese Armed Forces and perhaps a new international force. What is clear is that we are witnessing the opening of a new chapter in the year-long war between Israel and the Iran-supported Islamist militias deployed around it, and in the long and tortuous saga of Israel’s relations with its northern neighbour. 

What Cleverly gets wrong about Sunak’s pledge to ‘stop the boats’

Back in the 1980s, the American business guru Tom Peters came up with the advice to companies to ‘under-promise and over-deliver’. The idea behind it was that there was an asymmetry in customer responses to service standards which depended on what they had been guaranteed. A long delivery time could, for example, be perfectly acceptable to them unless they had been promised the purchased item sooner, in which case the reputation of the company involved would be badly harmed. The very best outcome for a company’s reputation was often when it set seemingly modest goals for itself in public but then outperformed them.

The Tory leadership contender James Cleverly seems to have imbibed from this literature, which was all the rage back in the day but is now inevitably tainted by the impact of comic fictional characters such as David Brent (‘There is no “I” in team, but there’s a “ME” if you look hard enough’). Cleverly has decreed that Rishi Sunak should never have promised to ‘stop the boats’ as one of his five key pledges to the electorate. His reasoning is as follows: ‘The self-imposed yardstick was that even one boat was a failure, and that was an unachievable target.’ In other words, Sunak made the mistake of over-promising and under-delivering.

The implication of Cleverly’s criticism is that without the absolutist pledge, the government’s performance on combating the Channel boats could have been sold as a qualified success. Yet when he was home secretary, from November 2023 to the election in early July, the government’s record on the issue was a failure by any metric. While numbers had fallen by 36 per cent through 2023, compared to 2022, they then rose again strongly in the first half of 2024.

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For example, at the end of May this year, the fact-checkers Full Fact found that as of May 26 – just after the election had been called – there had been 10,448 recorded illegal arrivals via Channel dinghy, a 38 per cent increase on the same period in 2023. Cleverly’s period in charge at the Home Office simply produced rubbish results on an issue that Sunak had correctly identified as one of the highest concerns for electors who might otherwise consider voting Tory.

It wasn’t the terms of the pledge that damned the Sunak administration, but its failure to sustain any progress whatsoever on an issue that was causing public outrage. The public might well have been reasonably satisfied had Sunak’s ‘stretch target’ (another grim piece of jargon from the literature of management) led to, say, an 80 per cent reduction in crossings. But it didn’t.

Without wishing to turn his surname into a pun, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Cleverly’s interpretation casts serious doubt on his conceptual political intelligence. If one compares his approach on the issue to that of Robert Jenrick, who resigned as immigration minister shortly after Cleverly’s arrival at the Home Office, it is as different as chalk and cheese.

Cleverly resides in the comfortable fiction of incremental, art-of-the-possible improvements which he never actually achieved. Jenrick, on the other hand, is relentless in identifying the issue as profoundly corroding the basic social contract and being of foundational importance to the nation’s voters. He had the foresight to understand that Sunak’s policy prescriptions were inadequate and bound to fail – and also the gumption to resign. Now, he is hammering home his own radical action plan. 

If Jenrick does become the next Tory leader, as looks likely, it will largely be down to his having achieved a rare scoop of interpretation from within the governing class: he saw the politics of immigration from the point of view of his constituents and then subjected elite conventional wisdom to searching analysis. Having come to appreciate its deficiencies he then instigated a new direction and pursued it with vigour.

Is Jenrick sincere? Well, his undertakings on leaving the ECHR and scrapping the Blair Human Rights Act are so unqualified that any subsequent policy U-turn by him would be suicidal. Compared to the Cleverly approach – the equivalent of ‘leave it with me and I’ll see what I can do’ – he is streets ahead and deserves to be too.

The danger of a ground campaign against Hezbollah

There has never been a better time in recent years for Israel to launch a cross-border ground attack against Hezbollah. The Iran-backed terrorist group’s senior leadership, both political and military, has almost been wiped out – with up to 19 senior officials, including its political leader Hassan Nasrallah, killed in recent weeks.

Morale amongst Hezbollah fighters must be desperately low after the group’s command and control network – the ability to coordinate its fighters dotted along the border with Israel – was severely undermined by the astonishing Mossad-led pager and walkie-talkie attack, which killed dozens of fighters and injured many more.

It must also be clear to many in Hezbollah now that the terror organisation has been severely penetrated by Mossad agents, who are able to provide real-time intelligence on the movements of what is left of Hezbollah’s high command.

Never before has the claim by Israel – that you can run, but you can’t hide – seemed so pertinent to those who seek its destruction.

Details of the Israeli ground incursion into Lebanon emerged in the early hours of this morning after weeks of increasingly intensive airstrikes against Hezbollah in the region. Paratroopers and commandos from Israel’s elite 98th division are involved in the operation, codenamed ‘Northern Arrows’, which is supported by the air force and artillery. Early Israeli reports said ‘intense fighting’ was taking place with Hezbollah in a string of southern Lebanese villages close to the border. Avichay Adraee, an Israel Defence Forces spokesman, said on X that ‘fierce fighting is underway in the south’. He also accused Hezbollah of operating from civilian areas and using human shields.

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But while the timing of the ground incursion into Lebanon may represent the best possible chance to deliver a damaging blow against Hezbollah, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his military commanders are running the risk of not only fighting two wars on two fronts, but multiple wars on multiple fronts. And most military experts argue that strategically such a position is at the very least undesirable.

Israel is now involved in military operations in the West Bank, Gaza and Yemen, where just over 24 hours ago it launched a series of airstrikes against the Houthis.

After almost a year of bitter fighting in Gaza, much of Israel’s reservist-based army is said to be exhausted. What many within Israel thought would be a relatively quick ground and air campaign designed to punish Hamas, has turned into a grim war of attrition with no meaningful endgame in sight. The Gazan death toll is in the thousands, while much of the region has been completely flattened.

For many of the hostage families, the trauma of Hamas’s mass murder on 7 October continues. There is no realistic prospect of the release of the 101 Israelis still being held captive somewhere in Gaza. And all the while the Israeli casualty toll mounts, with over 700 soldiers killed in action and thousands more left with terrible life-changing wounds.

It should be remembered that Hezbollah represents a different military threat to Hamas. The group is funded by Iran, trained by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and has an annual budget of somewhere between $800 million and $1 billion. The terrorist group is reportedly composed of around 100,000 fighters – although some estimates suggest that as few as 20,000 are actually full-time troops.

In all likelihood the Israeli troops will gain ground quickly, notching up a series of victories against Hezbollah in the process. But this is Hezbollah territory and it is unlikely they will give it up easily without a fight. Local Hezbollah commanders will have almost certainly mined bottlenecks, such as road junctions, or at the very least have them covered with anti-tank weapons. Abandoned houses will have been booby-trapped with improvised explosive devices and snipers will be ready and waiting to take out Israeli officers to cause chaos and confusion.

Alternatively, Hezbollah may simply decide to cede a buffer zone to Israel and wait for its troops to withdraw. Hezbollah did this two decades ago after accepting that defending southern Lebanon was simply too costly, before continuing its murderous rocket attacks on repopulated Israeli villages.

History has repeatedly shown that wars are far easier to fight than to end. A limited occupation designed to achieve a specific end – such as allowing Israelis to return to their villages – could easily turn into a much longer and more bloodier occupation.

A Tasmanian court has widened Australia’s gender divide

It’s hard to make head or tail of where Australia stands on the gender debate that has divided the West. The issue boils down to a simple question: should men be allowed in women’s spaces? But the answer is far from simple. And a court ruling by a Tasmanian court ruling may have just added to the confusion.

Tasmania’s avant garde Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) is not everyone’s cup of artistic tea. Its curator, American-born artist and wife of Mona’s very wealthy founder, David Walsh, Kirsha Kaechele, is certainly no stranger to controversy.

In July, the museum was exposed as exhibiting artworks attributed to Picasso, that were actually sophisticated fakes, painted by Kaechele herself. Having  been rumbled, Kaechele issued an apology to the Picasso estate, but she and Mona clearly enjoyed the publicity. It was where those fakes were located, however, that has made international headlines, and become a cause célèbre embraced by Australia’s feminist sisterhood.

The faux Picassos were a feature of Mona’s Ladies’ Lounge – a space to which only women were admitted. Women were served champagne by male butlers, and were free to enjoy the fake Picassos and other art installed there for ladies’ eyes only. Mona presented the lounge as a piece of performance art in itself, asserting that it symbolised turning the tables against a long tradition of discriminating against women in Australian society.

Last year, however, a male visitor named Jason Lau was so offended by being barred from the Ladies’ Lounge that he took Mona to court, arguing this blatant anti-male discrimination breached Tasmanian law. Lau went to a judicial tribunal in May and won. The art installation was shut. But that was just the start of the drama.

Kaechele and Mona promptly appealed to Tasmania’s Supreme Court. The appeal itself became a piece of performance art, with Kaechele leading a procession of women, dressed in black cocktail dresses and twinsets, to the court for the hearings, shrewdly capturing sympathetic media attention from Australia and overseas. They packed the gallery for the appeal, and repeated the performance for Mr Justice Marshall’s reading of his judgment last Friday.

Their performance was not in vain. Marshall overturned the tribunal decision, concluding that Tasmania’s anti-discrimination laws allowed for: ‘Any person (to) discriminate against another person in any project, plan or arrangement designed to promote equal opportunity for a group of people who are disadvantaged or have a special need because of a prescribed attribute’ – in this case, being a woman in a supposedly man’s world.

The judge found that discrimination against women still exists, citing an Australian government ‘report card’ issued on this year’s International Women’s Day that highlighted ongoing disadvantages women experience such as women being paid less than men for the same work; disproportionate shares of caring and parental responsibilities; and more. Given such factors, Marshall said, Mona’s exclusive space for women was merited.

Outside the court, however, publicity-savvy Kaechele took the sober judgment, which was effectively a strict interpretation of the relevant Tasmanian legislation, and mixed in a large dollop of over-the-top hyperbole, telling the media: ‘This judge has decided that the Ladies’ Lounge can exist and it’s a day of triumph for us,’ she said. ‘I’m very inspired by the occurrences in the courtroom today. In thirty seconds, the patriarchy was smashed, and the verdict demonstrates a simple truth: women are better than men’.

‘We’ll see how the men take it’, she finished with a dramatic flourish, backed by a placard of an immaculately manicured female hand, its middle finger extended upwards in a very unladylike way. ‘The men are a little hysterical, I’m a bit concerned (for them)’, she said. ‘They’re troubled by the power of women. They may appeal, but they’re not appealing to me.’

That the judge ‘smashing the patriarchy’ was a man, merely applying the established law impartially, wasn’t mentioned. Having a bloke as hero and saviour simply doesn’t fit the feminist narrative.

It’s unlikely that Lau, having made his point, will take his case any further, and the Tasmanian tribunal has been ordered to review its decision in light of the court’s judgment. But don’t forget this is gender-confused Australia, so anything could happen.

After the recent Federal Court of Australia case Tickle v Giggle, which opened up a can of worms when it comes to who may access women’s ‘safe spaces’, Mr Justice Marshall should count himself extremely fortunate that he was only asked about the legality of Mona’s Ladies’ Lounge itself, and not who is entitled to access it.

Remember how the space banned entry to ‘those who do not identify as ladies’? The Tickle case turned on Australia’s sex discrimination laws, which since 2013 no longer deal with discrimination based on strict biological sex, but can also factor in a person’s chosen sexual self-identity.

Under that federal legislation, upheld by the tortured judicial logic of the Tickle case, Lau may have been allowed in to the Ladies’ Lounge exhibit if he had claimed that he was not a biological male but actually identified as a woman. If Kaechele acted to stop Lau on that basis, arguably she would have broken Tasmanian and Australian law.

As it is, Mona hasn’t clarified who is a woman for the purpose of its vindicated exhibit. Are they biological women only, as Kaechele’s performance art protests implied? Do they include transgender women? Or do they go further and include anyone who chooses to identify as a woman, even if – as the Tickle decision would uphold – only for the purpose of gaining entry?

Whatever the answer, the Mona ruling saying one thing about women’s spaces, and the Tickle decision saying another, highlights just how utterly confused contemporary Australia is about gender, and what defines it. Once there were just Sheilas and Bruces: now Sheilas can be Bruces, and Bruces Sheilas, whenever it suits them. It’s enough to make one Mona with frustration.

Terry Barnes is a Melbourne-based contributor for The Spectator and The Spectator Australia

Sunak’s government more popular than Labour, poll reveals

As the Tory leadership hustings continue, there’s a bit of good news for outgoing boss Rishi Sunak. It now transpires that more people prefer Sunak’s government to Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour lot, according to polling by More in Common. In yet another blow for Starmer, the survey found the new government was less popular than Sunak’s by two points, with the current Prime Minister not yet being three months into the job. It’s hardly the best start…

More in Common quizzed 2,080 people on their thoughts on the governments of late. 31 per cent preferred Sunak’s boys in blue, with 29 per cent logging their support for Sir Keir. It follows Starmer’s rather bumpy ride in the top job, with his time as PM marred by accusations of cronyism, a freebie fiasco with considerable questions remaining about Labour donor Lord Alli, and backlash to unpopular policies like imposing VAT on private schools and cutting the winter fuel payment. In more bad news for Starmer, his personal approval rating has fallen, More in Common finds, by 38 points since his party won the election – down to -27 per cent.

While the Prime Minister hasn’t even enjoyed his first 100 days in power, already barely a fifth of voters believe his party can win the next national poll, with a third of Labour voters lamenting their support for the Starmtroopers. And although Nigel Farage’s party benefited from widespread disillusionment with the last government, polling shows that Reform voters are still eight times more likely to have preferred Sunak’s lot to the current crowd. How curious…

Sir Keir’s misfortunes are certainly helping brighten the mood at a Conservative party conference that one delegate described to Mr S as ‘directionless’, given uncertainty over how the leadership vote will go. Steerpike even spotted a Labour party member at Tory conference sporting a Tom Tugendhat badge – although they hurriedly insisted they were not deserting their own. Another party insider noted it was ‘incredible’ how far Labour has already fallen, joking: ‘They make us look a lot less dysfunctional.’ Quite…

Robert Jenrick is closing the gap on Kemi Badenoch

Can Kemi Badenoch reach the final two of the Tory leadership contest? So far this has been the key question at Conservative party conference. Of the leadership candidates, Badenoch has had the bumpiest conference so far, with criticism of her comments on maternity pay and business regulation more generally.

The argument from the Badenoch camp is that she is the clear favourite with the membership so it would be wrong to block her from reaching the final stage of the contest, where the grassroots get to pick their favourite out of two candidates.

However, adding to Badenoch’s difficulties is a new poll of the membership. A YouGov poll suggests that Badenoch’s apparent lead has reduced over the course of the contest. Six weeks ago, the pollster had Badenoch on an 18-point lead over her nearest rival, Robert Jenrick. The latest poll sees that lead slashed to four points.

In a two-horse race, Badenoch polls 52 per cent to Jenrick’s 48 per cent. The poll suggests that the race is wide open more generally. Should James Cleverly beat Badenoch to the final two, it could also be a tight race between him and Jenrick. YouGov have Jenrick beating Cleverly by just four points in a run-off scenario, with Jenrick on 52 per cent and Cleverly on 48 per cent. It is Tom Tugendhat who has the toughest task – in a run-off with Jenrick, YouGov suggests he trails by 16 points.

The reason all the candidates are being pitted against Jenrick is that his team are confident he already has the numbers to make the final two. This means they have been able to spend a lot of their campaign time over the past few weeks focusing on the membership – with multiple association visits and targeted messaging.

Some of Jenrick's supporters still take the view that if Badenoch reaches the final stage, he will have a tough time beating her. But this poll will add to the sentiment building at this conference that this race is wide open. If Jenrick wins, the Tories will move to having a harder line on immigration – including a pledge to leave the ECHR. The pressure is building for the speeches on Wednesday.

Can Israel ‘win’ its war against Hezbollah?

Israelis awoke today to the unsurprising news that the IDF had crossed the border into Lebanon. The incursions, which had been expected for days and heavily briefed as imminent yesterday, are supposedly ‘limited’ and ‘targeted’ – aiming to destroy fortified Hezbollah positions overlooking the Galilee and prevent the terror group from using short-range weapons like RPGs against Israeli towns. 

The invasion came after two weeks of astonishing successes in the war against Hezbollah. First, the detonations of thousands of supposedly secure pagers worn by Hezbollah commandos, secretly laced with explosives, then a repeat wave of explosions of walkie-talkies, the backup communications system, and then two weeks of intense bombing against weapons dumps and rocket caches all over Lebanon. At the same time, the IDF and Israeli intelligence systematically wiped out the leadership of Hezbollah in Beirut with targeted airstrikes that showed just how deeply the group must have been penetrated.

Those strikes culminated in the bombing of a bunker in the Dahieh district of Beirut on Friday night where the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, was holding a meeting with his remaining senior staff. 

The bunker-busting deep penetrating bombs killed Nasrallah, who had led Hezbollah for 32 years and built it from a Lebanese terror militia into a regional military power and Iran’s most reliable asset. When Bashar Assad’s rule was threatened by the Arab Spring, it was Hezbollah that won the most critical battles, massacring Syrian Sunnis in the service of Iran and Assad. Many Israelis rejoiced at the end of Nasrallah, and they were joined by Sunni Muslims from around the Middle East. 

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With Hezbollah’s leadership erased, its weapons being eliminated and its communication in disarray, Israeli political and military leaders decided that now was the time to put boots on the ground in Lebanon. 

This is Israel’s fourth major incursion into Lebanon to ‘bring calm to the residents of northern Israel’. The first, in 1978, was in response to the Coastal Road massacre, when PLO terrorists crossed from Lebanon and hijacked a bus, killing 38 Israeli civilians including 13 children. That incursion ended with an Israeli withdrawal after pressure from the UN. 

A much bigger invasion happened in 1982, where Israel tried to take on the PLO and other Palestinian groups that had set up their operations in southern Lebanon. The IDF besieged Beirut itself until the PLO agreed to move to Tunis. Israel slowly withdrew from most of the country but kept control of a buffer zone up to the Litani river, working with the South Lebanese army, a local Christian militia, to keep control. 

It was this occupation that the young Hezbollah group focused on, attacking Israeli troops, firing Katyusha rockets into Israel despite the buffer zone. Eventually in 2000 Israel left Lebanon, taking many of its South Lebanese army allies with it as refugees. 

Hezbollah crept south, the rockets began again and after a cross-border raid by Hezbollah took Israeli hostages in 2006, Israel once again launched a war into Lebanon. 

The 2006 war is Israel’s cautionary tale. The war caused massive destruction to Lebanese civilian infrastructure. Israel pounded Dahieh, Hezbollah’s Beirut stronghold, with enormous bombs, but killed no Hezbollah leaders. Dozens of IDF soldiers were killed, but Hezbollah’s losses remained moderate. When Israel was forced into a withdrawal by international pressure and domestic embarrassment, there was a ceasefire and a UN resolution but few victories on the ground.

The IDF has learnt its lessons from the shame and failure of the 2006 war, while Hezbollah was overconfident after its successes. The 2024 war against Hezbollah is already an order of magnitude more successful than 2006, on the day ground troops go in. 

All of this, though, doesn’t mean Israel is close to achieving its stated war aim of ‘returning the residents of northern Israel to their homes in peace.’ Sirens sound every hour in northern Israel as rocket barrages target the Galilee, forcing residents to run for shelters. The long-time evacuees who left northern Israel months ago are being joined by new families fleeing the Haifa and Safed areas.

Once the invasion is in full swing and the Hezbollah outposts on the border are destroyed, then what? Some Israeli leaders talk about fully disarming Hezbollah, an unrealistic pipe dream. Only the most extreme far-right politicians hope for an ongoing Israeli occupation like in the 80s and 90s, and this time with no South Lebanese army to help. So what will stop Hezbollah from shooting rockets and bring those northern residents home?

After October 7, 2023, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised the Israeli public ‘total victory’ against Hamas. A year later, Hamas in Gaza is destroyed as a military force, many of its leaders are dead, Gaza is in ruins and more than a million Gazans are displaced. However, Hamas is still holding some 100 Israeli hostages or their bodies, and it is still the government of Gaza. There is little actual combat happening in Gaza today. The war is effectively over. But nobody would call that a ‘total victory’.

Israel has had tremendous, unimaginable successes against Hezbollah in just a fortnight of intense operations. But the sort of total victory that Netanyahu has promised the Israeli public may be a mirage. As the IDF moves into the next phase, Israelis should be asking their leaders how they expect to win the war, not with fantasies of dismantling Hezbollah through force of arms alone, or with yet another ongoing occupation, but with a realistic plan that allows the residents of northern Israel to live in peace. 

What Israel hopes to achieve with its Lebanon operation

As troops from the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) 98th airborne division enter into Lebanon, they know that fighting Hezbollah will prove dangerous and difficult. Although Hezbollah has deteriorated after Israel’s recent attacks, its terrorists still have significant fighting capabilities. The elite IDF troops are backed by the Israeli airforce and artillery.

It’s been nearly 12 months since Hezbollah started firing missiles at Israel, forcing more than 60,000 civilians to evacuate their homes. These 12 long months of relentless bombing have destroyed buildings, caused widespread fires and killed and injured Israelis, including children. Now Israel wants to bring this to an end. Its ground manoeuvre will continue what the Israeli air force started with its bombing campaign.

Since 8 October, the Israeli government had hoped that international negotiations would lead to a diplomatic solution with Hezbollah. Israel never believed that Hezbollah would agree to disarm (as it was instructed to do under UN resolution 1701 in 2006), but it hoped that Hezbollah would agree to stop firing on Israel and move its armed forces behind the 40 kilometre line and away from Israel’s border. Attempts to reach a deal were rejected time and time again by Hezbollah’s now deceased leader Hassan Nasrallah, forcing Israel to take action.

The current ground operation is limited to the area close to the border. It is targeting terrorists and infrastructure and aims to create a buffer zone that will allow Israeli civilians to return safely to their homes. Lebanese civilians have been told to evacuate for their own safety. The United states, Israel’s closest ally, has called for a de-escalation, but has also agreed to support a limited IDF operation. US President Biden also said that the killing of Nasrallah is a ‘measure of justice’ for his tens of thousands of victims. Although the Americans are delighted to see what they hope will become the demise of Hezbollah, they are worried about a wider war breaking out that could involve Iranian and American forces.

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The question now is: will the operation remain limited or will it expand deeper into Lebanon in order to dismantle more of Hezbollah’s capabilities? If Hezbollah finally agrees to a ceasefire, Israel will have to decide whether the terms of the agreement are good enough to guarantee its long-time security, and whether to stop the momentum it has created against the terror organisation in the past couple of weeks. Israeli troops are prepared for either option.

Possibly the more complicated issue will be who will keep the buffer zone in southern Lebanon safe from terrorist activity in the longer term. The United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) have proven their incompetence at doing this. They are weaker than Hezbollah and also seem unwilling to confront them. I remember when I served in the region as an IDF soldier in the late 1990s, UNIFIL hostility towards the IDF led them to made decisions that placed Israeli troops at risk and aided Hezbollah. Hezbollah would often fire rockets into Israel from near UNIFIL bases, knowing that Israel wouldn’t be able to fire back. After the second Lebanon war in 2006, UNIFIL allowed Hezbollah to quickly reestablish a significant armed presence in southern Lebanon.

Another option is for the buffer zone to be manned by the Lebanese army. However, Lebanon’s army has always been weaker than Hezbollah, and its government isn’t fully independent, but has been dominated by Hezbollah and Iran. Still, if Hezbollah is significantly weakened, perhaps Lebanon, with help from its allies, could find a way to finally stand up to those who have been undermining its sovereignty for decades.

A third option is that the IDF will remain in southern Lebanon. This is the option that the Israeli public and the international community would least like to see. The IDF held positions in the region for 15 years, before withdrawing in 2000. Its presence in Lebanon was costly, attritional, and led to few gains. Most Israelis don’t want the army to reestablish a prolonged presence in Lebanon now as a result. A lack of international legitimacy could also harm Israel’s relations with its allies. 

The Israeli government has a difficult task now. It needs to have a quick exit strategy from Lebanon, but one that will keep the country safe from Hezbollah.

The uncomfortable truth about the end of UK coal

Should we celebrate the end of Ratcliffe-on-Soar, Britain’s last coal-fired power station, whose boilers went cold on Monday, bringing to an end 142 years of coal-fired electricity in Britain? Even as recently as 2012, 39 per cent of our electricity came from coal. 

The news of the power station’s demise was, predictably enough, received with great enthusiasm by the climate lobby, who asserted that renewables had displaced this filthy form of generation. According to Lord Deben, the former Chair of the Climate Change Committee, the end of coal power in Britain will inspire the rest of the world to follow suit.

Coal is undoubtably a dirty fuel, producing around twice as much carbon dioxide as gas when used to generate an equivalent amount of electricity – not to mention large quantities of acid rain-causing sulphur dioxide. But before the history of coal in Britain is finally laid to rest, let’s look at the case against its hurried demise. 

Firstly, if the rest of the world is going to be inspired by the decommissioning of Britain’s coal-fired plants there is little sign of it yet. China last year generated over 60 per cent of its electricity from coal. Many of these emissions end up being embedded in consumer products used in Britain. China is not the most coal-intense economy, either. South Africa generates around 80 per cent of its power in this way, India 75 per cent and Indonesia 60 per cent. These are big users. 

Britain may have managed to displace coal with a combination of gas and wind power, with a small contribution from solar (4.9 per cent last year), but it is not a practical course for many countries which do not have easy access to gas supplies, and who would have no other practical means of coping with the intermittency of wind and solar. The advantage of coal is that it is very easy to transport, store and stockpile. Gas is much more difficult in this respect. We have learned how to transport gas by ship in liquified form – thankfully, because the energy crisis which followed the Ukraine invasion would have been a lot worse without it – but this is expensive and requires dedicated terminals. To store gas requires large volumes of tank space, or underground caverns such as the Rough gas storage facility, which was closed in 2017 because of its high maintenance costs – and then reopened in a hurry in 2022. Coal, by contrast, can be stored pretty well anywhere. 

Had the Ukraine crisis happened a decade earlier, when we still had a significant number of coal-fired power stations, we could have done as Mrs Thatcher did before the miners’ strike in 1984, and stockpiled coal. Gas supplies for central heating would still have suffered a jolt in price, yet electricity prices could have been kept a lot lower. This is a point which has not been made nearly enough.

Nor is it true that renewables have exactly replaced coal. There is a growing gap between supply and demand for electricity in Britain which resulted in us importing a tenth of our power last year via sub-sea cables. These are facilities which were built in the hope that they would be used in both directions: Britain would export as well as import electricity, making the most of different patterns in supply and demand. Yet the cables are increasingly becoming a one-way street for Britain to import electricity to make up for the failure of the country to generate enough supply. This is certainly not helping us to achieve energy security (as Miliband keeps telling us his wind turbines will do) especially not now that Norway is looking at banning the export of power when its hydro-electric stations are failing to deliver the goods, such as in times of drought.

Few are mourning the demise of coal in Britain this week, but the truth is that we haven’t yet really found the means by which fully to replace it. 

Has the UK Supreme Court been a success?

Today marks the 15th anniversary of the UK Supreme Court. When it opened its doors in 2009, it was argued that separating the country’s top judges from their historical home in parliament was a defining moment in the constitutional history of the UK. Fifteen years later, it’s hard to see whether anything significant has really changed.

The Supreme Court was proposed by the Blair Government in 2003, as part of a botched set of reforms to abolish the role of Lord Chancellor and reform judicial appointments. It came as a surprise, not only to the then-Lord Chancellor, Derry Irvine (who was replaced by Blair’s former flatmate, Charlie Falconer), but also to many senior judges and officials, who found out about the change on the news while at an away-day.

Progress was not swift. Legislation was required. The proposed reforms were not supported by all the Law Lords. A building proved hard to identify. Eventually the rather modest Middlesex Guildhall was selected. A rather appalling carpet ‘with symbols representing the four nations of the United Kingdom’ was installed. The move across Parliament Square took six years. 

Supporters of the court were animated by the principle of separation of powers: that judges should not also be legislators. However, some, such as Baroness Hale, who became the first female president of the court, also advocated for something more like a constitutional court. This was probably ill-advised and led opponents to argue that the establishment of a Supreme Court risked inspiring increased levels of judicial activism.

Initially, it appeared that this prophesy might come true. The heart of the argument that was that senior judges were over-reaching: failing to respect the sovereignty of Parliament and the executive’s powers. Concerns were raised about the use of judicial review and the Human Rights Act. The think-tank Policy Exchange established a ‘judicial power project’ which argued that judges threatened the rule of law and effective democratic government.

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Over the past 15 years, questions have increasingly been asked about these issues. Many of them were provoked by the constitutional upheavals caused by Brexit. 

Both the court’s Miller judgments during the Brexit years were extraordinarily controversial. The first – which effectively ruled that an Act of parliament was needed to leave the EU – was arguably wrong. The decision of the court was predicated on the view that once the government had issued its Brexit notification to the EU, it would be impossible to recall it. This turned out to be an incorrect assumption. 

The second Miller judgment (which ruled that Boris Johnson’s prorogation of Parliament was unlawful) turned out to be an entirely Pyrrhic victory for its proponents. 

It had two clear results. First, it ensured that Parliament was reassembled in advance of Brexit – which only ended up revealing that there was no majority in parliament for any other Brexit solution. 

Second, it allowed Dominic Cummings to claim that elites were lining up to stop Brexit. Only a vote for Boris Johnson would allow the country to ‘get Brexit done’ and move on. The result was a large Conservative majority in the 2019 election. Still, it could be argued that both judgments highlighted the fact that the court had rather limited powers to do much to thwart Brexit. It was principally a question for Parliament.

There have been other contentious judgments in recent years, although the number remains quite small. In November 2023, the Court found against the government’s proposed Rwanda scheme. Yet few who actually read its judgment doubt its conclusions. More recently, the Court ruled on an important case on fossil fuel extraction, which critics argue was overly expansionary and may make future projects much more difficult. 

Yet, in truth, the claims of activism are rather overblown and it is hard to directly link any supposed change in approach by the judges to a change of venue.

One of the most notable attacks on parliamentary sovereignty actually came from the House of Lords in Jackson v Attorney General (the 2005 Hunting Act challenge). Three judges made non-legally binding comments on the question of parliamentary sovereignty. They suggested that it might not be absolute and that the courts might reject any future attempt to subvert the rule of law – for example, if the government sought to abolish judicial review. These views were decisively rejected by the former Senior Law Lord, Lord Bingham, in his well-known book The Rule of Law.

If you look more closely, you can also see push-back from the court against claims that it is pushing constitutional boundaries. The President of the court, Lord Reed, delivered a judgment which criticised organisations that brought legal challenges against the two-child benefit limit ‘as a means of continuing their campaign’.

Appearing before the Lords Constitution Committee, Reed accepted there was an issue with political cases being brought before the courts. Yet he argued that judges were ‘repelling them’ and that they were ‘careful to avoid straying into what are genuine political matters.’

Arguably a bigger misstep during the move to the Supreme Court was not legal, but rather an effort to make the senior judges better known, via speeches and appearances on television. This turned some of them into personalities and seems unwise – particularly when commentators began suggesting that Hale and Lord Sumption appeared to express competing judicial philosophies.

If senior judges are perceived to air their views when speaking – particularly out of court – they will discover people are rather more interested in who is appointed. They will also find it harder to step behind the veil of impartiality when politicians respond to adverse judgments. Happily the Reed-led court appears to have rowed back from this trend since 2020.

What would a visitor from the past make of the Supreme Court? Its approach to the law is little different from that of the former Law Lords. The quality of appointments remains high. There are some more women on the bench (although fewer than many will have hoped for – only two of the 12 Justices are women). Perhaps the most striking change was the installation of that atrocious carpet – which must now surely be due for replacement.

Mexico wants Spain to apologise for conquering the Aztecs

When Claudia Sheinbaum becomes Mexico’s first female president later today, Felipe VI, the King of Spain, will not be present. He has, very pointedly, not been invited to the swearing-in ceremony because he hasn’t apologised for Spain’s invasion and conquest of the Aztec empire 500 years ago. 

This diplomatic stand-off began in 2019 when Andrés Manuel López Obrador, then president of Mexico, wrote to King Felipe inviting him to express his regret. Having described the conquest as ‘tremendously violent, painful and unjustifiable’, López Obrador said, ‘Mexico would like the Spanish state to recognise its historical responsibility for these offences and to offer the appropriate apologies or political reparations.’

Felipe didn’t reply to that letter. By 2022 López Obrador was suggesting that Spain needed to learn to respect Mexico rather than regarding it as an ex-colony. Then last Thursday at his daily press conference the out-going president read out the four-page letter he sent five years ago and claimed that Felipe’s failure to reply showed high-handed arrogance. 

His successor sings from the same hymn sheet. Shortly after becoming president-elect of Mexico in July, Sheinbaum declared that ‘Spain should ask for forgiveness.’ Perhaps she has in mind something along the lines of Pope Francis’ apology in 2021 for the atrocities committed during the conquest and evangelisation of the Americas. She may well also be aware that there is a precedent: just nine years ago Spain recognised that the expulsion of the Jews in 1492 was a cruel mistake. Now one of Sheinbaum’s ministers has proposed holding a ‘ceremony of atonement’ to normalise relations with Spain.

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Felipe, first as prince and then as King, has in the past attended the swearing-in of Mexican presidents. On this occasion he has left it to Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s left-wing prime minister, to comment on Mexico’s decision not to invite him. Regretting that the relations between two ‘progressive’ governments have deteriorated to this point, Sánchez confirmed that due to ‘the unacceptable and inexplicable exclusion [of King Felipe]… there will be no representatives of the Spanish government at the ceremony.’

‘Spain,’ Sánchez explained, ‘regards Mexico as a brother country… We feel enormous frustration… that we cannot normalise our relations.’ Hinting that Mexico’s politicians are using a confected confrontation with Spain as a distraction from their country’s real problems, he recalled with gratitude that Mexico welcomed hundreds of thousands of Spaniards fleeing the Spanish Civil War and Franco’s repression: ‘I feel closer to those principles and values.’  

Although there will be no representatives of the Spanish government, several of Spain’s anti-monarchical, left-wing politicians will attend the swearing-in ceremony. One suggested that if Spain is represented abroad by the head of state, then it should be a democratically elected head of state. Another described Felipe as ‘arrogant’ for not apologising to Mexico ‘for the excesses’ committed during the Spanish conquest and said that the king is now ‘paying a price’ for his ‘enormous diplomatic clumsiness’. 

In fact the Spanish monarchy did once make an apology – of sorts. In 1990 during a visit to Mexico, Juan Carlos I, Felipe’s father, regretted the abuses that occurred during the conquest whilst pointing out that Spain’s monarchs sought from the very beginning to defend the dignity of the indigenous people. ‘Of course,’ Juan Carlos explained, ‘the prudence and equanimity of the monarchs was unfortunately often disregarded by… venal officials.’ 

Juan Carlos’ reluctance to shoulder the blame for events that took place half a millennium ago is shared by many Spaniards. They are alert to the ‘emotional fraudulence’ of professing guilt for something that happened 20 generations ago. Besides, many point out gleefully, López Obrador’s Spanish surnames suggest that he may himself be descended from a conquistador. The Partido Popular, Spain’s main right-wing opposition party, which rarely endorses anything the government does, has on this occasion enthusiastically supported Sánchez’s decision to lodge a formal protest with the Mexican authorities, calling the decision not to invite Felipe ‘an unacceptable provocation’. 

Nor has it gone unnoticed in Spain that, while King Felipe was dropped from the guest list because he hasn’t apologised for what Hernán Cortés and his men did hundreds of years ago, Vladimir Putin, personally responsible for a far more recent invasion, was invited. 

How doom scrolling changed TV for ever

Are you one of the growing number of ‘second screen’ television viewers? For all too many of us, it seems that watching one screen just isn’t enough; modern technology and, in particular, our obsession with looking at our phones has so addled our brains that plenty of us fiddle with our mobiles while ostensibly ‘watching’ TV. Two thirds of people watching TV now do so while browsing their mobile phones, according to a study in the United States.

It’s tempting to react to this news with Olympian disdain; what has happened to people that they need two screens to keep themselves amused? But feeling smug and pious isn’t an option for me; I’m as guilty of ‘two screening’ as the next addict. The impulse to check one’s email or social feeds while watching TV, or doing almost anything else, including going to the toilet, is almost impossible to resist. Checking one’s phone feels less of a conscious impulse than a tic; it’s like lighting a cigarette or shoving down another Pringle. We know it’s bad for us but we just can’t stop.

Being glued to our phones certainly ruins the magic of television; it also deprives us of one of the pleasures of watching the box: the social element of doing so. TV, in our bright living rooms, has always been a more social medium than cinema, with its silence, darkness and focal point of concentration. ‘Are we watching this or not?’ my mother would say when a family discussion broke out. TV back then was something that brought people together; but the proliferation of screens has changed all that. Even Gogglebox participants – who are paid to pay attention – often struggle to stay absorbed in what they’re watching.

While mobile phones must take some of the blame for frying our brains in this way, there might be something else going on too; the truth is that so much TV these days is too complicated. TV shows nowadays also promise so much but fail to deliver; is it anyone wonder we’re bored of watching and end up doom scrolling instead?

TV drama – and sometimes even comedy – has become far too demanding. Tortuously involved back stories, grace notes, and all manner of twisting plots and arcs and journeys are common. It’s all a far cry from the cut-and-shut TV of old, where you could happily miss an episode and catch up without too much bother. (And which was often more intelligent and better written, albeit in a different way.)

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Take Succession. I thought I was paying close attention, and, to avoid the temptation, I put my devices in the kitchen on Do Not Disturb. But still I couldn’t grasp what was going on; I kept forgetting why Tom Wambsgans was in danger of going to prison. Who was who and why did they all hate each other so much? ‘Previously on’ episode recaps can’t hope to bring you up to speed on shows this intricate.

I don’t mind being a little confused by TV shows. In fact, I’d rather be slightly puzzled than have everything iterated in excruciating detail, as long as I know I’m supposed to be intrigued. But there’s a sweet spot of complication and exposition. (And ‘light’ doesn’t have to mean dumbed down; Frasier and any number of Hollywood Golden Age rom-coms testify to that.) When TV becomes too complicated, it’s a struggle rather than a pleasure, to follow what’s going on.

TV today also fall into another trap; every TV drama or comedy (outside Channel 5, anyway) now comes with promotional trumpets proclaiming that it’s the living end. We’re told all the time that this is the TV show that you have to watch. All too often, it isn’t. Give me the light touch of an 80s ITV sitcom any day. Nobody ever tried to sell us Never The Twain or Duty Free as hugely significant. Now, even Emily In Paris is promoted with a promise that it contains the meaning of life. I suspect the reason that Friends and Suits are so popular is because you don’t need a degree in their lore to watch them.

A bit of complexity is fine. But so much TV has become too complex on its surface, and terribly thin underneath. When I started in TV in the 1990s it was a medium that was still looked down on; ‘telly’ was seen as a little vulgar, somewhat déclassé. When, thanks to the internet, the financial bottom fell out of the rest of the media, this all changed. TV started to attract higher status, higher-class people; the kind of folk who like to watch complicated ‘intelligent’ shows, and who have a fear of being seen as fluffy. Suddenly, TV scriptwriters had to be over everything in world affairs, even if you were working on a soap like Emmerdale.

Was this really ‘progress’? I’m not convinced. Some TV shows are too eager to impress their audiences rather than entertain them. It’s perhaps no wonder we’re reaching for our phones.

What’s the answer? It’s tempting to say we must make better, more gripping programmes. But perhaps, even then, our phones are just too fascinating, whatever is on the box. Outside of our living rooms, we’re just as glued to our phones as at home. Even at live sports events you’ll see spectators staring at their mobiles, barely aware of what is happening in front of them. If a football match can’t hold the attention of paying fans, then we are all surely lost. 

Maths is stressful. That’s why it’s necessary

In the weeks since the Labour government came to power, we’ve gone from debating compulsory teaching of maths until age 18 to entertaining the idea that the times tables may be too stressful for children to memorise.

When I was at school in Poland in the 2000s and 2010s, the response to such a suggestion would have been an eye-roll, or the blowing of a loud raspberry. The comment that ‘if you can’t have what you like, then you must learn to like what you have’ was commonplace, and maths was taken by everyone until age 18.

I was at the top of my class until, at age 15, I began to fall behind in maths. My school insisted on educating everyone as if they were a budding mathematician, so I ended up having to spend my evenings in remedial maths classes, stubbornly picking apart integrals and differentiation, calling my cousin – who was studying maths at university – for help, crossing out line after line of equations, and generally losing my mind. At school, the teacher took delight in calling me to the blackboard and pointing out to the entire class how unprepared I was.

Mathematics taught me that learning could be hard. It taught me to say ‘I don’t know, I need help with this’. It taught me how to swallow my pride, how to endure the embarrassment of continually asking for help until it was no longer embarrassing. It taught me compassion, that circumstances can be complex, that there are people who get left behind academically through no fault of their own. It showed me that there are teachers who are patient and kind, and will speed one along, and others who are harsh and inflexible, who will slow one down – and how to manage both.

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It was in no way to the advantage of the economy to teach me maths – the economy gains more from me when I play to my strengths in the humanities, for example – but it was of considerable advantage to my development as a human being. My resilience, my determination and my empathy are largely products of being bad at maths. If children are never made to do things at which they do not excel, they will grow up under the false impression that they are bad at nothing. The longer this illusion lasts, the more painful it is when it’s inevitably shattered.

More authoritarian societies, such as China, will impose a challenging curriculum from above, telling their students to deal with it. Their children may be more anxious, but they will be more resilient and better equipped to deal with the real world. Meanwhile, British children slide further and further into a fantasy world which will diminish their ability to deal with reality, which is often unsympathetic to their anxieties. The truly ambitious ones will still choose to do hard things, as they always have – usually in fee-paying schools, in the case of Britain – while the rest fall behind and take the future of the nation with them.

It is possible that in an age where technology can count and calculate for us, the utility of teaching the times tables in schools is marginal. But as artificial intelligence advances, we are ever more under a duty to train and develop ourselves – not for our utility to the economy, which may one day very well run itself, but for our fulfilment as human beings, and to be useful to ourselves and other people.