63 h. ago Without dignity, leaders fell at Trump’s feet in The Hague – and for what? All Nato’s key problems remain | Martin Kettle

The relationship with him is still volatile, the Ukraine strategy still unclear and Europe needs to ensure its collective defenceNato’s Hague summit was an orchestrated grovel at the feet of Donald Trump. The originally planned two-day meeting was truncated into a single morning’s official business to flatter the president’s ego and accommodate his short attention span. The agenda was cynically narrowed to focus on the defence spending hikes he demands from US allies. Issues that may provoke or embarrass Trump – the Ukraine conflict, or whether the Iranian nuclear threat has actually been eliminated by US bombing – were relegated to the sidelines.Instead, the flattery throttle was opened up to maximum, with Nato’s secretary general Mark Rutte leading the assembled fawning. On Tuesday, Rutte hymned Trump’s brilliance over Iran; yesterday, he garlanded him as the vindicated visionary of Nato’s drive towards the 5% of GDP spending goal. No one spoiled the party. As the president’s own ...

Politics

9 d. ago Easy regime change in Tehran is a nice idea. But look to history: it’s a near

No one doubts the malignity of the Iranian government, but if we forget the tragedies of interventions past, we’ll make the same mistakesOn the eve of the 1991 Gulf war, a TV reporter asked the US commander Norman Schwarzkopf if he would topple Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. Stormin’ Norman replied with a memorable succinctness: “Easy say. Hard do.”Schwarzkopf knew what he was talking about. The general was a lifelong student of the Middle East region – he spent some of his childhood years in Tehran – and of military history. Indeed his successful ground-war strategy for Saddam’s defeat in Kuwait was consciously modelled on the flanking tactics used to such devastating effect by the Carthaginian commander Hannibal to defeat the Romans at Cannae in 216BC.Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago Rachel Reeves seized her moment – whatever the future brings, Labour’s economic course is now set | Martin Kettle

The chancellor is no mere technocrat: her spending review revealed a visceral commitment to social and economic mobilityThe consensus has long been that the 2025 spending review would be a defining moment for Keir Starmer’s government. For once, the consensus proved spot-on. The government’s main priorities were set out on Wednesday in a blizzard of Commons announcements from Rachel Reeves, some economically substantive, others more for show. The upshot is that the shape of the British state, as Labour intends it, is now decided until the eve of the next election.There are further crossroads still to come, some of them major, as the years covered by the review unroll. Taxes are likely to rise, probably as soon as the autumn budget, to pay for Reeves’s big ticket boosts on Wednesday for defence, health and housing. Council tax could rise too, with possibly dramatic results. The review’s emphasis on capital spending means current spending could be squeezed again, perhaps heralding pay...

Economics

3 w. ago Why is defence such a hard sell? The same reason Starmer is struggling in the polls | Martin Kettle

Decades of failures have left liberal democratic governments unable to command public confidence when it really mattersDefence reviews and foreign policy resets seem to turn up almost as often as the Sussexes’ lifestyle brand relaunches these days. Labour’s strategic defence review this week comes less than two years after the Conservatives’ hardly less detailed defence white paper in July 2023, which in turn was a “refresh” of Boris Johnson’s ambitious integrated review of defence and foreign policy of March 2021. By this measure, it must be doubtful if, come the 2030s, analysts will look back on Keir Starmer and John Healey’s review and say it broke the mould.The Labour government was entitled to try to put its own stamp on defence policy, of course, and its review team of George Robertson, Richard Barrons and Fiona Hill did a good, reasonably independent job. Yet this 2020s pattern of repeated strategic adaptation and refocus feels like the new normal now. It is also true that gr...

Politics

3 w. ago How the use of a word in the Guardian has gotten some readers upset | Elisabeth Ribbans

‘Got’ was changed during the editing of an opinion piece, leading to correspondence lamenting a slide into American English. But language isn’t a fortressIn Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part II, a messenger breathlessly announces to the king that, “Jack Cade hath gotten London bridge”. Hold this late 16th-century text in mind as we fast forward to last week when Martin Kettle, associate editor and columnist at the Guardian in the UK, was seen to suggest in an opinion piece that, if King Charles has pushed the boundaries of neutrality, such as with his speech to open the new Canadian parliament, he has so far “gotten away with it”.In a letter published the next day, a reader asked teasingly if this use of “gotten” – and another writer’s reference to a “faucet” – were signs the Guardian had fallen into line with Donald Trump’s demand that news agencies adopt current US terminology, such as referring to the “Gulf of America”.Elisabeth Ribbans is the Guardian’s global readers’ editorguardian...

Politics

last month Charles has pushed the boundaries of politics as king – and got away with it | Martin Kettle

Right now, the monarch’s political leanings appear in sympathy with the mood of Britain. But what if the public moves further to the right?It requires an effort to keep reminding yourself of the sheer historical oddity of monarchy’s healthy survival into the modern democratic age. Yet so rooted is the monarchy in the mental furniture of Britain that most people in our politics barely think about it. This week, however, the modern British monarchy has stood up and demanded to be counted, doing something new and perhaps genuinely consequential.Judged by any yardstick, Charles III’s visit to Canada was an audaciously disjunctive event. The idea that a vibrant democracy such as Canada, with a highly sophisticated sense of its own complex identity, might summon an elderly hereditary monarch from across the ocean to provide a focal point for its resistance to Donald Trump’s existential threat takes some believing. Yet that was exactly what played out this week, when the king travelled to ...

Politics

last month In Canada, Charles pushed the boundaries of politics as king. So far, he has gotten away with it | Martin Kettle

Right now, the monarch’s political leanings appear in sympathy with the mood of Britain. But what if the public moves further to the right?It requires an effort to keep reminding yourself of the sheer historical oddity of monarchy’s healthy survival into the modern democratic age. Yet so rooted is the monarchy in the mental furniture of Britain that most people in our politics barely think about it. This week, however, the modern British monarchy has stood up and demanded to be counted, doing something new and perhaps genuinely consequential.Judged by any yardstick, Charles III’s visit to Canada was an audaciously disjunctive event. The idea that a vibrant democracy such as Canada, with a highly sophisticated sense of its own complex identity, might summon an elderly hereditary monarch from across the ocean to provide a focal point for its resistance to Donald Trump’s existential threat takes some believing. Yet that was exactly what played out this week, when the king travelled to ...

Politics