Playing the Wargame

(Read on, or view here: https://youtu.be/M6v4yCwxCUo)

With Donald Trump’s latest pronouncement half implying that he wants to butt out of the quagmire he’s created in the Middle East, two things are becoming clear. One, he’s finally clocked that it’s going to cost Americans as well as everyone else. Two, that he’s been played by the Israelis all along. The threat to his presidency now looms larger by the day. And our own Prime Minister’s looking like little more than collateral damage.

There’s an old saying beloved in scribbler circles: ‘Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied.’

And dead on cue, the Israeli Prime Minister has written off claims that his country dragged the US into the conflict as ‘fake news’. Adding: ‘I misled no one.’

Yerright. It’s no secret that he’s been wanting to smash the Iranian regime to smithereens for years, only hanging on for a bit of serious heft from America to make it possible.

Besides which, top US counter terrorism official Joe Kent has just quit in protest at the war, posting on X: ‘Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.’

So much for Trump’s insistence that he only wants to keep his country safe from nuclear attack, even though he maintained he’d sorted that problem with his mega-bombing raid months ago.

Word is the Iranians were playing ball on a mutually acceptable deal before that, but maybe it struck him as more fun to smash the enrichment site to bits anyway.

Whatevs. It’s become clearer by the day that as long as the nasty clerics running the show in Tehran are down but not out they’re determined to hit back with everything they’ve got. Thus turning a little-ish local war into a stonking great big one.

Plus, every bit as plain for all to see, The Donald has an amazing capacity for spotting everything except the obvious.

That might sound a bit harsh. But a fifth of the world’s entire oil and liquified natural gas supply does goes through a waterway that’s very much on their patch.

And as Britain’s Trade Minister Chris Bryant put it on telly last week: ‘I’m no defender of the Iranian regime, but it seemed to me rather obvious that the first thing that they would do to retaliate would be to try to close the Straits of Hormuz.’

Upshot, he added: ‘It just doesn’t feel like there’s been a plan. Or if there is a plan, it’s changing every single day.’

Actually, Trump’s messaging changes by the hour, sometimes even mid-sentence. Witness his latest outbursts, accusing Nato nations of being cowardly, at the same time saying that he does and doesn’t need their help.

And as that uncomplimentary vibe filters into mainstream media thinking the Prez is getting crosser and crosser, accusing hacks of being: ‘Corrupt and highly unpatriotic.’

Glad that’s sorted then. Same goes for folk raising eyebrows about the cost of all the weaponry being deployed. As America’s self-styled Secretary for War Pete Hegseth put it: ‘I takes money to kill bad guys.’

Very John Wayne. You can almost see him drawing the trusty Colt Single Action revolvers and downing half a tribe of Indi-bums. This same guy, btw, has banned snappers from his briefings because he thought their pics didn’t make him look sexy enough.

Trouble is, this ain’t no goodies and baddies movie, it’s a looming global catastrophe. Energy prices going through the roof, making the shock stemming from Putin’s invasion of Ukraine look like a picnic by comparison.

Then there’s the knock-on effects on the manufacture and availability of oil-based products, not least fertilisers, creating the very real risk of food shortages.

As for the impact on the world economy, loads of mortgages have already vanished from the market.

Meanwhile, the tit for tat attacks following the bombing ordered by the Israeli PM on Iranian gas fields are getting more damaging and widespread. To a point that even The Donald seems to be getting a handle on the problem.

He’s not exactly accusing his chum Bibi of going rogue, but he’s clearly not pleased with him. And he’s wary of Netanyahu’s call for sending the troops in. On the grounds that they’re the ones likely to get killed.

Almost makes you wonder if he’s read and actually taken note of something written last week in the I newspaper by Miles Taylor, his one-time Chief of Staff at the US Department of Homeland Security. Here’s a direct quote:

‘On matters of life and death, I encountered a president whose national security decision-making was ad hoc, impulsive and often recklessly indifferent to facts that complicated his preferred course of action.’

Well, back here in Blighty no one’s indifferent to any of the facts. Least of all Keir Starmer, who’s led the pack in keeping his distance from The Donald’s preferred course of action.

Possibly spotting the overwhelming poll evidence that the British public reckon the war’s a dumb idea, the Tory leader has U-turned on the subject.

Having backed it at the outset, she’s now gone so far as to suggest that Trump’s criticism of Starmer for not doing so is ‘childish’. And even the ever so Maga-minded Reform leader Nigel Farage has changed tack.

Round one to Starmer then, you’d think. Except that it hasn’t really turned out that way.

Those same surveys that found that we Brits don’t support the war also discovered that little more than a third of us favour Sir Keir’s hands-off approach, while getting on for a half of us don’t.

Make sense of that? Of course these are only snapshots. And however hard Starmer tries, he can’t shield us from the inevitable truth, that the war’s just driven a coach and four through the government’s drive to bring down the cost of living.

Jacked up prices at the pumps are just for starters, higher heating bills are on their way. And the Bank of England last week brought their own planned strategy of progressively bringing down interest rates to a juddering halt.

The local elections are now only a few weeks away, but by then much of this bad stuff will be filtering through.

And, much like the worldwide financial crash of 2008 which was absolutely a crisis made in Wall Street, the then Tory opposition somehow managed to morph it in voters’ minds into a crisis made in Downing Street.

The parallel is far from exact. But it is safe to assume that the kicking Labour’s expecting on May the seventh will be even harder than it was going to be anyway.

For this reason it’s every bit as safe to assume that mutterings and splutterings about what a rubbish leader Starmer is will get louder and louder. And who knows, may even see the back of him.

But will former Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner or any of the other possible contenders for his job make any real difference to the party’s or the nation’s fortunes?

Will she or he bring us a new golden age, in a country whose fortunes were ravaged first by that crash made in America, followed by the Covid crisis made in China and then the price spike made in the Kremlin?

Maybe, but hang on a minute, isn’t that a pig soaring away out there in the sky?