Some disparate thoughts on a horrifying day

American leadership is over. Ukraine has been betrayed. What happens next is up to us.

Photo by Burgess Milner on Unsplash

Please don't expect much from this. I'm writing it for me rather than anyone else. I'm not even sure that it has a specific purpose. I’m simply so angry that I can't not write it.

What we saw yesterday was the single most appalling diplomatic spectacle of our lifetime. I constantly have to check my sentences now for hyperbole, but what else competes? What could ever come close? It was like a fairy tale in reverse. A monstrous grotesque, motivated entirely by greed, power and self-pity, trying to humiliate a man who has risked everything for the survival of his country. To watch Donald Trump or JD Vance is to come face to face with the human potential for viciousness and mendacity. They are the filth of this goddamn world.

There's no point going into what happened. You'll have seen it already. But I would like to say this and to have it written down somewhere: Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a hero. There's no-one I look up to more. From the beginning of this war, he has conducted himself with grace, restraint, pragmatism, bravery and singular moral clarity.

He did not run. He did not hide. Instead, he formulated a plan to defend his country. He has spent years asking world leaders for what he needs to defeat the enemy. Most of the time, those requests were met. Sometimes they were not. And when they weren't, he did not sulk. He tried something else. Despite the pressure and the anguish, he was rational, level-headed and imaginative.

He understood that the best way to protect his country was to deliver an accomplished public relations exercise. He did this with a degree of genius we have not seen since perhaps Nelson Mandela. He spoke softly, but rationally, practically but inspiringly. He showed the world what Ukraine is, what lay inside its heart.

Even yesterday, as he was assailed on all sides by these carpet-chewing gangsters, these tiny little men with their tiny little hearts, he was still more civilised and eloquent than they would ever be. When Brian Glenn, a Trump regime loyalist masquerading as a reporter, berated Zelenkyy for not wearing a suit, the Ukrainian leader replied: "I will wear a costume when this war is finished. Maybe something like yours. Maybe something better." Even in his third tongue and under unprecedented strain, he was more sophisticated and amusing than his detractors would ever be. He has more dignity in his little finger than they will muster over the entirety of their lives.

The central fact about Zelenskyy is this: He is very good at killing fascists. That is why they despise him. They recognise the ideological enemy when they see him.

Our independence from the US will be a twin track process. It will involve the head and the heart.

Over the next few years you will probably see a divide between those who emotionally want an immediate rupture with the US and those who recognise the need to placate it while we prepare to operate in a new world. This is a false binary. We require both elements.

Emotions are important. Our shock will prompt decisive action of the sort that was unthinkable just weeks ago. Our outrage can help create and consolidate a global anti-Trump/Putin front. It will galvanise people to take to the streets, to write to their MP, to demand action to protect Ukraine. Big campaigns operate on emotion as much as organisation.

But we will also need careful planning. As I wrote yesterday, Ukraine is reliant on the US for the Starlink system and certain key bits of equipment, including armoured vehicles. We can find solutions, but it would be a serious problem if the US blocked Ukraine from Starlink tomorrow and stopped selling Europe the items we want to give to Ukraine. This means that we will need leaders who can act as a go-between between Ukraine and Europe on one hand and the US on the other. It's pretty obvious that Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Giorgia Meloni will want that role.

In the long term, we are heavily reliant on the US for all sorts of things. Our nuclear reliance is overstated - the British deterrent is operationally independent - but our intelligence reliance is not. Separating ourselves from the US will be a long painful process which will require delicate hands.

We should try and be as understanding of both tendencies as possible during this process. They seem inimical. They’re not.

We must embrace the sane right. One of the deeply alarming elements of the last few weeks has been watching the British right radicalise itself with alarming speed. This is partly because of Trump acting like a kind of global lodestar. It is partly because the British press and broadcasters have worked to normalise him. And it is partly because of X.com. The algorithm has been rigged to promote and reward far-right content. Liberals and progressives have left. It has now turned into a nexus of ever worsening hatred and radicalism.

Who could have predicted that we would see comment pieces from people like Suella Braverman and Katharine Birbalsingh saying that brown people cannot be English? I mean seriously. We knew they were unwell, but the current output of the right is much more extreme than anything we saw from them even six months ago. The velocity of their moral collapse is breathtaking.

Yesterday, however, might prove a breaking point. Trump's attack on Zelenskyy finally forced British conservatives to choose between two of their core principles. Mercifully, they broke for Ukraine. The Mail called it "a spectacle to horrify the world". The Sun said "Ukraine hero ambushed". Robert Jenrick, a man I do not enjoy praising, said he was "sickened by that degrading spectacle".

None of this was guaranteed. The Spectator has been flirting with betraying Ukraine as has the Telegraph. Farage pays lip-service to Ukraine because he's politically canny, but he'll try to destroy the pro-Zelenskyy consensus wherever possible.

This is a fundamental split on the right. We should be celebrating and commending those who break for Ukraine, as much as we lambast those who break for Trump. Usually, people say they can't bring themselves to praise someone like Jenrick because of his past record. But it is precisely because of his past record that he should be praised for the statement.

Big, historic things are about to happen. They will only be possible if we can maintain a consensus in British politics for Ukraine. Most other countries - the US, sure, but also many European ones - do not enjoy this kind of consensus. We should be grateful for it, and try to harness it to build political support for what the government will soon need to do.

The government must now break its red lines on tax and borrowing. There is no way around this. There is no alternative to it. We must build an independent Europe that can guarantee its own security. It is not even a goal. It is simply the only option left behind when all alternatives have been eradicated.

As Anneliese Dodds alluded to in her resignation letter yesterday, this will soon be about much more than three per cent of GDP. As the Institute for Fiscal Studies said: "The world has changed and one question is whether the government's pre-existing promises on tax and spend might need to change as well."

This is fast becoming a consensus, even a cliche. The government can keep on denying it if it wants, but anyone who recognises the world we're in now and what it requires of us will see the need for higher tax and borrowing to fund defence spending.

There is an assumption that this is politically impossible. Voters have been told to sacrifice for too many years: the financial crash, austerity, Brexit, covid, inflation. When will the good times come? But that is just a failure of political will and political skill. Voters understand the severity of the moment. They can see what is happening. They will think much more ill of the government for being defeated by Russia than they will the spending required to prevent that outcome.

We can establish a new consensus, a war effort, for what is required. It would unite right wing concerns about defence and patriotism, left-wing demands for investment and independence from the US, and widely-shared commitments to Ukraine. It could offer a genuine dose of solidarity. But it demands that the government is honest with people about what is happening and what it will require.

An independent Europe is a two-stage process. The first stage is providing Ukraine with the money and resources to fight the war, as I wrote yesterday. The second is the much greater task of preparing Europe in the eventuality of a Russian invasion. This is the outcome we must optimise for. That is partly about money, sure. But it is also about getting people to accept seemingly intolerable political choices.

Europe, for instance, currently has 1.47 million active-duty military personnel, but it has much weaker combat power than the US 300,000 troops because they are distributed over 29 national armies and lack a unified command. One obvious answer to this problem is a European army. Cue all sorts of outrage and instinctive shaking of heads. But why? Why would it be so awful to have a European army? How would that not make Britain much, much safer than it is now? These are the kinds of difficult conversations we must now have. And we must be prepared to have them.

Do not despair. It's easy to give in to hopelessness. Trump is in his pomp. The far-right feel they have taken over the world. Too many mainstream journalists have stayed on the site and now, brain-addled by bullshit, seem to believe them.

But great things can emerge from the events which are now taking place. None of us would wish for this. All of us fear it. But it is now happening and it is our responsibility to develop a positive outcome from what must anyway take place. We can't waste this crisis.

There is a possible outcome here in which Britain is wealthier than it would otherwise be, by virtue of the effects of rearmament and the investments, particularly on strategic aviation and space assets, which will need to be made. There is an outcome where Britain finds a role for itself in the post-Brexit period, back with Europe, recognising that its interests and those of its neighbours are naturally aligned.

Perhaps, if we're really lucky, we might even remember that Europe and Britain together nurtured the values which we fight for today: liberty, reason, diversity, tolerance and the scrutiny of power. That the battle against the global far-right is to defend those values against their natural enemy: authority, obscurantism, conformity, extremism and untrammeled executive might.

What you do now matters. It seems sometimes as if this is all terribly distant. It is taking place in Russia, America, Ukraine. But it is not. It is happening here.

America has fallen. We must accept this fact. The guarantor of the post-war world order is collapsing into something that looks very much like far-right oligarchy. Even if the Democrats were to return to power tomorrow, the US is so unstable we could not guarantee this would not happen again. Only Europe can take its place now. Only Europe can lead the West.

In that calculation, Britain plays a decisive role - because of its history, because of its wealth and because of its defence capacity. We are now at the frontier of Western civilisation. We might not want to be, but we are. What we do matters.

We have a centre-left government. It is defined by nervousness, timidity, indecision and anxiety. It does the right thing slowly or sometimes not at all. But do not just sit there complaining about it. Do something about it. Have a clear impression of what you believe should happen and push for it.

We could have had Boris Johnson in charge when this happened, or Rishi Sunak, or Liz Truss God save our souls. If you're the kind of person that reads this newsletter, they wouldn't have given a two-penny damn what you had to say about anything. This government might do. It is composed of people who generally share your values. It can be influenced in ways that its predecessor cannot.

So sure, everything feels catastrophic and terrifying. But consider this: at a pivotal moment in history, when the fate of the West hung in the balance, you have been presented with an opportunity to influence the decisions of a key country, which might well define what happens next. Don't waste that chance.

That right there is about as positive a thought as I can muster on a day as terrible as this one. But it does have the considerable advantage of being true.