The Henry Jackson Society for some time now have been running event after event in the House of Commons and publishing policy paper after policy paper propagating the most crude, primitive and stupid anti-China bigotry. The Henry Jackson Society are devoid of China and Asia specialists and have no deep scholarly experience and expertise in the field of China and Asia more generally. They have no personnel who have actually ever visited China or have studied Chinese history, culture, politics and indeed speak the language and have worked with Chinese people. These huge intellectual and academic gaps and cultural, historical and social limitations exemplify themselves in the prejudices, ignorance and child like assertions in the HJS's Asia Studies Department which are glaring when one actually wastes time studying the crass, teenage style nonsense that the HJS write about China.

Whether this is down to the fact that the Henry Jackson Society has been exposed for being paid by the Japanese Government to run a PR smear campaign against China is for the HJS to answer and account for. The Charity Commission in the UK have been utterly useless (as per usual with the so-called checks and balances of British institutions) in properly investigating how the Henry Jackson Society can be a registered Charity when clearly engaged in such hyper partisan political campaigning activities. Despite stating that the Charity Commission would assess whether to conduct a regulatory review into whether the HJS was in violation of UK Charitable law way back in 2017, the Charity Commission, strangely never bothered to do so. How convenient given that its then Chairman William Shawcross was also a Trustee of the Henry Jackson Society.

It is now required to know with the amount of anti-Chinese propaganda emanating from the Henry Jackson Society and flowing around the British Parliament, if the Japanese Government is still funding the HJS Asia Studies Department to conduct a deeply offensive and slanderous malign campaign of disinformation against the Chinese people. Indeed, the HJS must come clean completely on who its funders are, something it has always refused to do. For a society that campaigns on transparency and democratic good governance it has consistently refused to disclose who its financial backers are, despite being ordered to do so by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. Stanley Kalms of Dixons has given generously to the HJS and it would be in line with standard democratic practices of transparency and freedom of information to know who else are the paymasters of the Henry Jackson Society. 

Just recently the HJS held the most ridiculous and childish event in the House of Commons attempting to assert in the most intellectually vague, weak and frankly offensive manner that Britain has every god given right to do whatever it likes in the South China Sea with its Navy because, in that disgusting, hackneyed and utterly pathetic English imperialist mindset, the South China Sea is ripe in the eyes of the HJS for renewed British maritime economic and political exploitation as was the case in the 19th century and if Britain proclaims it has strategic interests thousands of miles away in an area of the world it has no major claim to or involvement with, then so be it because, according to this HJS neo-imperialist mindset, Britain says so. That is how primitive and simplistic the logic behind the HJS's assertion that Britain has 'strategic interests' in the South China Sea is, as if it were still some great imperial power that could behave anyway it liked in other peoples territory and territorial waters because of riches and resources there which have not been produced and worked hard for by Britain but it wants and feels entitled to for some bizarre parasitic English psychological reason.

The EU Referendum has brought to the surface many unappealing and unattractive aspects of the English, their institutions and systems of government and politics, how they do business and behave as a nation and their history. One of the least attractive has been the legacy of the British Empire and the inability of the English to come to terms with the loss of their Empire and their much reduced status in Europe and the world which has produced an identity crisis among them as a society. England's inability to come to terms with its reality and engage with the rest of the world and Europe in terms of equals has driven a great deal of the Brexit madness in the UK, and it is a political and social madness on a collective national scale, most vividly illustrated by the behaviour of MPs in the House of Commons with ever more deranged, ill tempered, angry and nonsensical debates over phantom issues such as the Prime Minister's dead exit deal and alternatives to the Irish backstop. The state of domestic British politics has become utterly deluded and irrational due to the English induced Brexit crisis.

Yet, what the HJS and British State must understand is that attempting to whip up false and laughable narratives regarding Britain's 'strategic interests' in the South China Sea and slandering the second largest economy on the planet and pre-eminent ancient civilisation of the Chinese people, will only further isolate and weaken an already badly damaged UK. Every recommendation and suggestion put forth by the HJS regarding British involvement in the South China Sea is a non-starter and would lead to serious repercussions for the strengthening of China-UK relations if adopted by the British Government. The task before the UK as it leaves the EU on such bad terms and seeks to negotiate new trading relationships and remake itself in Europe and the world as an independent, sovereign, self governing nation-state is a mammoth task that will now consumer the energies and efforts of generations of British Governments. That task will only be further complicated and made even more painful and difficult if the British Government travels down the path that the Henry Jackson Society is proposing regarding China-UK relations. 

Later, during the 1990s, neoconservatism became taken over by the Mossad and the lobbyists for Israel and came to be publicly identified as a ‘Jewish’ ideology, despite its having — and having long had — many champions who were ‘anti-communist’ or ‘pro-democracy’ or simply even anti-Russian, but who were neither Jewish nor even focused at all on the Middle East. Republicans Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and John McCain; and the Democrat, CIA Director James Woolsey — the latter of whom was one of the patrons of Britain’s Henry Jackson Society — were especially prominent neoconservatives, who came to prominence even before neocons became called “neoconservatives.” What all neocons have always shared in common has been a visceral hatred of Russians. That comes above anything else — and even above NATO (the main neocon organization).

During recent decades, neocons have been hating Iranians and more generally Shiites — such as in Syria and in Lebanon, and now also in Yemen — and not only hating Russians.

When the Israel lobby during the 1990s and after, pumped massive resources into getting the US Government to invade first Iraq and then Iran, neoconservatism got its name, but the ideology itself did not change. However, there are a few neoconservatives today who are too ignorant to know, in any coherent way, what their own underlying beliefs are, or why, and so who are anti-Russians (that’s basic for any neocon) who either don’t know or else don’t particularly care that Iran and Shia Muslims generally, are allied with Russia. Neoconservatives such as this, are simply confused neocons, people whose underlying ideology is self-contradictory, because they’ve not carefully thought things through. 

An example is Vox’s Alex Ward, who built his career as an anti-Russia propagandist, and whose recent ten-point tirade against Russia I then exposed as being false on each one of its ten points, each of those points having been based upon mere allegations by US neocons against Russia without any solid evidence whatsoever. Indictments, and other forms of accusations, are not evidence for anything. But a stupid ‘journalist’ accepts them as if they were evidence, if those accusations come from ‘the right side’ — but not if they come from ‘the wrong side’. They don’t understand even such a simple distinction as that between an indictment, and a conviction. A conviction is at least a verdict (though maybe based on false ‘evidence’ and thus false itself), but all that an accusation is an accusation — and all accusations (in the American legal system) are supposed to be disbelieved, unless and until there is at least a verdict that gives the accusation legal force. (This is called “innocent unless proven guilty.”)

Earlier, Mr. Ward had headlined as if he were an anti-neocon, when he posted his “America is fueling the war in Yemen. Congress is finally pushing back.” What can account for that seemingly incongruous article?

Mr. Ward is a Democrat — an heir to Senator Jackson’s allegedly anti-communist though actually anti-Russian ideology — but, since Ward isn’t as intelligent as the ideology’s founder was, Ward becomes anti-neocon when a Republican-led Administration is doing things (such as Ward there criticizes) that are even more-neocon than today’s Democratic Party itself is. In other words: ‘journalists’ (actually, propagandists) such as he, are more partisan in favor of support of Democratic Party billionaires against Republican Party billionaires, than in support of conquering Russia as opposed to cooperating with Russia (and with all other countries). They’re unaware that all American billionaires support expansion of the US empire — including over Yemen (to bring Yemen in, too — which invasion Ward incongruously opposes). But politicians (unlike their financial backers) need to pretend not to be so bloodthirsty or so beholden to the military-industrial complex. Thus, an American doesn’t need to be intelligent in order to build his or her career in ‘journalism’, on the basis of having previously served as a propagandist writing for non-profits that are mere fronts for NATO and for Israel, and which are fronts actually for America’s weapons-manufacturing firms, who need those wars in order to grow their profits. Such PR for front-organizations for US firms such as Lockheed Martin, is excellent preparation for a successful career in American ‘journalism’. If a person is stupid, then it’s still necessary to be stupid in the right way, in order to succeed; and Ward is, and does.

This, for example, is how it makes sense that Ward had previously been employed at the War on the Rocks website that organized the Republican neoconservative campaign against Donald Trump during the 2016 Republican primaries: the mega-donors to both US Parties are united in favor of America conquering Russia. And that’s why War on the Rocks had organized Republican neocons to oppose Trump: it was done in order to increase the chances for Trump’s rabidly anti-Russia and pro-Israel competitors such as Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio to win that nomination instead, which would then have produced the billionaires’ dream contest, between Hillary Clinton versus an equally neoconservative Republican nominee. A bipartisan neoconservatism controls both of the American political Parties. A ‘journalist’ who displays that sort of bipartisanship can’t fail in America, no matter how incompetent at real journalism he or she might be. (However, they do have to be literate. Stupid, maybe; but literate, definitely.)

The core of America’s form of capitalism has come to be the US aristocracy’s bipartisan, liberal and conservative, Democratic and Republican, form of capitalism, which isn’t merely fascist (which includes privatizing everything that can be privatized) but which is also imperialist (which means favoring the country’s perpetration of invasions and coups in order to expand that nation’s empire). The United States is now a globe-spanning empire, controlling not merely the aristocracies in a few banana republics such as Guatemala and Honduras, but also the aristocracies in richer countries such as France, Germany and UK, so as to extract from virtually the entire world — by means mainly of deception but also sometimes public threats and clearly coercive — unfair advantages for corporations that are within its borders, and against corporations that are headquartered in foreign countries. America’s billionaires — both the Democratic ones and the Republican ones — are 100% in favor of America’s conquering the world: this ideology is entirely bipartisan, in the United States. Though the billionaires succeeded, during the first Cold War — the one that was nominally against communism — at fooling the public to think they were aiming ultimately to conquer communism, George Herbert Walker Bush made clear, on the night of 24 February 1990, privately to the leaders of the US aristocracy’s foreign allies, that the actual goal was world-conquest, and so the Cold War would now secretly continue on the US side, even after ending on the USS.R. side. When GHW Bush did that, the heritage of US Senator Jackson became no longer the formerly claimed one, of ‘anti-communism’, but was, clearly now and henceforth, anti-Russian. And that’s what it is today — not only in the Democratic Party, and not only in the Republican Party, and not only in the United States, but throughout the entire US alliance. 

And this is what we are seeing today, in all of the US-and-allied propaganda-media. America is always ‘the injured party’ against ‘the aggressors’; and, so, one after another, such as in Iraq, and in Libya, and in Syria, and in Iran, and in Yemen, and in China, all allies (or even merely friends) of Russia are ‘the aggressors’ and are ‘dictatorships’ and are ‘threats to America’, and only the US side represents ‘democracy’. It’s actually an aristocracy, which has deeply deceived its public, to think it’s a democracy. Just as every aristocracy is based on lies and on coercion, this one is, too — it is no exception; it’s only that this particular empire is on a historically unprecedentedly large scale, dominating all continents. Support that, and you’re welcomed into the major (i.e., billionaire-backed) ‘news’ media in America, and in its allied countries. This is America’s ‘democracy’. (Of course, an article such as this one is not ‘journalism’ in America and its allied countries; it’s merely “blogging.” So, it won’t be found there though it’s being submitted everywhere. It will be accepted and published at only the honest news-sites. A reader may Web-search the headline here in order to find out which ones those are. Not many ‘news’media report the institutionalized corruptness of the ‘news’media; they just criticize one-another, in the way that the politicians do, which is bipartisan — the bipartisan dictatorship. But the rot that’s actually throughout the ‘news’media, is prohibited to be reported about and published, in and by any of them. It is totally suppressed reality. Only the few honest news-sites will publish this information and its documentation, the links here.)

However, actually, the first time that the term either “neoconservatism” or “neo-conservatism” is known to have been used, was in the British magazine, The Contemporary Review, January 1883, by Henry Dunkley, in his “The Conservative Dilemma” where “neo-conservative” appeared 8 times, and was contrasted to traditional “conservatism” because, whereas the traditional type “Toryism” was pro-aristocratic, anti-democratic, and overtly elitist; the new type was pro-democratic, anti-aristocratic, and overtly populist (which no form of conservatism honestly is — they’re all elitist): “What is this new creed of yours? … That there must be no class influence in politics? That any half-dozen hinds on my estate are as good as so many dukes? That the will of the people is the supreme political tribunal? That if a majority at the polls bid us abolish the Church and toss the Crown into the gutter we are forthwith to be their most obedient servants?” “No: from whatever point of view we consider the question, it is plain that the attempt to reconstruct the Tory party on a Democratic basis cannot succeed.” “The Tories have always been adepts at conservation, but the things they have been most willing to conserve were not our liberties but the restrictions put upon our liberties.” “The practical policy of Conservatism would not alter, and could not be altered much, but its pretensions would have to be pitched in a lower key.” “Here we seem to get within the smell of soup, the bustle of evening receptions, and the smiles of dowagers. The cares which weigh upon this couple of patriot souls cannot be described as august. It is hardly among such petty anxieties that the upholders of the Empire and the pilots of the State are bred.” “The solemn abjuration which is now proposed in the name of Neo-conservatism resembles a charge of dynamite.” He viewed neo-conservatives as being let’s-pretend populists, whose pretense at being democrats will jeopardize the Empire, not strengthen it. Empire, and its rightness, were so deeply rooted in the rulers’ psyche, it went unchallenged. In fact, at that very time, in the 1880s, Sir Cecil Rhodes was busy creating the foundation for the UK-US empire that now controls most of the world.

The modern pro-Israel neoconservatism arose in the 1960s when formerly Marxist Jewish intellectuals in New York City and Washington DC, who were even more anti-communist than anti-nazi, became impassioned with the US empire being extended to the entire world by spreading ‘democracy’ (and protection of Israel) as if this Israel-protecting empire were a holy crusade not only against the Soviet Union, which was demonized by them, but against Islam, which also was demonized by them (since they were ethnocentric Jews and the people whose land the ‘Israelis’ had stolen were overwhelmingly Muslims — and now were very second-class citizens in their own long-ancestral and also birth-land). This was how they distinguished themselves from “paleoconservatism” which wasn’t nearly so Messianic, but which was more overtly ethnocentric, though ethnic Christian, instead of ethnic Jewish. The “paleoconservatives” were isolationists, not imperialists. They originated from the opponents of America’s entry into WW II against the imperialists of that time, who were the fascists. Those American “isolationists” would have given us a world controlled by Hitler and his Axis allies. All conservatism is absurd, but there are many forms of it, none of which makes intelligent sense.

The roots of neoconservatism are 100% imperialistic, colonialist, supremacist, and blatantly evil. They hate Russia because they still crave to conquer it, and don’t know how, short of nuclear annihilation, which would be extremely dangerous, even for themselves. So, they endanger everyone.

As is so often the case with the English, in particular their most offensive incarnation in the form of the Tory Party, what the English say and what the reality of the situation is, the hard cold truth, are two very different matters that rarely, if ever, gel together. Fallon quoted the former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher [who actually had tremendous respect and admiration for and a very good working relationship with the last General Secretary of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev] in trying to whip up stupid and offensive anti-Russian Cold War sentiment. Well, I am reminded of another one of Mrs Thatcher's great quotations which I am fond of throwing back in ugly English Tory faces: 'Such is presentation……how different from reality.'

Fallon would not countenance any criticism of the new aircraft carriers, their cost, their Ministry of Defence project management, their sea readiness, their utility, and a whole host of other salient issues which deserved scrutiny by snapping that critics should 'shut up.' I'm sorry Fallon but the last time I checked the UK was supposedly a free liberal democracy with intellectual freedom and freedom of speech. Not some Gestapo State as your colleague Mrs May has attempted to create.

So let us examine closely how brilliant and what a great investment these two new British aircraft carriers are. Both HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales have roughly cost the hard pressed, almost bankrupt UK taxpayer a combined 6 Billion Pounds. At the official launch of HMS Queen Elizabeth back in the summer Fallon boasted: 'But Queen Elizabeth, the biggest and the greatest warship this country has ever built, will go on now from these trials to defend our country, to safeguard our sea lanes, to work with our allies and partners to keep the peace, and to save lives across all seven seas.' When pressed on what he would say to the 'armchair critics', Fallon beat his meagre chest and said 'They should come and see this wonderful flagship of the Royal Navy, which will help keep this country safe for 50 years to come.' Not to leave any hostages to fortune and most certainly not to be modest Fallon went on: 'This is a great day for Britain. There are only three other countries in the world building aircraft carriers – and we are building two.'

Let us blow away the Fallon/Tory/English spin and Rule Britannia hyperbole and examine the truth. While on a tour of the Royal Navy’s mighty new aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, an intrepid journalist noticed that it is fitted with the exact same software that was hit by a massive cyber-attack only a few months ago. HMS Queen Elizabeth is the most expensive aircraft carrier ever to be built for the Royal Navy at over 3 Billion Pounds but it is running on the same IT software system used by the NHS that were targeted by cyber hackers earlier this year. Also HMS Queen Elizabeth is designed to house 36 fast jets. None of which have yet been built. What is the point of an aircraft carrier if there are no aircraft to land on it? As Jeremy Clarkson writing in The Sun put it: 'Apparently, three of the Anglo-American F-35s will be delivered to the Navy in 2020, then six more the following year. Quite what the crew is supposed to do to defend itself in the meantime is unclear. Use rude gestures, perhaps?'

And there is the small matter about the usual serial incompetence of the utterly corrupt and incompetent UK Ministry of Defence and its budget planning and project planning when it came to the building and budgeting for HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales. The Ministry of Defence as usual can not organise a tea party in China. Thanks to these two new aircraft carriers there is now a massive 30 Billion Pound black hole in the UK Ministry of Defence's budget. Several senior Ministry of Defence officials linked to UK defence procurement have in recent weeks resigned while the Ministry of Defence has now had to engage in a behind the scenes, classic Whitehall cover up cost cutting exercise. The sacrificial lamb for plugging this massive financial black hole so Britain can have two utterly useless, good for nothing, football stadium aircraft carriers without any aircraft will be the Royal Marines and their beach landing ships HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark. Churchill would be turning in his grave if he knew that Britain was sacrificing her ability to 'fight them on the beaches' so Michael Fallon can swan around spouting rubbish about how Russia is 'jealous' of these aircraft carriers and more anti-Russian garbage about how: 'the resurgence of Russian aggression abroad…[is] undermining democracy wherever it can” and how these aircraft carriers represent '90% of it – British – 17 million parts. This ship is a floating showcase for British industry, British talent, British skills and British brainpower.'

Fallon is not the only one spouting absolute lies and anti-Russian rubbish about these aircraft carriers. Sadly, a very weak naive former colleague of mine from the virulently anti-Russian Henry Jackson Society has been getting into Twitter spat after Twitter spat against RT defending these British aircraft carrier pieces of garbage. When will the anti-Russian propaganda of Fallon and James Rogers of the Henry Jackson Society stop. If it were not for the superior strength, grit, determination, continuous effort and heroic courage of the Russian people exemplified most vividly during the Battle of Stalingrad the simple fact is the UK would be the smallest province in the Nazi Third Reich now. But then Rogers is not an academically professionally trained historian. Perhaps some people need to go back to university and do a history degree.

Firstly, it is important to put Britain's place on the world stage and position in the pecking order of nations in proper context. Large elements of the British Political Establishment, the political parties, the media and population still think Britain is an extremely important country in world affairs when in reality it is a minor player in the great global issues of the 21^st century. The Britain of 2017 is a deeply insular, parochial country consumed within its own trivia. What groups such as The Henry Jackson Society; elements of the Tory Party; the British media and sections of the public fail to grasp is that what goes on and happens in Britain is largely irrelevant to the outside world.

The UK may be absorbed with Brexit and that is largely all you here about in the news and political discourse and once Britain's impending departure from the European Union comes into full force the country's weight and voice in international affairs will become even more diminished. Yet the rest of the world, including the EU, is not engulfed with the issue of Brexit (thankfully) and regards it as a typically peculiar, self-generated British nonsense and silly distraction from greater international challenges.

There really is no British foreign policy to speak of or overarching Grand Strategy for Britain's engagement with the rest of the planet beyond doing whatever the United States asks of it; banging on about the EU non-stop or pretending it still has some post-imperial grip on the nations of what it quaintly calls the «Commonwealth». This is a great shame and terribly limiting for the UK in this highly interconnected, interdependent, global age. Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Lady, started off her Premiership largely as a «domestic» Prime Minister but by the end of it she was immersed in international relations; a force to be reckoned with on the World Stage and became a foreign policy supremo, her very own Foreign Secretary, assisted greatly by her brilliant Foreign Affairs advisor, the real «Deputy Prime Minister» Foreign Office diplomat/MI6 agent Sir Charles Powell. Mrs. Thatcher also grew increasingly frustrated with her sheepish Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe who she berated in Cabinet for speaking in such a quiet, mumbling voice typical of many British people who speak in almost hushed, conspiratorial voices. As she said of Sir Geoffrey's oratorical delivery: «He spoke so quietly that sometimes I could barely hear what he was saying and had to ask him to speak up. And his delivery was not exactly scintillating».

With regards to the current Tory Prime Minister and pale imitation of Margaret Thatcher – Theresa May – she and her Tory Party are offering up a very two dimensional, simplistic, positively provincial foreign policy (if one can even call it a foreign policy). Her main advisors know nothing of foreign policy, international relations and global affairs having no academic credentials and intellectual training in this field; having never worked in the foreign policy community and largely having spent their working lives almost exclusively in the UK either as a football journalist such as Fiona Hill, her co-Chief of Staff, or as a domestic political apparatchik in the backrooms of the propaganda department at Conservative Central Office on «home» affairs such as Nick Timothy. Hill and Timothy's limited understanding of the world beyond Britain; their lack of professional work experience in the worlds of foreign policy and international relations; their lack of knowledge, erudition and intellectual firepower in understanding global geopolitics, other cultures and foreign policy matters combined with their provincialism, lack of cosmopolitan urbane sophistication shines through in Mrs. May's policies and speeches. 

As Phillip Stevens writing in the Financial Times makes clear: «In Whitehall code Mrs. May is more 5 than 6». It was said she was frustrated with discussions in Whitehall regarding selecting bombing targets in Libya or Syria and more concerned with domestic counter-terrorism. To her credit Mrs. May is correct in that Britain should stop pretending that it is a force in world affairs and stop believing it's military can make a difference in some kind of post-imperial neoconservative interventionism akin to Mr. Blair's deeply misguided foreign policy. Britain can't and should cease wasting any time, energy or resources on thinking it can make a difference in places like Libya and Syria. The only countries which have the power, strength and competence to really shape world affairs are the United States, China, Russia and perhaps collectively the European Union if it pulls itself together with a European army and single European foreign and defence policy.

Instead, Britain should largely give up any pretensions to being a global power and instead focus on putting its own domestic house in order and improving the quality of life for its own citizens at home. Her new National Security Advisor Mark Sedwill attempts to straddle both MI5, which is in essence the Home Office, where he was Permanent Secretary and MI6 which is in essence the Foreign Office were he previously served as British Ambassador to Afghanistan. Whether or not Mr. Sedwill will be able to pull off this balancing act remains to be seen given how engrossed in the Home Office/MI5 the Prime Minister and her top advisors are. There really is no need to go into great depth or analysis of what the Conservative Party's foreign policy platform is at the 2017 General Election for it has no real depth or multi-dimensional complexity to it a GCSE student could grasp it in a couple of minutes. It can be summed up in a few sentences: hostile to all things EU related and largely anti-European shaped by a Little England, provincial, Home Office/MI5 outlook on the world which is deeply xenophobic, ignorant and prejudiced Hostile to anyone who does not hail from the «Anglosphere». 

Subservient to the United States under President Trump backing him and his administration 100% and willing to do anything the Americans ask of Britain. And that is pretty much it. There is no one in the Conservative Party policy making machinery or even in Whitehall who really do foreign policy or have great expertise on these complex subjects. As the Tory MP and former Chairman of the House of Commons Defence Select Committee Rory Stewart pointed there were only two people working on Ukraine within the Foreign Office at the start of 2014. Meanwhile when it comes to the second largest economy in the world and the second Super-Power of the 21st century, the People's Republic of China as one former UK Government official put it: «There’s no one in the government who gets out of bed and thinks China. It’s a very old fashioned, almost Victorian view of the world». Quite. This is largely to the detriment of the British. If they think the world will come to them instead of going out into the world as part of the European Union, they are in for a very rude awakening.

Then we have the Labour Party. Before the advent of Tony Blair the Labour Party had historically been cool towards American global leadership. The Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson kept Britain out of the Vietnam War much to the chagrin of President Johnson. From Clement Attlee right up to Michael Foot it had also traditionally been the most Eurosceptic of the British political parties. From the Labour Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin to the Labour Leader Hugh Gaitskell, the Labour Party foreign policy regarding the burgeoning European Community had been to oppose British membership. Harold Wilson nearly split his party by applying to join in 1967 and had to offer a Referendum on continued British membership in 1975 with freedom of his party to campaign which ever way they liked. The Europhiles were led by the likes of Roy Jenkins and Shirley Williams while the anti-EEC brigade was led by Tony Benn and Barbara Castle.

Ironically, it was the Labour Party of Michael Foot at the 1983 General Election which pledged to end British membership of the European Community while it was Mrs. Thatcher's Conservatives which fiercely campaigned to protect Britain's place in the European Community. Also during the 1980s the Labour Party under Michael Foot and for a period under Neil Kinnock supported unilateral nuclear disarmament and were in lock step with the CND. All this changed under Tony Blair. Mr. Blair ditched the anti-Americanism; the policy of unilateral disarmament; the hostility towards European integration and embraced a pro-American; militaristic, interventionist foreign policy which climaxed with the disastrous decision to follow the Bush administration into invading Iraq and toppling the regime of Saddam Hussein. Mr. Blair, unlike previous Labour Prime Ministers, also became fixated – some would say obsessed – with Middle Eastern issues and was staunchly, unflinchingly pro-Israel. If one were into conspiracy theories one would hazard a guess that perhaps Mr. Blair was a plant within the Labour Party courtesy of the CIA and Mossad!?!

Under the present leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, no Blairite and a traditional socialist, there has been a certain convergence ironically between himself and Mrs. May in that both are rightly sceptical of British military adventurism abroad. But there such convergence ends. While Mr. Corbyn may be moderately Eurosceptic he is not an ultra-Brexiteer and has intimated he may stop Brexit if elected. Mr. Corbyn has rightly opposed British military involvement in airstrikes in Syria knowing full well that it is simply window dressing and superficial symbolism for Britain to pretend it can make any kind of difference through military power in that part of the world.

Mr. Corbyn himself is also rightly sceptical of the continuing maintenance of a horrendously expensive British nuclear deterrent when the money could be better spent on pressing domestic priorities such as health, education, infrastructure, p[pensions et al. There really is no need for Britain to possess nuclear weapons. It is simply a vanity project to maintain the veneer of pretensions to great power status. Germany has no nuclear weapons and feels perfectly fine sheltering under the NATO/American nuclear umbrella. Indeed, we as an international community should be reducing the amount of countries in the world that possess nuclear weapons not maintaining an over-inflated nuclear weapons state status quo. There is an argument that, while nuclear weapons cannot be dis-invented, their possession should be limited to a handful of truly Great Powers such as the United States, Russia, China and one European country say France. One day human kind will hopefully evolve to a higher, more enlightened level of consciousness and think to themselves why on earth did our ancestors waste so much money on building and maintaining weapons that had the potential to wipe out every single life on earth a thousand times over. 

The Labour Party foreign policy, like the Conservatives, is not terribly well thought out; sophisticated and deep. Under a Corbyn Premiership Britain would probably become more independent of the United States, most certainly since it is now under the leadership of Donald Trump, and Mr. Corbyn could be relied upon to stand up to Donald Trump unlike Mrs. May who is quite content to be his lap dog. Brexit might be stopped in its tracks but the Labour leadership have been vague and inconsistent on this; one minute stating they will go through with it but deliver a softer Brexit; the next minute intimating that the whole process could be stopped. One matter which is clear – under a Jeremy Corbyn Labour Government foreign policy – there would be no repeat of the Blairite neoconservative military adventurism abroad and a more realist approach to Britain's place in world affairs befitting of the true power status of the country in international relations. Mr. Corbyn's foreign policy would probably focus instead on utilizing Britain's soft power for international development purposes in Africa and he would seek to repair relations with Russia. 

His policy with regards to China remains opague given his support for Tibetan independence and the Dalai Lama, though here again I think Mr. Corbyn as a realist recognising that Britain with it's dwindling resources, dwindling wealth, and dwindling influence in Europe and the wider world will need good relations with the second largest (perhaps soon to be first largest economy on the planet) and that post-Brexit Britain most certainly needs China a great deal more than China needs Britain. I think Mr. Corbyn would be willing to work with the Chinese realising that a strong Sino-British strategic relationship can yield great benefits for Britain based on the principles of mutual trust and mutual respect leading to win-win cooperation. This is something Mrs. May and her Home Office/MI5 crew simply do not understand. But all in all, both major parties whether they the Conservatives or the Labour Party or the very minor fringe party the Liberal Democrats offer very little in the way of an intellectually rigorous, deep, profound, creative and imaginative British foreign policy and Grand Strategy, which is to the detriment of the country at large and the opportunities it could harness for improving the quality of life in Britain.

The National Security Council, created by President Harry Truman in the aftermath of World War II and at the outset of the Cold War, is the principal forum within the Executive branch of Government for the consideration of US national security and foreign policy matters and for advising the President on such topics. It consists of many national security officials, military leaders, Cabinet officers and is headed by the National Security Advisor and run by the National Security Council staff. As I wrote in a recent article, many DC eyebrows within the American foreign policy establishment were raised with the appointment of the President's chief political strategist, the mercurial Steve Bannon, to the principals committee of the NSC and as a permanent member back in January.

It was not just the fact that Mr. Bannon lacks any national security or foreign policy expertise and credentials, it was the fact also that domestic political advisors have never been permanent appointees to the Council. This seemed to break with Senator Henry Jackson's old adage that when it came to national security policy making the best politics was «no politics». While it was bad enough that President Obama's equally mercurial political strategist, a certain David Axelrod, attended meetings of the National Security Council from time to time, Axelrod was never a permanent member, let alone appointed to the Principals Committee.

The Principals Committee is convened and presided over by the National Security Advisor and its membership has historically consisted of the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Defense, the Attorney-General, the Secretary of Energy, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the White House Chief of Staff, the Director of National Intelligence, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Homeland Security Advisor, and the United States Ambassador to the United Nations. Never before has a purely domestic party political advisor served on the Principals Committee. Yet, Bannon's unprecedented and disturbing appointment lasted only roughly two and a half months just as Trump's first National Security Advisor Lt.General Michael Flynn lasted only three weeks and three days in his job. Last week, in a stunning clipping of wings, Bannon, who many in the media had speculated was the real power behind the throne, was unceremoniously removed from the National Security Council. The reasoning put out by the Trump administration was has incoherent as many aspects of its nascent domestic and foreign policies. One line was that it was only ever a temporary appointment. Another was that Bannon was simply appointed to keep a watchful eye over Michael Flynn which begs the question, if Flynn needed watching, why was he appointed to such a sensitive and powerful post like National Security Advisor in the first place?

The real reason Bannon was removed was because he has become locked in a power struggle with all people Jared Kushner, the President's son-in-law and by extension, the President's daughter, Ivanka. For someone who is supposedly such a shrewd political operator, you would have though Bannon would have avoided getting into a turf war and alienating the most favoured child of Donald Trump and her husband, because that is a battle he simply could never win. There is, after all a strong whiff of the mafia regarding the Trump family and it is not just because Trump's mentor and consigliere Roy Cohn who served as his publicist and attorney was a well known Mafioso. As the Trump son Eric said like something straight out of The Godfather when asked back in October how he thought Mike Pence did during the Vice-Presidential debate the first line out of his mouth was that Mike Pence «represented the family well tonight». I could imagine Michael Corleone saying something similar. .

So, Bannon's wings have been clipped and the «family» along with the new National Security Advisor HR McMaster have made it clear who is really in charge in the Trump White House, for now at least. Another departure from the NSC was Deputy National Security Advisor KT McFarland, a Lynn appointee, who is being carted off as Ambassador to Singapore. I would bet by the summer the Chief of Staff Reince Preibus may also be shunted off to become Ambassador to perhaps a really enjoyable place like, say North Korea? Remember, no good deed in Washington DC goes unpunished. It would seem that the «family» are the real power centre in the White House.

Kushner and Ivanka, both only 36 years old with zero government and political experience and credentials (just like the President himself) have established themselves in the West Wing were some in Bannon's camp have taken to deriding them as the «West Wing Democrats» because unlike Bannon they are far more centrist and socially liberal than the populist, fire and brim stone ultra nationalist conservative Bannon Breitbart alt right. There have been whispers to that the heiress to Goebbels, Trump's Minister for Propaganda, with her penchant for «alternative facts» and make believe massacres, a certain Ms. Kellyanne Conway, could also soon be shown the door and that the loud mouth know nothing Sean Spicer may soon be replaced too.

With the son-in-law in the ascendance, and therefore by default the daughter too, Kushner has been become almost a one man Government all on his own. It would seem that this 36 year old former real estate developer is taking multi-tasking to a new level. He has been put in charge of brokering peace between Israel and the Palestinians; handling relations with China, Mexico and Canada as well as heading up an office to reinvent the workings of the whole Federal Government no less. Normally such rank nepotism and family cronyism has been associated with banana republics but in the Trump Republic such family patronage is being taken to new levels.

One senses that Mr. Kushner is a hollow political, intellectual and public policy light weight, who is not really an independent adult in his own right, but still infantilised, having made it this far not based on his own mediocre talents and merits but rather relying heavily on the nepotistic patronage of his father who bought his son a place into Harvard with a generous donation even though Kushner's grades were not good enough to make the cut for Harvard's rigorous admissions and now is worming his way into the highest echelons of the American Government by virtue of marriage to the President's favoured daughter. 

As a former educational official at Kushner's High School put it: «There was no way anybody in the administrative office of the school thought he would on the merits get into Harvard. His GPA did not warrant it, his SAT scores did not warrant it. We thought for sure, there was no way this was going to happen. Then, lo and behold, Jared was accepted. It was a little bit disappointing because there were at the time other kids we thought should really get in on the merits, and they did not». The lo and behold, of course, was the $2.5 million his convicted criminal father Charles Kushner donated to Harvard University on the eve of his son's university education. It will be interesting to see what Mr. Kushner is really made of over the next few years because all the money in the world and the benefits of familial patronage will not avert a third intifada blowing up between Israel and the Palestinians or advance the father-in-law's agenda if and when Congress cyclically falls back under Democratic control.

Yet, they were in no way enthralled to President Nixon. Indeed, their greatest bête noire and ideologically nemesis was Nixon's Secretary of State, Dr. Henry Kissinger, and his policies of realpolitik triangulation. The neo-cons fervently believed in the Wilsonian principle of remaking the world to become «safe for democracy», that is American style electoral democracy. They were dogmatic idealists who refused to engage with the world and the balance of power structures of global geopolitics as they were, rather seeking to spread American electoral democracy to other countries and cultures, even if it meant through the barrel of a gun, causing civil wars in the process. Henry Kissinger's policy of accommodation and detente with the Soviet Union was anathema to the neo-cons. They viewed it as a sell-out and betrayal of American «values» and tantamount to appeasing «evil». For the neo-cons, ideological purity was always of far greater importance than global stability. They wanted the United States to constantly challenge and assert itself against the Soviet Union rather than engaging in arms control treaties and more liberal US-Russian trade policies.

At first during the early 1970s the neo-cons attempted to recapture the heart and soul of the Democratic foreign policy elites by latching on to Democratic Senator Henry Jackson, who one such neo-con, Richard Perle, worked for on Capitol Hill. A hall-mark of the how the neo-cons operate politically has always been parasitic in nature. They have shown themselves adept over the decades of latching on to various different politicians in either the Republican Party or their original home of the Democratic Party and attempting to influence and mould these sympathetic politicos in their own dogmatic image. Senator Jackson lost the Democratic nomination for President in 1972 to George McGovern and then ran again for the 1976 nomination against Jimmy Carter. 

Once Senator Jackson was beaten a second time and it was clear to the neo-cons they would get no were in the Democratic Party of the 1980s, a new saviour, straight out of Hollywood arrived, to do battle for the neo-cons. To the delight of many neo-conservatives Ronald Reagan, the former Governor of California, had ran on a vigorous anti-detente platform in his insurgent challenge against incumbent President Gerald Ford for the GOP's Presidential nomination in 1976. In Ronald Reagan many previous New Deal, Cold War liberal hawks, found a kindred spirit who believed in the unquestionable moral righteousness of the United States and shared a similar moral contempt for all things associated with the USSR. Many of their number made the final break with the Democrats and hopped on-board the Reagan Revolution such as Jeanne Kirkpatrick. The first Reagan administration was packed with neo-cons who steered the President towards labeling the Soviet Union as the «evil empire», engaging in a massive build up of American armaments which sent the national debt soaring and brought NATO to the brink of all out nuclear exchanges with the Russians during the early 1980s. 

With the advent of the second Reagan term and the arrival of the reforming and moderate Mr. Gorbachev and his liberalizing policies of Perestroika and Glasnost, the old foreign policy realist moderates of the Republican Party once again gained the upper hand. The neo-conservatives were marginalized, and that is how they would remain for a decade. With the end of the Cold War, fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union the neo-cons, who existed psychologically in a perpetual state of fevered paranoia and war, had lost their greatest enemy, which had defined their life in public service for five decades. 

One strange facet about the neo-cons is that almost none of them have ever been involved in actually fighting wars on the front-line. Very few have any real military experience and most of them would be useless on the battlefield as they are not the most physically impressive, muscular and well built. Yet, what they may lack in physical strength and brute force, they more than compensate mentally, with their fevered obsession, fascination and love of all things war related and militaristic. One senses with the neo-cons that they are attempting to compensate for their own physical inadequacies and deficiencies by politically proving how tough they are. One also senses with their constant seeking out of enemies to take on (from their armchairs that is) that they are exorcising some demons from their childhoods.

Perhaps not surprisingly given how many of their number came from Jewish backgrounds and the strong Jewish influence on their outlook on the world, their attention now firmly turned to the Middle East. The neo-conservatives began to set about defining Israeli security interests as American security interests and became fixated on creating a US style electoral, free market democratic state in the Middle east to, in their opinion «drain the swamp», and create a shining beacon of Western style democracy in a Middle Eastern country to show case to the rest of the region, triggering a hoped for domino effect. They aligned themselves with the pro-Israel Christian evangelical right-wing of the Republican Party and the anti-Palestine hard right of the Likud Party. They set their sights on Saddam Hussein's Iraq and worked tirelessly throughout the 1990s to promote the idea of «regime change» and «democratic transformation» in Iraq and the broader Middle East. Many of their number swarmed around the Presidential candidacy of George W Bush and ended up in senior positions within the Bush Jnr administration such as Paul Wolfowitz, Elliot Abrahams, John Bolton in alliance with more traditional conservative nationalist hawks such as Vice-president Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Within days of the 9/11 attacks the neo-cons were already pushing their pre-conceived agenda regarding Iraq on to the blank sheet that was George W Bush and successfully outmaneuvered more pragmatic foreign policy moderates such as Colin Powell. And, as we all know the neo-cons «shining beacon' of democracy in Iraq has not exactly worked out as they had ideologically planned and laboured for. 

Despite the fact that many leading neo-conservatives were the architects, masterminds and executors of the blood drenched, botched Iraq War which has caused untold regional and global instability, they showed little remorse or regret and for years after it became clear to any sensible, rational person engaged with reality that Iraq was a nightmare not a triumph of Western democracy, they still could not repent and see the error of their ways. One of their British cousins, the loony tune Conservative MP Michael Gove, even had the audacity and worryingly deluded arrogance to write in 2008 that : «The liberation of Iraq has actually been that rarest of things – a proper British foreign policy success. Next year, while the world goes into recession, Iraq is likely to enjoy 10% GDP growth. Alone in the Arab Middle East, it is now a fully functioning democracy with a free press, properly contested elections and an independent judiciary… Sunni and Shia contend for power in parliament, not in street battles». Clearly, Mr. Gove along with quite a few another neo-cons need to be carted off to the asylum and locked away for therapy for a very long time. 

Thankfully, President-elect Trump has no time for the neo-cons, and they most certainly have no time for him. Despite attempting a mini-comeback of sorts and gravitating to the candidacy of Republican Mitt Romney in 2012 and then Senator Marco Rubio in 2016, Trump and his scathing denunciations of the Iraq War, the Bush Jnr foreign policy, American exceptionalism, warmth towards Russia and President Putin and «America First» isolationist/non-interventionist world outlook, was utter heresy to the neo-conservative fundamentalist maniacs. The neo-cons declared open war on Trump's Presidential campaign when it became clear in early February that he stood a chance of capturing the party.

Neoconservative historian Robert Kagan — one of the prime intellectual backers of the Iraq War and an advocate for Syrian intervention — announced in the Washington Post that if Trump secured the Republican nomination, «the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton». Max Boot, an unrepentant supporter of the Iraq War, wrote in the Weekly Standard that a «Trump presidency would represent the death knell of America as a great power», citing, among other things, Trump’s objection to a large American troop presence in South Korea. In a remarkable letter sent by a large body of Republican national security officials and thinkers, which contained a number of neo-conservatives among their ranks, they openly denounced Trump in March 2016 stating they would not vote for him for President. Trump has returned the favour and explicitly attacked their thinking and their ideas as «crazy». It will be interesting to see whether the neo-cons regroup and attempt to weather the Trump years from within the Republican Party or whether they will flock back to their original birthplace of the Democratic Party. One thing is for sure, they will not have the ear of President Trump, in the same way they did President Ronald Reagan and President George W Bush.

Boris Johnson's sister, Rachel, labelled him a «political psychopath». I suppose having grown up with one for a brother, Ms Johnson knows one when she sees one. Mr. Gove, like Mr. Johnson, is divorced from reality. He likes to think of himself as a intellectual snob. Yet, he only achieved a 2.1 in his undergraduate studies, not in the premier intellectual league of a First class degree, and is only educated to BA level having undertaken no post-graduate study and research. Being so absorbed in his own little pseudo-intellectual world, he evidently cannot see the intellectual word for the trees. No more clearly can this be seen than in his steadfast support to this day for the Iraq War. Tariq Ali once recalled how, at the time of the Iraq War, he «debated the ghastly Gove on television [… and found him] worse than most Bush apologists in the United States». That takes quite some doing. Back in 2002 and 2003 from his column in the Murdoch owned Times. Gove helped beat the journalistic drumbeat to war in Iraq. As the loathsome Editor of the Daily Mail Paul Dacre put it in evidence to The LevesonInquiry: «I’m not sure that the Blair government – or Tony Blair – would have been able to take the British people to war if it hadn’t been for the implacable support provided by the Murdoch papers. There’s no doubt that came from Mr Murdoch himself». 

Gove wrote in an article for The Times in December 2002 while he was Assistant Editor that the invasion of Iraq would «deliver millions from misery». Those who warned against the dangers of invading Iraq were labelled by Gove as «Saddam's useful idiots». Even as far on as 2008 when it had become clear to most sensible and rational people that the invasion of Iraq had proved to be a catastrophe on epic proportions Michael Gove was adamant that the «liberation» of Iraq represented:«that rarest of things – a proper British foreign policy success». One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again. And so it was with Mr. Goveapropos Iraq stating in 2008 that: «Alone in the Arab Middle East, it is now a fully functioning democracy with a free press, properly contested elections and an independent judiciary». And just to leave no hostages to fortune Gove threw in for good measure that: «Sunni and Shia contend for power in parliament, not in street battles». Even in 2013 Gove was professing how he was a «big fan» of Tony Blair. 

Strangely Michael Gove has gone rather silent on the topic of the invasion of Iraq and it's aftermath. Instead he has poured his political energy into leading the charge for another high-risk adventure, taking Britain out of the EU. Perplexing the man who professed during the EU referendum campaign that the British people had had enough of experts, never had his own political and intellectual judgement rigorously examined with regards to his greatest cheer-leading role before Brexit – that of the Iraq War. But just as Iraq is a liberated paradise of democracy and Sunni and Shia harmony in the fevered mind of Michael Gove, so to is it unnecessary for Britain to remain in the Single Market or even have an extended transitional phase upon it's departure as has been mooted by the Governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney. After demonstrating during the summer Tory leadership contest that Gove has loyalty only to himself and the ease he displayed in the (but ultimately cack-handed) political knifing of his fellow Brexiteer Johnson, the new Prime Minister Theresa May sacked Gove from the Cabinet and exiled him to the backbenches with the atonement: « I have been talking to colleagues and the importance of loyalty is something on people’s minds…. it would perhaps help if you could demonstrate that loyalty from the back benches». Ouch! Gove has now taken full advantage of his return to the backbenches to demonstrate his loyalty, yet not just from the backbenches of the House of Commons, but with a brand new column in his old employer of the Murdoch Times, which he is getting 150,000 pounds for.

Curiously one of the more overt corrupt quirks of the British House of Commons (which no one in the British media or public ever really campaign against) is that, outrageously, MPs can hold multiple outside jobs while still being an MP as long as they are not serving in Government. This means that many electors are left with part-time MPs who do not represent fully and solely the interests of their constituents but represent multiple outside commercial, business, journalistic, industrial and lobby interests which they derive a handsome income from in addition to their tax-payer funded MPs salary and expenses. It also means that the very people who are voting on the laws of the land and shaping and passing legislation are beholden to external financial interests and multiple conflicts of interests. All the MP has to do is «register» the outside interest and the financial remuneration involved. This type of activity is banned in the US Congress. Congressmen and Senators cannot hold outside, financially remunerated jobs as well as serving as elected representatives of the people and voting on the laws of the land. 

There is no such ban in the British House of Commons. So, you have MPs who sit in Parliament and sit on Parliamentary committees – proposing legislation, scrutinizing and amending legislation and voting on legislation – who could also be working as a Director or Consultant for an investment bank – in effect a paid lobbyist who can influence and vote on financial regulation laws. And the British complain about the EU Parliament! It is not just Mr. Gove who has taken advantage of his return to the backbenches while still serving as an MP to get his snout firmly in the trough. The former Chancellor, who still serves as MP for Tatton, George Osborne, is also doing it as well. There was quite a to do about Hillary Clinton making paid speeches to financial groups before she ran for President. But the fact was Mrs. Clinton was out of politics at the time and was not holding any public office. She was a private citizen. Yet, since his return to the backbenches of the House of Commons in the summer time, Mr Osborne, still MP for Tatton has made well over 300,000 in paid speeches to big investment banks. Perhaps before the British public and the rest of the EU are subjected to any more hyperbolic, bonkers rantings from Michael Gove about how horrible and corrupt the European Union is he would kindly stop writing his 150,000 pound Murdoch paid column in The Times, focus on doing his job as an MP and making that his only job, and renounce his previous positions regarding the Iraq War, admit he was wrong and apologize to the millions of people who have since lost their lives, homes and loved ones.