… careless of the war crimes it’s implicated in and the hatred it’s stoking

Stuart Littlewood writes:

The King’s Speech is an ornate part of the State Opening of Parliament. The monarch announces to Parliament the government’s programme for the year ahead. Previously called the “Speech from the Throne”, it is delivered from the throne in the House of Lords to MPs and peers packed together into that chamber. The speech is written by the government and the King is supposed to read it out in a neutral voice and with a straight face.

Yesterday’s [7 November] speech contained the following passage:

My Government is committed to tackling anti-Semitism and ensuring that the holocaust is never forgotten. A bill will progress the construction of a national holocaust memorial and learning centre in Victoria Tower Gardens… My Ministers will work closely with international partners to support Ukraine, strengthen NATO and address the most pressing security challenges. This includes the consequences of the barbaric acts of terrorism against the people of Israel, facilitating humanitarian support into Gaza and supporting the cause of peace and stability in the Middle East.

No mention of the barbaric acts of terrorism and worse by the people of Israel against the people of Palestine over the last 75 years. And while our political class busy themselves with plans to build a holocaust memorial centre, they seem to have forgotten its essential message, “Never Again!” in their rush to support and reward Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Whether Charles III approved of the sickening stuff he was relaying to the world outside we’ll never know. He’s not allowed to say.

As for the Ukraine fiasco, that was embarked on by “Bonkers” Boris Johnson and his potty foreign secretary, Liz Truss, without parliamentary approval. No proper explanation of the situation in the years leading up to the conflict was ever presented. The House of Commons had an ill-informed and hurried discussion but there was no proper debate and no vote.

Anyone paying attention, though, knew that Britain had been helping to train and equip Ukraine’s troops since 2014 for just such a fight and that NATO had systematically broken promises made to Russia in 1990 not to encroach further eastwards than Germany. And it was pretty clear even to the dimmest that this wasn’t Russia’s war in Ukraine but the US’s proxy war against Russia using Ukraine as the battlefield with the intention of bringing NATO’s nuclear capacity right onto Russia’s doorstep. Such provocation was never going to end well, was it?

And now we have Britain hand-in-glove with the US torpedoing international law, approving and assisting Israel’s continuous war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated against the Palestinians for over seven decades and doing everything they can to block Palestine’s right to freedom and self-determination. In the process, we’re implicating ourselves in Israel’s genocidal actions and stoking up huge hatred not only in the region but across the world. So that’s not going to end well either.

Why are we cursed with such contemptible leadership?

Given the imminent danger and unpredictability of the situation we’ve helped to create, I would have admired Charles more if he’d done away with convention, torn up the speech and told the assembled “elite”: “No, you do not use me or my Office to legitimise such a base programme while huge crowds are on the streets telling my government to change course.”