Given his dramatic elevation to hero / saviour status, his speech to Israel’s Knesset on Monday could have been the occasion to deliver one of the great, inspirational, statesmanlike US presidential addresses. (Think FDR’s ‘Four Freedoms’ that finally pushed America into joining the war against the Nazis, think Lyndon Johnson’s ‘We Shall Overcome’, think Reagan’s ‘Fall of the Berlin Wall’, think JFK’s ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’, think Obama’s ‘A More Perfect Union’, think right back to Abraham Lincoln’s ‘Gettysburg address’, to name but a few).
Instead, perhaps intoxicated by the cocktail of adulatory standing ovations, this teetotal POTUS delivered his usual hyperbolic, hubristic, grievance-airing, narcissistic mix of self-congratulation, exaggerated boasts, downright falsehoods. There were moments when a genuinely statesmanlike phrase slipped out, a clue to the likelihood a quality speechwriter had scripted something authentically inspirational but which Trump largely ignored in favour of doing his old familiar schtick on this genuinely historic occasion.
Of the near 70,000 Gazan civilians killed (with, perhaps, as many more again still buried beneath the rubble) barely a word. Or of Israel’s brutal, illegal settlement expansion in the West Bank. Or of the path to a Palestinian state, vaguely flagged up in the Trump peace plan but still publicly rejected by Netanyahu and the hard right members of his cabinet who have kept him in power.
Donald the Great?
It was hard to keep count of the times Trump lauded himself and his own team and family for their roles in bringing ‘peace’ to Gaza. So much so that my journalist wife suddenly exclaimed: “This is turning into a Thankathon!”. The word ‘peace’ churned out so often, despite the fact that what Trump has achieved (to his credit) is a fragile ceasefire but not the peace deal he’s claiming. Certainly not his preposterous claim to have ended 3,000 years of conflict in the Middle East. Or that of the Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana who not only lauded Trump as a “giant of Jewish history” but equated him with Cyrus the Great, the Persian ruler who liberated the Jewish people from the Babylonians as recently as, er, 539BC!!
Half a dozen times, Ohana and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s sycophancy extended to proclaiming how The Donald should have got the Nobel Peace Prize last week and must be a shoo-in for next year.
In the Times sketch writer Tom Peck’s Tuesday column, ‘Sycophancy was ladled on, then star guest went off-script’ was the fitting headline. His column began: “Flattery, Disraeli once said, is best laid on with a trowel. In the Israeli parliament, they laid it on with a JCB. So voluminous and so cloyingly thick was the weight of adulation heaped on President Trump that he almost appeared to have become preserved in it. The president recovered in good time to deliver a further hour of what can only be described as Gettysburg praise, which is to say praise of himself, by himself and for himself. Never in the field of human conflict has so much credit been given by so few to even fewer.
“On a day when Israeli hostages were returned home after two years of unimaginable horror, it is a remarkable achievement that the greatest public outpourings of mutual love and affection happened between two old men, Trump and Binyamin Netanyahu at the podium of the Knesset. It was a historic day, certainly, but a carefully choreographed one, too. While Israeli hostages were being driven out of Gaza by the Red Cross, Team Trump arrived one by one in the balconies of the Knesset to rounds of standing ovations... Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Steve Witkoff, Marco Rubio.”
Pardon Bibi, Mr President!
One biggish surprise during Trump’s rambling, repetitive Knesset address came when he not only endorsed Netanyahu’s victory boasts, but heaped praise on the Israeli leader and took the presumptive step of publicly urging its president, sitting a few feet away, to drop the longstanding corruption case against Netanyahu which has effectively been delayed again and again by the Gaza conflict. “Hey, I have an idea, Mr President, why don’t you give him a pardon? Cigars and champagne — who the hell cares?” said Trump, impervious to the scale of bribery and corruption charges Netanyahu faces.
So, had Witkoff and Kushner not reminded him that when they joined Hostage Square at the weekend, they — and Trump’s name — had been cheered wildly by the massed crowds while Netanyahu’s was greeted with deafening boos? Had Trump himself forgotten or forgiven that it was Netanyahu’s own hubris in attacking without his consent the Hamas negotiating team in Qatar, the president’s key military and commercial ally, that fired him to the ‘enough is enough, Bibi’ riot act that actually brought about the ceasefire and the Israeli premier to grudgingly agree to his ‘20-point peace plan’.
Paying homage to a potentate or an orgy of sycophancy?
The 3-hour overrun Knesset sycophancy session over, the ‘love train’ (aka Air Force One) moved on to Egypt’s Sharm-el-Sheikh luxury resort where around 20 world leaders, including Keir Starmer, had been forced to twiddle their thumbs or chat among themselves, while awaiting The Great Showman / Peacemaker’s arrival. Officially a conference to sign off the ‘Peace Plan’ (*note peace not ceasefire’), it turned out more the bizarre spectacle of a procession of world leaders filing one by one onto the stage for a photo opp with the US president rather like courtiers paying homage to an all-powerful potentate. Another ‘orgy of sycophancy’ as one senior Egyptian journalist put it, adding: “Egypt was hustled into staging this conference only for it to provide the platform for the US president to talk about himself.”
Some were allowed to speak, showering praise on ‘The Great Peacemaker’. Others, including our prime minister didn’t get a speaking turn. Carefully positioning himself in constant camera shot behind the president, Sir Keir clearly expected to say a few words when Trump called out “Where’s the UK?” He stepped forward but Trump merely, briefly shook his hand before turning his back and leaving Starmer no option but to retreat... to the delight of the right-wing UK papers ever eager to mock him. Snub or not? The jury’s out for now.
Privately, however, wiser heads were sceptical over Trump’s claim that not only was Phase 1 of his plan going like a dream, but that phases 2,3 and 4 were already ‘under way’ despite the absence of the vaunted ‘Peace Board’ and any sign of the essential international Muslim peacekeeping presence taking shape. Considering Phase 2, which Trump posted to have started on Tuesday afternoon, includes Hamas’s disarmament, it begs the question: Disarmed by whom? On Tuesday, Trump also told White House reporters that if Hamas didn’t disarm, “We will violently disarm them”. Without defining who he meant by ‘We’. But if it means the IDF then it could well blow up the whole plan by alienating some Arab nations who have signed up and who could well abandon the alliance.
Meanwhile the gangs involved in the ongoing bloody shootouts with Hamas have historically been surreptitiously armed by Israel. For its part, Hamas has openly been executing people suspected of being ‘Israeli collaborators’. How fragile indeed is the ceasefire let alone the long-term peace boast?
In praise of Powell
Several right-wing UK titles had questioned why Starmer was even there in Egypt, echoing Tory leader Kemi Badenoch’s claim he should have been in the Commons answering questions on the escalating ‘China Spy Case’ row (*more of that later). Seriously? Whatever the doubts about the long-term prospects of the Trump peace plan beyond Phase 1, it would have been nonsense for a British PM to have stayed at home on such an historic day.
‘Starmer has been the ‘John Terry’ of Gaza — turning up to bask in a success he had nothing to do with’ was the morning after headline over a scathing column by Daily Mail political commentator, Dan Hodges. The John Terry reference dating back to the day the Chelsea captain got into his full playing kit to join the on-camera post European final triumph match he hadn’t actually played in.
Those same titles had ridiculed the suggestion aired on the Sunday political shows by cabinet minister Bridget Phillipson that the British government had player a key ‘background’ role in formulating Trump’s ‘Peace Plan’ — suggesting our Trump / Netanyahu defying decision to recognise a Palestinian state in principle had sidelined us.
The same day’s Mail leader contained this line: “Contrast the US President’s bold and principled leadership with that of Sir Keir Starmer, whose attempts to claim even partial credit for the peace deal are a new low. At every opportunity, the PM betrayed Israel — Britain’s oldest Middle Eastern ally — while encouraging Hamas to hold out for better terms.”
Earlier prominence had been given in the UK media to a particularly vicious ‘She’s delusional’ dig at Bridget Phillipson’s TV interviews by Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel and a former Fox News presenter, ex-Arkansas state governor and onetime Republican presidential candidate. He has also been sympathetic to the idea of Israel annexing the West Bank.
In fact, Huckabee’s intervention sparked a flurry of backchannel UK / US diplomatic activity that resulted in Trump’s chief Middle East envoy and longtime confidant, Steve Witkoff issuing a social media rebuttal declaring: “I would like to acknowledge the vital role of the United Kingdom in assisting and co-ordinating efforts that have led us to this historic day in Israel. In particular, I want to recognise the incredible input and tireless efforts of national security adviser Jonathan Powell.” Powell certainly can’t escape the headlines these days, also being at the heart of the China spy case furore. Undoubtedly Powell, who worked closely with Tony Blair on the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace in Northern Ireland, also did so with Blair and Jared Kushner in framing the 20-point Palestinian peace plan adopted by Trump. But Blair’s heavily-promoted role on Trump’s putative Gaza ‘Peace Board’ now looks in doubt, despite his warm greeting by the US president at the Sharm-el-Sheikh gathering.
That’s because Witkoff has also briefed Trump on how divisive the former UK prime minister is with key Middle East partners in the plan, some highly supportive of Blair but others hostile over his Iraq War history. Starmer has notably carefully sidestepped questions on whether he backs Blair for the role.
Even before Trump arrived in Egypt from Israel on Monday, word was reaching him and the gathered leaders how Hamas was seeking to reassert its authority in Gaza with gun battles against rival groups and on camera bullet-through-the back of the head executions of captured opponents. Such was the fragility of the ceasefire exposed so swiftly, albeit no one in Sharm-el-Sheikh was raining on the president’s parade by openly referring to it. Fragility reinforced on Tuesday when the IDF killed by drone seven people who had allegedly crossed the ceasefire demarcation line in Gaza.
So what changed Netanyahu’s mind?
But one of the remaining mysteries surrounding the strange Sharm-el-Sheik summit was the absence of Netanyahu. Not originally invited, Trump suddenly decided to call the official host, Egypt’s President Sissi to get him invited. Initially Netanyahu accepted but then pulled out, citing Israel’s Feast of the Tabernacles religious holiday. But speculation centred on two other possible motives. Attending could have meant the Israeli leader encountering the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, a man he has refused to meet since 2016. The other was that Tukey’s president Erdogan, a crucial figure in Trump’s peacemaker ambitions, had got wind of the unexpected Netanyahu invite while on route on his plane and phoned the US president to bluntly warn — if he’s coming, I’m turning my plane around and going home. You’d probably put your money on that being the decisive factor. Another snapshot of how rocky the road to peace is and how huge the challenge of turning Trump’s triumphant rhetoric into reality remains.
Front page mood shift
If Tuesday’s British front pages had been dominated by joyful images of the 20 surviving hostages reunited with their families, by Wednesday a gloomier mood was in evidence. Witness The Times Page 1 headline, ‘Hamas kills its enemies on ceasefire Gaza streets’ or the Guardian’s ‘Tensions high as Israel cuts aid to Gaza in row over hostage remains’. For now, it’s unclear if Hamas’s failure to deliver the remains of the 28 dead hostages is a cynical bargaining chip breach of the agreement or whether amid Gaza’s Armageddon hellscape they simply can’t locate where the remains are. The latest UN report suggests around 80% of Gaza’s infrastructure has been destroyed or rendered uninhabitable. Whatever the reason, the missing bodies of hostages has triggered fury and frustration among bereaved relatives.
Can Trump the threat maker work on Putin too?
That’s the question being asked with Ukraine’s President Zelensky heading to the White House on Friday for a meeting with Trump. William Hague in his Tuesday Times column (‘What Trump can learn from success in Gaza’) argued the case for the US president to apply the same tough, threatening stance that worked on Netanyahu to the Russian leader. “There are some signs that Trump is contemplating this lesson,” wrote Hague. “He is toying with sending Tomahawk cruise missiles to Zelensky. This is causing consternation in Moscow, under mounting pressure from Ukrainian drone strikes on oil installations. Sending such weapons to Ukraine would be the right thing to do. To make “Trump peace, diplomacy needs to be backed by hard power. That is the lesson of which Trump has just reminded us. It might even lead to that peace prize at last.”
Last Saturday, Boris Johnson struck a similar note in his Daily Mail column with its headline: ‘Trump made peace in Gaza through sheer strength. Now he needs to put the hard work on Putin — and I know he will’.
Certainly Zelensky will be pushing POTUS to go through with his Tomahawk missile musings. These longer range, more powerful payload weapons would give Ukraine the ability to hit targets in and around Moscow itself and could be a gamechanger in the conflict. The Ukrainian leader will also be urging Trump to finally forge ahead with the long-threatened economy-crippling sanctions on Russia.
But whether it’s the Midde East or Ukraine, the caveats are obvious. Trump’s unpredictable character, his attention span (lack of), his willingness or not to stay the course when things don’t go according to plan and adulation gets overtaken by condemnation.
The Great War of China
Jonathan Powell’s name was at the centre of an explosive clash between Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch when PMQs returned on Wednesday after a month-long break. It centred on the escalating row over who is to blame for the collapse of the trial against two Brits accused of spying on MPs on behalf of China.
The Tory leader and some newspapers are accusing the government, and implicating National Security Adviser Powell, of effectively sabotaging the case by refusing to provide prosecutors with statements designating China as a ‘national security’ threat. With the alleged motive of currying favour with Beijing and protecting trade relations.
“It all stinks of a cover up.... ministers are too weak to stand up to China,” Badenoch told Starmer. She claimed Powell had been involved in a ‘secret meeting’ on China but Starmer rejected any suggestion he had been involved in the spy case collapse.
In a pre-emptive strike at the opening of PMQs, the prime minister made the surprise announcement that three witness statements made to prosecutors by Powell’s deputy would be made public to counter claims of ‘political interference’ and strongly denied that any government ministers or advisers were involved in the CPS’s decision to drop the case.
According to Starmer the previous government was to blame for the trial’s failure for failing to update the Official Secrets Act — they were originally charged while the Tories were in power and hadn’t legally designated China as a ‘foe’ at the time. The prime minister repeatedly argued that the government were ‘disappointed’ the trial couldn’t go ahead but that was down to the last government’s failure to update the Official Secrets Act when they were charged.
There is little sign of the bitter dispute with its claims and counter claims cooling down. Pressure will continue for Jonathan Powell to appear (in camera if necessary for national security reasons) before a commons select committee.
On Wednesday afternoon, Dominic Cummings exploded a timebomb into the China issue by revealing that back in 2020, he and Boris Johnson were warned by the security services that China was successfully infiltrating sensitive UK government computer systems. It begs the huge question why the then Conservative government kept it secret and made no statement to parliament or the public on the breach.
When the three statements were finally released on Wednesday night, they neither provided a smoking gun nor cleared the Starmer government. The release begged more questions than answers with several cross party select committees lining up to stage investigations and summon key figures to appear, including the prime minister’s national security team, intelligence chiefs and the head of the Crown Prosecution Service.
Bit what the released documents — together with Dominic Cummings explosive intervention — do illustrate is how successive governments walked a tightrope between the need for trade with China, incoming investment by China and China’s appetite for espionage on various levels.
Following the release of one of the two men originally accused , former parliamentary researcher Christopher Cash, who advised then PM Rishi Sunak, issued his own statement claiming he would have been found innocent if the case had gone ahead and protesting he is now the “victim of trial by media”.
The one certainty is that this spy saga and its political fallout is set to run and run. A fascinating mix of a le Carré spy thriller and a Thick of It satire episode indeed.
Several national papers’ Thursday front pages were fed by the spy case furore, with the Telegraph, Times and Mail splashing on Dominic Cummings sensational revelation that he and Boris Johnson were warned back in 2020 by intelligence chiefs that China had successfully hacked sensitive government information. It begs the question why the Johnson government didn’t make any statement to parliament or the public.
The LibDem leadership have now announced they will press for a statutory public inquiry into the abandoned spy case and into Britain’s relationship with the Beijing regime more widely.
Speculation mounted on Thursday that a government decision to delay planning consent for a proposed new Chinese embassy is linked to the spy case furore. The planned embassy on the site of the old Royal Mint building close to the Tower of London would be the biggest in the capital and some spy chiefs have warned its underground complex could be used as a high-tech espionage hub.
