The one our Labour government has just issued will allow imports of diesel and jet fuel produced by third parties from Russian oil. The ones Labour MPs blocked were UK oil and gas licences.
Let’s try to get to the bottom of it. Easing sanctions on Russian oil is a knife in the Ukraine’s back because that imported oil won’t just fuel our cars and airliners. It’ll fuel Putin’s murderous war on the Ukraine, the country heroically fighting for her freedom – and ours.
That perfidious decision to sell the Ukraine down the Dnieper has even triggered some sibling rivalry within Labour ranks.
Emily Thornberry, chairman of the foreign affairs committee, said that Ukrainians “feel very let down… Just because other countries are behaving in the wrong way does not mean that we should join them. It really doesn’t. We are Britain, one of Ukraine’s strongest allies, and we have led the fight against Russia.”
You aren’t going to win any prizes for guessing which “other countries” Dame Emily had in mind. Trump has been doing everything constitutionally possible and more to help his friend and role model Vlad run the blockade of sanctions designed to stop Russian exports.
For example, Trump exempted from sanctions Russian tankers already at sea. Another licence permitted Russia’s gas exports from her Far Eastern ports.
While Trump thus mollified Putin, Starmer showed steadfast resolve: whatever Trump does or doesn’t do, Britain, he said, would continue to exert “maximum economic pressure on Russia.”
One thing that Trump did do was start a war against Iran that, while irreproachable in theory, has so far produced few tangible long-term effects.
‘So far’ are the operative words: it’s possible that Iran’s ability to produce nuclear weapons has been terminally degraded. It’s possible that Iran will now have to think twice before resorting to aggression and terrorism. It’s even possible that pigs will fly, though, out of respect for diversity, not over Muslim countries.
Meanwhile, the most immediate result of the war is an oil crisis threatening to ground the planes carrying British holidaymakers to Costa del Sol, Ibiza and Benidorm. And those who’ll decide to brave traffic on continental motorways will have to pay 50 per cent more to fill their Chinese-made cars.
Dame Emily was right in accusing her Parteigenosse Keir for betraying the Ukraine. It’s true that, since 2022, Britain has been the staunchest supporter of the Ukraine this side of Poland and the Baltics. The support has been somewhat heavier on words than on deeds, but Ukrainians have had every reason to regard Britain as their friend.
Lately though, the deeds have been more or less supplanted by words, and even promises supposedly chiselled in stone turn out to have been scribbled on sand.
For example, HMG crossed its heart and hoped to die when promising to board and capture any sanction-busting Russian ships entering British waters. However, those ships continue to cock a snook at Starmer’s promises by sailing through the Channel as if it were the Volga.
Now comes another inexcusable betrayal, which Dan Tomlinson, the exchequer secretary, nevertheless tried to excuse: “When there are international conflicts … what we have to do as a government is make sure that we’re protecting the UK national interest, that we’re protecting individual families and looking after their finances.”
One can just see Churchill making that statement in 1940, when the first Luftwaffe bombs (many of them made in the USSR, by the way) fell on Britain. It would have been unquestionably better for family finances to accept a negotiated peace on Hitler’s terms. Family finances circumscribe British national interests, Churchill would have orated, and never mind defending the country’s sovereignty.
However, if Starmer cares so much about our family finances, how does he explain the licences his government has refused to issue, those for producing more oil and gas in the North Sea?
Our spivs have cottoned on to a fact straight out of the economic primer: increasing the supply of a commodity will lower its price if the demand stays stable. When the commodity in question is oil, then God has created only two ways of increasing its supply: either buying more or producing more.
Starmer’s government, spearheaded in such matters by that swivel-eyed net zero loon, Ed Miliband, has rejected the second option. Hence Ed and his accomplices have chosen saving ‘our planet’ over family finances. Some things, they seem to imply, are more important than money.
Fair enough, some things indeed are. But evidently not keeping up financial pressure on a fascist regime openly stating that it’s waging war on the West, not just the Ukraine.
What’s more important to that lot than people’s finances is an ideology based on the latent Marxist urge to destroy our country. Any constituent of that ideology, including unwavering commitment to the climate swindle, is sacrosanct. The survival of our ally, the bulwark against Putin’s hordes, isn’t. Those flights to Ibiza come first.
This kind of logic isn’t just immoral, shortsighted and strategically inept. It’s also idiotic on its own terms.
Why not do more drilling in the North Sea, Ed and Keir? Oh well, you see, producing and burning oil increases the carbon footprint on the throat of ‘our planet’. Fair enough, I’ll buy that. But does burning oil produced in Russia spare ‘our planet’ from that awful fate?
You see, chaps, the atmosphere is like Russia: it doesn’t recognise national borders. We are all breathing the same air, and it doesn’t matter exactly where ‘our planet’ catches fire and burns to extinction. Wherever hydrocarbons burn and wherever they are produced, the effect on ‘our planet’ will be exactly the same – even assuming, for the sake of argument, that effect is deleterious.
So let me try to clasp together different links in the Labour logical chain. First, they are going to buy Russian oil. Second, the Russians will use the proceeds of such transactions to kill more Ukrainians. Third, this is unfortunate but unavoidable because Britons’ junkets to Ibiza take priority over Ukrainian lives.
It’s what Kierkegaard would describe as an ‘either… or’ situation, isn’t it? Either we continue to “exert maximum economic pressure on Russia” or we pay less for fuel and jet travel. Can you fault this logic?
Yes, we can, says the government, and Kierkegaard can take a long walk off a short pier. It’s a case of ‘both… and’, not ‘either… or’.
This is how a government spokesman worded this illogical claim: “We are committed to strengthening our sanctions on Russia to degrade its ability to wage war in Ukraine, whilst protecting critical supply chains and maintaining market stability.”
Sorry, chaps, you can’t have both. The two desiderata are mutually exclusive, which ought to be clear even to any averagely intelligent 10-year-old. What’s also clear is that we are governed by imbeciles short on brains but long on ideological chicanery.
So I hope you’ll join me in hoping that Starmer hangs on. Alas, all available Labour alternatives are even worse, hard as that may be to imagine. Any chance of Zelensky becoming British prime minister?