PETER HITCHENS: Starmer may strut the world pretending Britain is still an important player, but he’s no more powerful than the King of Legoland. And here are the problems he REALLY needs to confront in broken Britain

Rattling through the Ukrainian night in his T-shirt, aboard Kiev’s grandiose official train, Sir Keir Starmer ponders spending yet more money we do not have on a war in which we have no interest.

What is this foolishness? Who and what does Sir Keir think he is? What sort of country does he think he leads? He speaks as if he imagines he is the late Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, a mighty ruler commanding huge armies. Yet he is not really much more powerful than the King of Legoland. He has no money, and he has no strength.

Our state is so weak that shoplifters laugh at it as they hurry home with their loot. Burglars and vandals likewise scoff at it. Supposedly illegal marijuana is grown in flourishing criminal farms using stolen electricity. It is then consumed openly in the streets. Yet nothing is done.

This matters. Almost daily we see another case in which a crazed killer has been smoking this ghastly, dangerous drug. You want to know why we have so much knife crime? This is almost

certainly why. Sir Keir’s not interested. This has become a country in which we more or less apologise to illegal drug takers, for the

damage they do to the rest of us. Here, have a free needle, and a special tax-funded place to stick it in your arm.

The state is so feeble at defending our shores that scores of illegal immigrants pour ashore almost daily on our undefended beaches. Much of our Navy is immobile or conked out. Our Army is tiny. Our fabled superpower nuclear deterrent, when tested, either veers crazily over the USA or plops, lifeless, into the sea. I suspect it will be a while before we risk any more such tests. I often wonder if we are only pretending it exists.

Rattling through the Ukrainian night in his T-shirt, Sir Keir Starmer ponders spending yet more money we do not have on a war in which we have no interest, writes Peter Hitchens

Yet we stomp about in Ukraine with gifts of money and missiles.

Why do we do this? If Britain has such stern principles against foreign countries being invaded, why did we illegally invade Iraq on false pretences in 2003 and bomb Serbia without UN approval in 1999? If we loathe tyrants so much, why do we perpetually suck up to Saudi Arabia, the reigning Olympic champion in repression, despotism, injustice etc? All our rhetoric about Russia is just that, hypocritical bombast, bellowed by a global mouse through an enormous megaphone.

The USA wants a confrontation with Russia. It has been seeking one since Washington adopted the aggressive and rather stupid Wolfowitz Doctrine in 1992. But why should we join in?

Almost everyone intelligent in US foreign policy opposed this strategy. The greatest American diplomat of the 20th century, George Kennan, spoke fiercely against it. But it went ahead anyway, with the support of that vain, squalid nuisance, Bill Clinton.

The crucial thing to grasp is that Putin’s aggression, undoubtedly nasty, is not what you have been told it is. Putin does not dream of the day when his Army washes its boots at Calais, while preparing the first successful invasion of these islands since 1066. He couldn’t if he wanted to.

He knows that his thuggish armed forces are corrupt, badly equipped, poorly led and badly trained. They still cannot even take the Ukrainian city of Kharkov, 20 miles from the Russian border. So a march on Warsaw, Berlin, Paris and Brussels is unlikely. What he wants is to prevent Ukraine becoming the host for American forces and missiles. This is not wholly unreasonable.

English foreign policy was based for centuries on keeping the French out of Scotland, a similar principle. You will have to ask yourself why the Americans want to push their power into Eastern Europe, as they have been doing for 35 years, because I can think of no good reason for it. Then again, I still do not know why they invaded Iraq in 2003.

But I am convinced of one thing. Britain has no interest in this quarrel. On the contrary, it needs to wake up to this key fact: we are no longer a superpower.

Yet, despite all the stupidities of the past 70 years, this remains a beautiful, potentially prosperous nation. If we choose to use our resources in our own interests, we can rebuild this country as an advanced, peaceful, well-defended, well-policed, just and well-educated place. But the first vital step towards this is to recognise that the nation we need to worry about most is our own.

The world is not waiting for our supposed wisdom. The world knows that we are a military minnow, and a heavy debtor. We are the only ones who still think that we bestride the globe like a colossus. Wake up. Grow up. Accept reality. Slay the real dragons at home.

Timotheee’s putting safety in jeopardeee 

I am assured by ‘sources’ that the actor Timotheee Chalameee was not rewarded by Lime Bikes for riding one of their nasty, dirty machines to the premiere of his new Bob Dylan film in London last week. So it is a mystery that Timotheee was accompanied on his ride by ‘his’ photographer Aidan Zamiri. Why would you need a photographer for that?

Sources also dismissed his claim that he was fined £65 for the way he parked it. He said: ‘Actually it’s horrible because it was an advert for them.’ Well, that last bit is true. What these dangerous, overpowered, street-cluttering things need is celebrity condemnation, not endorsement.

What would the young Bob Dylan have done?

Timothee Chalamet steals the limelight riding in on a Lime e-bike at the London premiere of A Complete Unknown

Timothee Chalamet steals the limelight riding in on a Lime e-bike at the London premiere of A Complete Unknown 

At last, Blair says something sensible 

How terrible it is when Sir Anthony Blair says something sensible. He is so dim, that it is hard to compute, like rain falling indoors. Yet his words are actually quite right: ‘Life has its ups and downs, and everybody experiences those. And you’ve got to be careful of encouraging people to think they’ve got some sort of condition other than simply confronting the challenges of life.’

I have argued for years that ‘ADHD’ is a myth and its treatment with amphetamines a disgrace. I have said ‘antidepressants’ were often a risk (sometimes of suicide, as the tragic Thomas Kingston case has underlined) to those who take them, that the science behind them was not just flawed but wrong, as it is.

My reward, as usual, was abuse. Far too many influential people drug their children for ‘ADHD’ or themselves take ‘antidepressants’. But if even the Blair creature can see that this has gone too far, there may be hope.

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