TWO peace activists were arrested at the weekend while attempting to deliver a letter to a Suffolk air base stating the opposition to an anticipated return of US nuclear weapons there.
Some 110 nuclear bombs were stored at the Lakenheath base until they were removed in 2008 after strong and constant protests.
But earlier this year, documents surfaced from the United States Defence Department detailing a contract to build defensive shelters for Lakenheath’s “upcoming nuclear mission.”
On Saturday, five women walked through the gates of Lakenheath, intending to deliver a letter to the base commanders, asking them to stop the nukes from returning.
Police stopped the women and two sat down peacefully, vowing to stay until a base commander could meet with them. Both were arrested and taken to Bury St Edmunds police station.
Protest against nuclear war outside Westminster Abbey, London 2019 | Wiktor Szymanowicz/Future Publishing via Getty Images
What’s the difference between the defence policies of Labour and Conservatives? Spoiler alert: there isn’t one
Days after Rishi Sunak announced the country would be going to the ballots, Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg released a campaign video in which he declared “security is at the forefront of this general election”.
It was a grand claim, but an astute one. Sunak and Keir Starmer have indeed spent much of the past six weeks fighting over who is leading the party of defence, while the subject has also dominated headlines (or it did until Nigel Farage re-entered politics and made the election considerably more about immigration).
From existential concerns about the size of the British army to debates about who supports Trident (and who doesn’t) and the shock announcement of the possible return of National Service, you’d be forgiven for thinking the election is less about voting red, blue, green or yellow, and more about what shade of camouflage you’d prefer your leaders in.
But how, exactly, do Labour and the Tories differ when it comes to matters of defence? And how will rising fears from politicians and pundits over threats from Russia, Iran and China affect British politics?
Early on in the election campaign, Labour leader Starmer declared his the ‘party of national security’ – a sentiment echoed by his shadow defence secretary, John Healey, who said “Labour is now the party of defence.” Their claims came weeks after Starmer took to the pages of the Daily Mail, not his natural ally, to proclaim: “We will back our Armed Forces. We will back our nuclear deterrent. We will back Britain.”
This messaging appears to be working. That same pro-Tory paper reported in March that Labour is now more trusted than the Conservatives on defence, with voters reportedly associating the latter with cutting military spending, not increasing it.
This is all quite a reversal. For a time, much of the media painted Labour as actively hostile to the military. It led to the BBC even asking “Has Jeremy Corbyn ever supported a war?” And, in 2019, when a video emerged showing members of the British parachute regiment firing at a poster of the then-Labour leader at a target range in Kabul, it seemed to reflect a wide sentiment that the military and the left were no longer friends.
Matters military, it was long felt, were best left to the Tories. After all, in 2021, a Byline Times analysis found that 91% of the veterans who sit in either the House of Commons or the Lords were Conservatives. Of the 44 veteran MPs, 40 were Conservative, while only 2 were Labour.
It was not always thus. The 1945 General Election, for instance, held as an army of men returned home from World War Two, saw a massive victory for Labour in the UK. Labour won decisively with 393 seats, the Conservatives securing only 197. Labour’s emphasis on social reform clearly resonated with those who had served – the promise of a better country for those who had been ready to die defending it.
It could be that Starmer is seeking to reignite this spirit, where national defence and the left are not deemed antithetical. And there are some canny election reasons for this.
At Action on Armed Violence, we analysed the locations of the ten arms manufacturers based in the UK that have received the highest value and quantity of domestic defence contracts over 2022/3 – finding a significant Conservative bias. The ten firms have 130 locations (listed offices or factories) across 94 parliamentary constituencies – 67% of which are represented by Tory MPs. Labour represents just 16% of the seats.
Of the 20 constituencies with two or more arms manufacturers present, 14 were held by Conservative MPs and just three by Labour. But predicted voting data suggests the Tories will hold onto just two of them on 4 July, while 13 will switch to Labour.
It is no wonder the Starmer wrote in the Mail: “With Labour, the defence industry will be hardwired into my national mission to drive economic growth across the UK.” If polls are to be believed, the military-industrial complex is about to be painted red – and it’s no coincidence that at least 14 prospective MPs standing for Labour today are ex-military.
Where does this leave the Tories, then? Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ) is frantically coming up with new, harder-right ideas to separate the party from Labour. Its National Service ploy, Sunak claims, is “to strengthen our country’s security”. Exactly why battalions of 18-year-olds on Salisbury Plain will make the UK more secure than its nuclear arsenals is not clear.
As for other differences, while the Conservatives focus on defence spending and global strategic engagement, Labour emphasises European alliances and a broader security perspective. The Liberal Democrats and SNP, meanwhile, both advocate for strong European ties and proactive foreign policies, and the Greens prioritise environmental security.
In truth, though, there is seemingly not much to distinguish Labour and Conservatives when it comes to matters of defence. As with Starmer working to avoid the red-tops claiming the nation is not safe in his hands, Labour has been deafeningly silent on issues such as the inquiry into Special Forces’ extra-judicial killings in Afghanistan, the widespread concerns about misogyny, sexual assault and systemic racism in the British military.
When there is not so much as a camouflage fag paper between the defence policies of the right and the left, the danger is that there are no oppositional voices of any merit. And, in a world where sentiments of war seem to be spreading much faster than sentiments of peace, this lack of critique could easily lead us all to very bad places indeed.
Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his wife Victoria board a plane at Stansted Airport in Essex, England, July 9, 2024 as they head to Washington DC to attend a Nato summit
LABOUR has spent its first week in power signalling a changed approach from the Tories — a national wealth fund for infrastructure projects, a reset to devolution with a new council of the regions.
In Washington Keir Starmer’s purpose is different — to show his “cast-iron commitment” to continue the last government’s subordination to US foreign policy, co-ordinated through the Nato military alliance.
This was never in doubt — Starmer is merely affirming Britain’s role in the US-led imperialist bloc as every postwar Labour prime minister has before him.
There are good reasons, though, to regard British foreign policy as every bit as disastrous as domestic policy in recent decades.
On one level the Morning Star can agree with Starmer’s lines at the Nato summit — yes, the world is getting more dangerous.
Two current major wars, in Palestine and Ukraine, show a real capacity to expand into wider conflicts and drag in other powers.
Both relate, in different ways, to the major fault line in international relations, that between the US and the old European colonial powers on one side, and the rest of a world in which that transatlantic bloc carries less and less weight.
Starmer’s speech, calling on Nato members to spend more on their militaries, follows the Western convention of presenting the alliance as guarantors of a “rules-based international order” which is under threat from rising “authoritarian states.”
In reality, the arms race is driven by Nato. Not only does the United States spend more on its military than the next 10 countries put together, the Nato bloc taken together is responsible for 75 per cent of all military spending worldwide, though it comprises just 12 per cent of the world population and 30 per cent of its GDP.
Three-quarters of all arms spending is not, in Starmer’s eyes, enough. Though Labour opts to stick to arbitrary Tory spending rules overall, it promises billions more for the military: raising the defence budget to 2.5 per cent of GDP entails a rise from £64.6bn to £87.1bn, a £22.5bn increase in spending annually. By contrast, axing the two-child benefit cap to lift hundreds of thousands of kids out of poverty is something Labour says it cannot afford: the Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates this would cost £3.4bn a year.
Nor can Nato’s claim to spend this money defending a “rules-based order” stand scrutiny. Last month saw Julian Assange secure his freedom after years of persecution in British jails for exposing the war crimes of “the empire,” as the US bloc is widely known in the global South.
Britain has been alongside the US in ripping up international law with wars of aggression against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, conflicts whose consequences persist in ongoing conflicts and refugee crises today. Today’s militarism risks igniting a new world war with China, the principal economic and technological rival to the US. All in the name of upholding a global system of unfair trade treaties and unfettered corporate access to resources that keeps a majority of the human race in poverty, is wrecking ecosystems at an accelerating rate and is destabilising the climate into the bargain.
Nothing could be more important than stopping this war. Those who claim the troop build-ups are a deterrent ignore history, not just that of the first world war but recent history: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine followed the expansion of Nato to its borders, its encirclement by US bases and a whole series of enormous Nato military manoeuvres — the “Defender Europe” exercises — simulating war against it. Unsurprisingly, frightening Russia did not prevent war but provoked it, feeding a parallel rise in nationalist militarism there.
The drive to World War III will not be challenged by the opposition Conservatives, or by more than a handful of MPs. But its consequences if unchallenged are unthinkable. So a real opposition must be built outside Westminster.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (left) and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak during a press conference at the Warsaw Armoured Brigade in Warsaw during Rishi Sunak’s visit to Poland and Germany, April 23, 2024
Leaders join forces to condemn Farage for comments on Nato expansionism
RISHI SUNAK and Sir Keir Starmer united in support of their bipartisan war policy as the row spread over Nigel Farage’s remarks blaming Nato and European Union expansion for contributing to the Ukraine conflict.
The two leaders expressed outrage that anyone would make an election issue out of the apparent drive to a wider war in Europe and Britain’s complicity in it.
But anti-war campaigners warned that the conflict could not be swept under the carpet.
Reform Party owner Mr Farage had been the first to break through the wall of silence surrounding British policy towards Russia and Ukraine during the election.
Mr Farage said: “The West’s errors in Ukraine have been catastrophic. I won’t apologise for telling the truth.”
He had told the BBC that “the ever-eastward expansion of Nato and the European Union was giving this man a reason to say to his Russian people, ‘they’re coming for us again’ and to go to war,” referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Making it clear that he did not support Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, he added: “I am not, and never have been, an apologist or supporter of Putin.
“As a champion of national sovereignty, I believe that Putin was entirely wrong to invade the sovereign nation of Ukraine.
“What I have been saying for the past 10 years is that the West has played into Putin’s hands, giving him the excuse to do what he wanted to do anyway.”
The squabbling Tory Party briefly united to condemn Mr Farage.
Mr Sunak said he had played “into Putin’s hands” and former defence secretary Ben Wallace called him, somewhat irrelevantly, “a pub bore.”
Security minister Tom Tugendhat linked the Reform leader with the left, telling the press: “It doesn’t matter whether you’re Jeremy Corbyn or Nigel Farage — if you parrot the Kremlin’s lies, you cannot be trusted with our national security.”
Not to be outdone, Sir Keir huffed that Farage’s comments were “disgraceful,” adding that Ukraine was basically off-limits as a subject for political debate.
“Anyone who is standing for Parliament ought to be really clear that Russia is the aggressor, Putin bears responsibility, that we stand with Ukraine — as we have done from the beginning of this conflict — and Parliament has spoken with one voice on this since the beginning of the conflict,” the Labour leader said.
Indeed, he threatened a dozen Labour MPs with loss of the whip for expressing concern at Nato policy slightly before the 2022 invasion.
Response to Rishi Sunak’s extremism speech at Downing Street 1 March 2024. Second version of this image with text slightly altered.Zionist Keir Starmes is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
A new report shows oil majors fall short of meeting Paris Agreement targets while fueling global military conflicts.
Oil majors are not on track to hit Paris Agreement climate targets that limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C, a new report reveals.
Eight fossil fuel giants – Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, TotalEnergies, BP, Eni, Equinor, and ConocoPhillips – are on course to use 30 percent of the world’s remaining carbon budget for that 1.5°C goal, according to the Big Oil Reality Check report by nonprofit Oil Change International (OCI).
Combined, the oil and gas companies’ extraction plans are consistent with a temperature rise of over 2.4°C, the report found.That level of warming, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, will reduce food security, risk irreversible loss of ecosystems, and increase heat waves, rainfall, and extreme weather events.
“We analyzed the climate promises and plans of the largest eight international oil and gas companies that are owned in North America and Europe. What would it take for an oil and gas producer to align their production with limiting warming to 1.5?” David Tong, global industry campaign manager at OCI and co-author of the report, told DeSmog.
“If an oil and gas company were serious about transitioning its business model, the first step would be ending all new production and then setting a Paris-aligned phaseout plan,” he added.
‘No New Fossil’ Standard
A recent paper by academics at University College London and the International Institute for Sustainable Development, published in Science in May, calls for stopping fossil fuel expansion and building a “No New Fossil” global norm. According to the authors, this would make it “easier to phase down fossil fuels” and achieve the Paris Agreement climate goals.
No new fossil fuel projects would be needed in a 1.5°C world, they wrote, because the “existing fossil fuel capital stock” is sufficient to meet energy demand. The authors also note that preventing new fossil fuel projects is, in general, more feasible than closing existing projects from an economic, political, and legal viewpoint.
In the face of continuing global pressure to stop fossil fuel expansion, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Equinor, Eni, ExxonMobil, and TotalEnergies have goals to increase oil and gas production within the next three years or beyond, the OCI report finds. While Shell does not quantify a target, the company plans to keep oil production steady while growing gas production in the near future, OCI said.
#BigOil has, in recent years, made splashy climate pledges to cut their greenhouse gas emissions & take on the climate crisis, but those plans don't stand up to scrutiny.
— Center for International Environmental Law (@ciel_tweets) May 27, 2024
“None of those companies came anywhere close to alignment [with climate goals],” said Tong. “Six of the eight companies we analyzed have explicit plans to increase their oil and gas production in this critical decade when we need to be cutting our reliance on fossil fuels, cutting oil, gas, and oil production.”
Plateauing oil and expanding gas production, like some of these companies plan to do, is “grossly insufficient” compared with the action that’s needed, Tong added. Even commitments to make businesses more efficient aren’t going to cut it alone, he said.
“It’s like a cigarette company claiming that it will solve lung cancer by producing cigarettes more efficiently,” he noted. “That’s not just not a credible claim. It’s a promise to become a more efficient climate breaker.”
Big Oil and War
According to the OCI report, all the oil majors fail to meet basic criteria for just transition plans for workers and communities where they operate.
“A number of these companies also face significant ongoing, unresolved allegations of human rights … and Indigenous people’s rights violations,” Tong told me.
A March 2024 investigation, commissioned by OCI and conducted by DataDesk, revealed that ExxonMobil, Chevron, TotalEnergies, BP, Shell, and Eni are “complicit in facilitating the supply of crude oil to Israel.” These findings are particularly noteworthy in the context of “Israel’s mounting evidence of war crimes” against Palestinians in Gaza, the OCI states in its new report.
Diesel and gasoline for tanks and other military vehicles are supplied by Israel’s refineries, which rely on regular imports of crude oil by these companies and, since October 2023, supplies mainly from Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan/Russia, Gabon, and Brazil, the research has found.
The fossil fuel industry is “fueling war and military conflicts” in many regions of the world, said Svitlana Romanko, a prominent Ukrainian activist and founder and director of Razom We Stand, a Ukrainian organization campaigning to ban all imports of fossil fuels from Russia.
According to Romanko, the OCI Big Oil Reality Check report “reinforces the importance of moving away from fossil fuels and investing into distributed renewable energy.”
A new analysis by a group of climate experts estimates that the first two years of Russia’s war on Ukraine resulted in greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to around 175 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. The estimated global cost of this warming in extreme weather impacts: $32 billion.
After Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia earned over 681 billion euros in revenue from fossil fuel exports. European Union countries purchased fossil fuels from Russia for more than 195 billion euros.
Big Oil, as well as Russia, is profiting from the war, Romanko said. After the invasion, BP, Chevron, Equinor, ExxonMobil, Shell, and TotalEnergies raked in $219 billion, more than double their profits compared to the previous year.
“Most [governments] subsidize fossil fuels, and these subsidies are accounting for trillions of U.S. dollars annually,” Romanko said. “This is a big part of fossil fuel profits, and the more fossil fuels are subsidized, [the] less investments are made available for renewable energies.”
She pointed out that the partnership between TotalEnergies and Russia’s largest private gas producer, Novatek, was also “instrumental” in helping Russia get access to technologies and engineering services to launch Novatek’s Yamal LNG and Arctic LNG 2 projects.
Romanko notes that fossil fuel infrastructure can also constitute a liability for military attacks and quickly become a target.
“Centralized infrastructure endangers energy supply and overall safety of the supply,” she said. In Ukraine, a massive effort to install solar power plants in schools and hospitals helped decentralize this key resource, Romanko explained. “Decentralized energy supply is essential to building true energy independence,” she added. “And this is the future.”
Pressure for Accountability
Some of the eight oil majors in OCI’s report have faced more international and national scrutiny than others. Such pressure can facilitate accountability, but that’s less likely when the fossil fuel company is closely intertwined with the institutional, political, and economic life of its country.
“We need to look at what has succeeded in putting so much pressure on companies like Shell and BP,” OCI’s Tong said.
One factor: when communities in a company’s home country work closely in partnership with communities in fossil fuel-producing countries. Tong said that positive results also happen when campaigners use a range of strategies to expose producers, from nonviolent direct action to op-eds, research, and court action.
“This is particularly challenging with Eni, TotalEnergies, and Equinor in different ways because of the close interactions that each of the companies have with their home states,” he added.
Public, political, and legal pressure for accountability must also be coupled with industry regulation, according to Tong.
“We concluded that there is no evidence that the oil and gas sector will voluntarily transition to renewable energy, or voluntarily act to align their production with what’s needed for the Paris Agreement,” Tong said. Instead, governments must no longer license new production sites.
The strong right-wing result in the latest EU Parliament elections could also affect Big Oil’s energy transition.
“The more the links between the state and big polluters are overt, the more people get out in the streets and protest,” Tong said.
What is safe to say is that Big Oil’s business as usual will increase climate change effects.
“Floods, hurricanes, extreme weather events, and the millions of human lives affected and lost – this damage to nature, to human lives and to life on earth will only mount,” Romanko said. “What will be lost in a few more years will also mount if fossil fuel companies are allowed to continue with business as usual.”
