Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

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  • The depopulated Palestinian village that wasn’t

    From the indefatigable David Collier – The Lie Beneath the Tree: From Wikipedia Fiction To Witch Hunt:

    In September 2025, a large delegation of U.S. legislators visited Ofakim – a small town in southern Israel and one of the communities devastated during the Hamas atrocities of October 7, 2023. During their visit, they planted trees – a simple, universal memorial act in honour of the murdered civilians.

    That act has since been recast by anti-Israel activists as something sinister. Campaigners immediately claimed the trees were planted atop a “depopulated Palestinian village” – and some have gone further, calling for the legislators involved to be forced to resign.

    Through a chain of factual errors, activist myth-making, and the quiet authority of “reference” sources that repeat those errors as fact, a unifying gesture of mourning has been transformed into an accusation of moral wrongdoing….

  • The Chagos deal

    On the subject of Starmer’s obsession with the law (except when it doesn’t suit him), his disastrous deal to give away the Chagos Islands is back in the news, with the bill to cede sovereignty of the archipelago to Mauritius set to be forced through its final stages in the House of Lords this week.

    The Times:

    Sir Keir Starmer’s deal to give away the Chagos Islands “permanently weakens western security” and “sells out the Chagossian people”, a senior figure in the British overseas territory has said, after warnings that Mauritius could roll back environmental protections in the area….

    The deal struck by the prime minister in May last year will involve Britain paying Mauritius £101 million a year to lease back a joint US-UK military base on the island of Diego Garcia.

    The islands are known as the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) and are overseen by an administration of about 70 people, many of whom are based in London. These officials govern the islands alongside the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office.

    The Times has been told that those governing the islands have consistently expressed concerns about the deal, especially over the implications for former Chagos residents.

    A senior figure in the BIOT told The Times the deal was being “championed by a small number of [Foreign Office] civil servants”, and said that “in multiple conversations with military and BIOT administration staff it is clear that there is no one who supports this treaty, but they have not been part of the negotiations, and their opinions have largely been ignored.”

    The official, who asked to remain anonymous, added: “I haven’t met a single person in the UK or US hierarchy who thinks this treaty is anything but a bad idea.”

    The intervention came as a report by the Policy Exchange think tank warned that the deal puts at risk the “pristine marine ecosystem” around the Chagos Islands.

    Britain currently enforces a large marine protected area that protects almost 800 species of fish and 50 species of birds, many of which cannot be found elsewhere.

    Mauritius plans to open up almost all of the waters to fishing and Britain would have no legal recourse under the treaty if the new owners fail to protect the environment.

    Richard Ekins KC, a University of Oxford law professor and the head of the judicial power project at the Policy Exchange, said Mauritius was “unlikely to protect — and may well exploit — this vital marine environment”.

    Chagossians were forced to leave the central Indian Ocean territory in the 1960s to make way for the military base and access to the islands is restricted. Two women born on Diego Garcia briefly halted the signing of the deal last year after claiming the government unlawfully prevented Chagossians from having a say in the future of the islands.

    Britain entered into negotiations with Mauritius under the previous government after the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion saying the UK was under an obligation to bring an end to its administration of the Chagos Islands.

    Ministers argued they had no choice but to negotiate a deal before a formal court ruling put the legal basis of the Diego Garcia base in jeopardy.

    But the senior BIOT figure said this argument was being advanced in government by “Starmer’s legal buddy” Philippe Sands KC, “who actually took our government to court, working for Mauritius, who has Mauritian citizenship and who has been awarded the highest possible civil honours by that government.”

    Ah, Philippe Sands. We met him yesterday. “Jews are not the only community that are targeted, and right now there’s Muslims, or immigrants, or trans people, or black people. Other people have their stories which are not to be minimised.” But back to the Chagos story.

    They added: “Decolonialisation has been used as a justification for this move by some on the left but this is false. Certainly, not all Chagossians wish their homeland to remain in British hands, but it seems that a majority do.

    “They all have the right to British citizenship and recent months have seen a surge in arrivals of Chagossians to the UK. The Chagossian people are not Mauritian. They have a different history, faith and culture. Mauritius, for them, is just as much a colonial power as the UK. They were stabbed in the back, with forced deportation and no effective recompense, by a Labour government 55 years ago, and it appears may be about to receive a similar treatment.”

    Last month, the UN committee on the elimination of racial discrimination said it had “deep concern” at the terms of the deal, because it would “perpetuate longstanding violations of the Chagossian people’s rights”.

    The senior BIOT figure said it was “shocking” that Starmer, who has “for so long claimed to be on the side of human rights” was rushing through the deal.…

    “None of this is necessary”, the figure said. “We could pull out, even at this stage and actually take the moral and even legal high ground.

    They said: “Not ratifying this treaty will save the UK taxpayer a fortune; it will embed a more secure future for a critical western military outpost; and will ensure a future for an important marine protected area. But more important than this, it will support our indigenous Chagossian people and put us back on the moral high ground.”

    The moral high ground, perhaps – but what about leading international lawyers who enjoy holidaying in Mauritius?

    More from Yuan Yi Zhu in the Spectator:

    This week, the government will try to push its draft deal to surrender the Chagos Islands through Parliament. There are many, many reasons why the deal is bad – from security, to the legitimate rights of the Chagossians, to the fact that the legal basis on which it is constructed is bunk. But there is another reason why the Chagos deal should be canned: it will be a catastrophe for the world’s environment.

    Currently, the Chagos are protected by one of the world’s largest and strictest marine protected areas, in which all fishing is forbidden. An initiative of the last Labour government, the Marine Protected Area (MPA) has safeguarded one of the world’s most important natural environments, in which hundreds of animal and coral species exist away from human interference. This will be swept away under the deal, as I explain in my report for Policy Exchange.…

  • What true resistance looks like

  • Courts ignoring the law

    It’s becoming increasingly clear that the government really has no intention of publishing guidance on the Supreme Court single-sex spaces ruling. It’s the law, and Starmer is a stickler for the law, as we all know, but…well, it’s just too inconvenient to alienate all his backbenchers and all the Stonewall-trained bureaucrats, so he’ll continue to do nothing for as long as possible. It’s the Starmer way.

    The latest, from the Telegraph:

    English courts are still allowing biological men to use women’s toilets in defiance of a Supreme Court ruling.

    Eight months on from a landmark judgment that trans women are not women under equalities law, HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) has still not updated its rules on the use of ladies’ facilities.

    Its operations director told Sex Matters, the women’s rights group, that it was “reviewing relevant internal policies” but would not change anything until guidance was published by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC).

    Maya Forstater, the Sex Matters chief executive, said it was “absurd” that of all public bodies, the courts were flouting the ruling and putting women at risk of “finding themselves in an enclosed space alongside men who identify as trans”.

    The EHRC pointed out that the English courts should, along with other public bodies, be following the law even though the Government was refusing to publish its guidance.

    If even English courts are ignoring the law, then we really are in trouble.

  • The Iranian protests

    Gary Cohen at Jewish News compares and contrasts:

    These are not protests choreographed for export, or designed to flatter Western sensibilities. This is a ruthlessly oppressed population pushing back against a regime that rules through religious coercion, intimidation, and violence, while steadily destroying the country itself. The Islamic Republic has crushed dissent at home and exports its ideology abroad, pouring vast resources into repression and proxy wars while making war on its own citizens.

    These protesters are not posturing. They are not chasing admiration. They know the risks. This is a desperate battle for freedom. This is what genuine protest and resistance looks like. Raw, chaotic, dangerous, with the highest possible stakes.

    By contrast, across Western capitals and campuses, a very different spectacle unfolds. Loud, self-assured, saturated with moral certainty. Protests that claim to stand for human rights and resistance to oppression, taking place inside the safety bubble of Western society. The slogans are polished. The outrage rehearsed. Zero risk. Zero consequences. Zero danger.

    Starved of meaning or purpose, sanctimonious virtue-signalling activists unquestioningly swallow the lies and propaganda while convincing themselves they are on the right side of history.

    History, meanwhile, is happening elsewhere, with desperate people risking everything.

    What has taken hold in the West is not solidarity with the oppressed but the performance of virtue. Palestine has been turned into a moral stage on which activists rehearse outrage, congratulate themselves on their righteous indignation, and revel in their moral superiority. They pride themselves on their “courage”. But courage is easy when there are few consequences.

    The Iranian protests, meanwhile, continue not to feature in the news – though of course Venezuela is taking up the front pages now.

  • “The community want it stopped”

    Article here.

    Also, from the Telegraph – “West Midlands Police consulted mosques that had hosted anti-Semitic preachers before banning Israeli fans from an Aston Villa football match, The Telegraph can reveal.”

  • How racist are we?

    The UK is a country which, despite being one of the least racist countries in the world, obsesses about whether it’s racist or not. Camille Long:

    How racist are we, as a country? It is a question we ask ourselves again and again. We ask it of footballers, of politicians, of actors; we ask it especially of dead people, who can’t answer. The last word on Brigitte Bardot? Nothing to do with her beauty, her iconoclasm. No: she was an “unapologetic racist”. (So British, that — she hated foreigners and didn’t even say sorry.)

    We ask the question so much that I suppose it was only a matter of time before a poll confirmed that, yes, we are racist. Amid warnings about a “rising tide of ethno-nationalism” — the new stealth word for “Nazism” — The Guardian reported last week that 36 per cent of people thought it was important, in order to be British, to be “born in Britain”. You just thought: well, there it is.

    Only the poll was a lie.

    Quietly, later, after a day of panic, a correction was published: no one had said it was important to be “born in Britain” (the front-page headline). What they’d agreed with was it was important to be “born British”, which is different and, in my view, so vague as to mean nothing. So all the claims that the changes were “worrying”, that we are, to quote Keir Starmer, in a “fight for the soul of our country”, were lies.

    If anything, the poll revealed us to be kind and tolerant. People bent over backwards to show they weren’t racist. Only 3 per cent of people believe that to be British you must be white. Yes: after Elon, Trump, Tommy, after Farage Faraging 24/7 — only 3 per cent. God, they must have been disappointed. It also presented a clear view of what they thought it meant to be British: helping the economy, raising children well, obeying our laws.

    Does Starmer know this?

    Starmer, by the way, has a different view of being British. He thinks it is a nothing, a light amusement, a bauble. He welcomed the Egyptian blogger Alaa Abd el-Fattah as a British citizen, in the manner of someone announcing the results of Strictly. Fattah had been a “top priority” for the Foreign Office, he gushed. He would be finally coming over here after 12 years in prison in Egypt. He clearly thought people would be overjoyed.

    But they weren’t. After the rape gangs, the small boats, the sex assaults, the synagogue stabbings, the ban on the Maccabi fans; after the experiments on children, the juries debacle, the overt lying about a “black hole”, guess what. No one was in the mood to “prioritise” some random dissident windbag they’d never heard of, who it was later discovered had, before prison, said he “seriously, seriously, seriously” hated white people and loathed “Zionists” (for which read: Jews). He called us “dogs and monkeys”. His apology was nearly 600 mooing words long.

    If you really want to know what being British is, it is the opposite of this. It’s not being racist or antisemitic; it’s not inciting violence. It’s valuing what it is to be part of us. Where has Fattah done that? Where has he asked, sincerely, to be part of our liberal democracy?

    The supposed racism of the “white working class” is a left middle-class shibboleth, regularly boosted by the likes of the Guardian to preserve that comforting sense of superiority. Yes, the dockers marched for Enoch Powell, but that was over 50 years ago. Things have changed. Nowadays what people care about isn’t race; it’s about those who make no secret of their dislike of this country and its liberal values.

    So if I were to really define what it meant to be British — to put it in one simple way — it would be: spending 90 per cent of one’s time worrying you are racist, when you’re not.

  • Stories which are not to be minimised

    Hadley Freeman drops a serious point into her “how to be better in 2026” Sunday Times column – Feel free to talk about antisemitism when there is antisemitism:

    Two days after the Bondi Beach massacre last month, in which 15 Jews were murdered during a Chanukkah celebration because they were Jewish, a guest on the Today programme made this striking point: “Jews are not the only community that are targeted, and right now there’s Muslims, or immigrants, or trans people, or black people. Other people have their stories which are not to be minimised.”

    I guess I missed the meeting in which it was decided that reporting the killing of Jews “minimises other people’s stories”, and I definitely missed stories about trans people being executed in the West on a regular basis. But can we maybe re-examine that edict? Because as that guest was speaking, menorahs in public spaces in Britain were being desecrated and a plot to carry out mass slaughter of Jews in Manchester was averted. Which you might think would give some people in this country pause. But given the speed with which they then defended Alaa Abd el-Fattah, insisting he doesn’t hate Jews, only Zionists, apparently not.

    That Today remark was made, I believe, by Philippe Sands – a Jew himself, but also a regular BBC interviewee and contributor to the London Review of Books, so it all fits. One of the “community of the good”, in other words.

  • Worried about the men

    Tom Harris in the Telegraph on Bridget Phillipson’s reluctance to enforce the Supreme Court ruling:

    “Trans people must not be used as a political punchbag,” she said recently. What is obvious from her few public comments on the subject is that the minister has fallen into the trap so neatly set for her by trans activists and their powerful and well-funded lobbying organisations. She has become convinced that the Supreme Court ruling was not about women after all, but was about trans people, particularly those men who identify as women.

    She seems, based on her comments, to have given little consideration to women and girls whose right to privacy and security away from the presence and sight of biological males should be her top priority.

    Her reluctance to enforce the law has already had consequences. Employment tribunals have upheld the rights of men who identify as women to continue using women’s changing rooms at their workplaces in an apparent conflict with what we now know the Equality Act says. Meanwhile Phillipson sits gazing at the EHRC guidelines on the use of single-sex spaces, desperately worried about how all this will affect that most marginalised and vulnerable community – men.

  • In Venezuela

    Well yes – what happens next is the big question. No tears lost over Maduro, but….

    Freddy Gray in the Spectator:

    Few will mourn the departure of Maduro – a left-wing tyrant whose regime has grown ever more corrupt and oppressive as the years have gone by. Venezuela is a gangsterish system in which citizens struggle for food, snitch on each other to the authorities through social media, and drug cartels operate with impunity. But the question of what comes next is of course now paramount. America has proven quite successful in recent years at regime decapitation. It’s the change part that proves really difficult.

    The Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado, who was so careful to praise Trump after receiving the award in October, declared three weeks ago that her country had already been invaded – by Russia and Iran.

    ‘We have the Russian agents, we have the Iranian agents. We have terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, operating freely in accordance with the regime,’ she said.

    ‘We have the Colombian guerrilla, the drug cartels that have taken over 60 per cent of our populations and not only involved in drug trafficking, but in human trafficking in networks of prostitution. This has turned Venezuela into the criminal hub of the Americas.’

    So far so good, then. But….

    Trump has a deep obsession with energy prices and it’s notable that every country he threatens or attacks happens to have enormous oil reserves. On Christmas Day, he ordered strikes on Nigeria, apparently as a ‘Christmas present’ to protect Christians but cynics suspect other motives.

    By changing the guard in Venezuela he has removed one of the last major oil-exporting administrations that oppose American interests. The other big two are Iran and Russia. Given the increasing talk inside American corridors of power of a peace deal over Ukraine – and the business possibilities stemming from a rapprochement between Moscow and Washington – the Trump foreign-policy agenda of 2026 could already be clear. War with Venezuela and Iran and fossil-fuel-rich peace with Mother Russia. Total energy dominance – the idea will make beautiful sense in Trump’s mind. But as his predecessors George W Bush and Barack Obama discovered, the problem with forcibly removing governments is controlling what happens next.

    The assumption is always that the people of the country will rush out onto the streets to celebrate their new-found freedom – like, say, the French liberation from the Nazis. It’s perhaps more likely with Venezuela than it was with Iraq. But still…

    Also, of course, this was by every yardstick a middle finger up to international law.