The British secretary of “Defence” (for which read “war”) is Grant Shapps.

Our political system puts favoured MPs into short-lived ministerial positions, regardless of their qualification for the job.

Grant Shapps is a classic example, being a jack of all trades and master of none.  Before becoming an MP, he established a publishing company, which earned an iffy reputation and about which Shapps was in trouble for telling fibs. Having thus proved his worth as an entrepreneur, he was fit for ministerial office under the Tories.

With 5 O-levels and a diploma in business, this intellectual giant has picked up a fat salary and ministerial car as minister for transport (in which job, he became public enemy number one with thousands of commuters, for making South Western  Railway the worst service in the country). Having displayed such energy, he was made minister for it, then minister for housing, minister for international development and penultimately, the shortest-lived Home secretary in UK history, serving for just 6 days under the pre-eminent Liz Truss. As I write, he is Defence Secretary. In that capacity, he recently processed the Prime Minister’s order to bomb various installations in Yemen.

The whole of the Middle East is a tinderbox in no need of yet more belligerent interference, especially from such a proven cack-handed  individual as Shapps.

Britain’s interference in the region began with Blair’s invasions of Kuwait and Iraq, followed by our   murderous meddling in Afghanistan, Syria and Libya. For decades, Saudi Arabia has been at war in Yemen using arms supplied by Britain. Every intervention has worsened the conflicts and ended in disaster. When will we ever learn?

Rishi Sunak is banking on his gunboat diplomacy in Yemen to be a vote winner with the British public, the idea being that Brits love to see their government throwing its weight around. The same goes for Keir Starmer, who is not to be out-done by the Tories in rattling sabres, learning nothing from his predecessor, the war criminal Blair.

The semi-educated Shapps is probably unaware that Yemen and nearby Aden were British colonies until the 1960s, with anti-British attacks on red Sea shipping going back a long way. 

Last week’s bombing of Yemen has predictably brought retaliation and has not ended attacks on Red Sea shipping. So what is to be the next move? That question was asked in the House of Commons on 15th January and brought no answer.

It’s the old, old story. It’s easy to get into fight, but difficult to get out of it. Perhaps, just as the murderous maniac Netanyahu plans to completely wipe out Hamas, the plan is to exterminate all  the estimated 20,000 Houthi fighters, of course harming no innocent civilians in the process.

The best way to end the Houthi attacks would be to achieve  A Gaza ceasefire, but the USA  is underwriting Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and the UK government and Opposition remain complicit in Israel’s war crimes.

Neither the British government, nor the lickspittle opposition seek a ceasefire, being content to stand by as Israel continues to murder thousands of Gazans and turns the territory into scorched earth, pursuing its stated aim of clearing Gaza of all Palestinians, so that Jewish settlers can be moved in.

This is Israel continuing to act in ways which predictably earn the hatred of its indigenous Palestinians and surrounding Arab states. There has been no ethnic cleansing on this scale since the Holocaust.

*From Pete Seeger’s song, Where Have All The Flowers Gone?