How Britain Broke the World: War, Greed and Blunders from Kosovo to Afghanistan, 1997-2022

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K. is not only our political parent but also our cultural co-partner, a wealthy nation that gave us modern capitalism and the Industrial Revolution. Repeatedly, it hasn’t been the sole actor, nor the most significant, but it has often been the one that tipped the balance, meaning Britain has been the geopolitical player without whom certain events would not have happened. Then there is Dorries’ underlying assumption that everyone was in it together, that the coup against Johnson was perfectly coordinated and agreed on by everyone involved. Despite the failures in Iraq and the ongoing challenges in Afghanistan, when as part of the Arab spring uprising rebels openly challenged the rule of a newly rehabilitated Colonel Gaddafi, the then prime minister David Cameron was quick to advocate for airstrikes to protect the rebels from advancing government forces, convincing a reluctant President Barack Obama to agree. And, even aside from the ten people who get their own chapters, the smaller fry is not spared either, whether political bullies like Dominic Raab or hatemongers like Douglas Murray.

The dust cloud of our historical baggage in a province where we had previously fought was visible to them but not to us. He expected the accounts to have been well thumbed in recent years, by analysts on behalf of government, but the archivist confirmed that the sources had not been disturbed for decades. But this doesn’t mean that free speech isn’t a real problem, or that some liberal-left men haven’t abdicated all responsibility for asking questions about it, particularly as it pertains to women’s rights, the better to have an easier, more saintly seeming life. After the European court of human rights ruled against UK deportation flights of asylum seekers to Rwanda, the UK government has proposed a new bill of human rights that is likely to create more situations where the UK is in breach of international treaty obligations. Britain needs to seek out a series of deep engagements with Europe’s more capable militaries, which will make it easier for a future government to pursue a comprehensive security deal with the EU.It draws heavily on Arthur's (vast) personal experience and this is what brings it to life and makes it a cracking read for people interested in global politics. The saddest thing about this story of national decline is that none of the right people will ever read it.

Snell highlights that it was, therefore, a British idea that a UN resolution was unnecessary for humanitarian military action. Labour’s parliamentary position was precarious, and the party lost its governing majority through a series of by-election defeats and defections.

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JOB is most often heard on LBC radio shifting through the topics of the day with the assistance of his listners. Over ten chapters, each focusing on a particular person complicit in the downfall, James O'Brien reveals how a select few have conspired - sometimes by incompetence, sometimes by design - to bring Britain to its knees. In a 2014 speech Putin recognised Kosovo’s secession from Serbia as analogous with his annexing of the Crimea. The vastly simplified narrative that we were supporting a legitimate Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan against the Taliban was largely a fiction built on almost wilful ignorance, he shows.Despite the new forward-looking re-imagining of the nation that was the Cool Britannia of Blair’s early years, his foreign policy can be seen as a modern re-imagining of the empire’s colonial mission to civilise the uncivilised. But here too, politicians are navigating an industrial sector in structural decline, a political left that is often skeptical about the virtues of economic growth, and a political right that is organized in part around hating foreigners.

No, what I mean is that some books, at least in the current landscape, are hard to criticise; to argue with them is to incorporate yourself, however unwittingly, into the framework they purport to stand against. In 1940 the British Empire contained a quarter of the world's population and a fifth of its landmass, all of which, bar Ireland, was also at war with Germany.A web that has amplified the ambitions, ineptitudes, and abilities of ten infamous characters in contemporary British political culture.