…February 2024

The year of the Dragon has kicked off with the Chinese new year having started this month. The Chinese economy has slowed with consumers still spooked after the pandemic and cautious about spending. China’s consumer price index fell 0.8 percent year on year, the fourth consecutive month of such falls. The country was hit by deflation last year which has led to prices decreasing across the board. Employment rates have fallen and there’s been a significant downturn in the property market. 

Figures released in February show that the UK has officially slipped into recession as Gross Domestic Product fell 0.3 percent in the three months to December. This is because the British economy is heavily dependent on consumer spending, but consumers have been forced to cut back on spending by the economic situation. Few people in the country will notice any difference since the UK has been skirting recession for well over a year. 

February also saw the second anniversary of the war in Ukraine, which appears to be at a stalemate. This favours Russia which has a vast military industrial complex that has been slow to reorganise but is now ramping up, just as Ukraine’s allies appear to be slowing down on their commitments.

Nonetheless, the Ukraine war is helping to unite the European Union as the various European countries realise that the EU offers the best framework for their joint defence. And Europe is ramping up its defence spending. However, after decades of outsourcing, there is a question as to how much industrial capacity Europe has to manufacture more weaponry. 

Meanwhile Trump has said that he would encourage Russia to attack those allies that he thinks have not previously contributed enough to NATO. Never mind that America previously discouraged its allies from having the ability to be independent of the US, or that many of those countries have significantly increased their own defence spending in the wake of the Russian attack on Ukraine. The question that should worry those allies is how many American voters already oppose honouring their military commitments, and just how flaky is America as an ally? 

The war in Gaza continues, with Hamas still holding around 100 or so Israelis hostage while some 30,000 or so Palestinians have been killed. Hopes of another ceasefire have been dashed with yet another mass killing, this time around an aid truck, and there is still the continuing risk that the fighting will spread elsewhere in the Middle East. 

As it is, the Houthi rebels in Yemen have continued to attack shipping, forcing many shipping companies to reroute to avoid the area, pushing up costs that are likely to be passed on to consumers. The longer this persists, the greater the danger that it will push inflation figures up in other countries. 

America may yet end up being the biggest loser, apart from all the many Gazans that have died. America’s unwavering support for Israel has damaged its credibility across the Muslim world, while Netanyahu’s refusal to heed Biden’s requests to ease the pace of the bombing has made the US look weak. Worse still, Netanyahu’s outright rejection of the two-state solution and of any ceasefire after Biden has called for both of these is the diplomatic equivalent of Israel telling America to fuck right off.

The situation in Gaza has galvanised many voters in Western countries, forcing politicians to rethink their positions on the crisis. In the US, over 100,000 Democrats voted Uncommitted in the Michigan state primary, enough to suggest that Biden may have a problem in the presidential election.

The plight of the Palestinians has also led to a confected row in the British Parliament over a vote calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. The Labour Party is still trying to distance itself from previous accusations of anti-semitism but has rapidly discovered just how many of its activists and voters support the Palestinians, forcing the party to tread a fine line between the two.

In the midst of this, the former deputy Tory Party leader Lee Anderson accused the London Mayor Sadiq Khan of having fallen under the control of Islamists, echoing statements from the former Home Secretary Suella Braverman that the country is under the control of Islamists. This has led to claims that the Tory party is itself Islamaphobic, with party leaders trying to weigh up if that would lead to more or less votes. The opportunist provocateur George Galloway has won the Rochdale by-election.

Meanwhile Liz Truss is back, heading up a new pressure group called the Popular Conservatives, which apparently is not meant to be ironic. The idea is to promote Conservative values to win the next election, though the Conservatives are increasingly struggling to distinguish their values from the far right.  

King Charles has been diagnosed with cancer, with Buckingham Palace quick to stress that he would still be working through his government papers. Strangely, despite the obvious outpouring of sympathy for his medical condition, not one British news outlet asked the obvious question: exactly what work is an unelected king with no obvious constitutional powers doing in a country with a democratically-elected government and parliament?

In Pakistan, there was a surprise result from its general election, in which Imran Khan’s PTI party won the largest share of the vote, despite Khan having been imprisoned and his supporters prevented from standing under the PTI banner. In Russia, where Vladimir Putin is also holding a pointless election, the authorities were spared a similar upset when the jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny died, almost certainly killed on Putin’s orders. 

February also saw Julian Assange’s appeal against extradition to the US finally reach the high court. It’s difficult to see what grounds Assange could be prosecuted on and he certainly hasn’t broken any laws in the UK, where it is not yet a crime for journalists to embarrass the government. But then a review of Britain’s extradition arrangements with the US is long overdue. There is no reciprocal requirement for the US authorities to send American citizens to face British justice, and at the same time the former American president, Donald Trump, has routinely called into question the quality of American justice.