…August 2025

August started off on a sombre note with the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima at the end of the second world war. This was followed a few days later by the remembrance ceremony at Nagasaki, where the second atomic bomb was dropped, and a plea for peace in our deeply troubled world. Everything went downhill from there…

Much was made of a summit in Alaska between the American president Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin though it predictably delivered little. Putin appears to have played Trump, again. He has achieved his main aim – persuading the Americans not to get involved. Trump only has one option now to retain credibility and that is to follow through on his threats and impose massive sanctions against Russia. And yet he is remarkably reluctant to do that.

Instead he rolled out the red carpet for Putin when only a few months back the Ukrainian leader Zelensky was falsely berated for not thanking the Americans for their help. Trump didn’t hesitate to cut arms shipments to Ukraine, and has now imposed secondary sanctions on India, but not China, for buying Russian oil. If he is more cautious now in publicly backing Putin it is only because he has been surprised that the Ukrainians and Europeans carried on without him.

Much of the discussion in August centred around who would provide security guarantees to Ukraine. But the real issue is, who will guarantee the security of Europe? Certainly not the Americans or the US-led NATO. Gradually Europe is rearming and the Americans are becoming less relevant. Already European leaders are confident enough to float their own peace plan with the Ukrainians, independent of the Americans. The Ukrainians may have dismissed the European idea of a buffer zone in Ukraine as impractical but it’s a sign that the Europeans are no longer willing to follow Trump’s lead.

There was also talk of ceasefire in the other main conflict, the Gaza Strip, though that ended when Israel pressed ahead with its latest military operation aimed at occupying Gaza City and displacing the civilian Palestinian population.  This appears to be a direct response to several countries, including Britain, France and Canada, preparing to recognise Palestine as a state. By occupying Palestinian land in both Gaza and the West Bank Israel will be breaking international laws and completely abandoning the two-state solution envisioned in the Oslo peace accords. This will make it hard for European governments to continue supporting Israel. 

There have been protests inside Israel against the plans by the Benjamin Netanyahu-led government, largely because it risks the lives of the 20 or so hostages that are still alive in Gaza, and who should surely be the focus of Israel’s efforts. This has been echoed by the Israeli army’s Chief of Staff, Lt Gen Eyal Zamir, according to some Israeli media. 

The UN has declared a famine within Gaza City though Israel continues to deny that there is a famine in Gaza, or that its actions constitute genocide. This may or may not be technically correct. In the past, large Jewish voter blocs in the Western democracies would have guaranteed some support for Israel. But because so many voters in the world’s democracies believe that Israel is guilty of these things, many governments are now having to consider how much of their own voter base they can afford to alienate by continuing to support Israel, which is a far cry from the rush to support Israel following the Hamas attack of 7 October in 2023 on the country.

Israel has further upped the ante by killing a number of journalists. Earlier in the month the IDF bombed a tent, deliberately killing a group of five journalists that included the highly respected Al Jazeera reporter Anas al-Sharif, as well as a passerby. This is quite different to killing declared combatants or supporters of Hamas in a war. Naturally, Israel has accused al-Sharif of working for Hamas, but without any proof. Later, the Independent Arabia photojournalist Maryam Abu Daqqa was one of five journalists killed in a so-called double-tap strike on a hospital. Journalists might well be a nuisance – that’s part of the job description – but journalists are protected under the Geneva convention and deliberately killing an unarmed neutral observer is a war crime. Then again Israel has denied targeting media and medical workers, though both groups have suffered a disproportionately high rate of attrition. 

In the UK there has been a continuing backlash over the government’s efforts to ban the British protest group Palestine Action. This has gone beyond the group itself, because any show of support for the Palestinians can be construed by the police as support for Palestine Action, and therefore a criminal act. But there is a real and urgent anger within the UK at Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian civilians and plans to occupy Gaza City, which simply won’t go away. That anger is now being turned on the British government for taking away the right to protest, which itself lies at the heart of any democracy.

This is feeding into a growing narrative of the prime minister Keir Starmer’s heavy-handed rush to authoritarianism rather than listening to legitimate concerns. It fits a pattern of withdrawing the whip from Labour MPs that disagree with him, and refusing to outline his plans for reforming the British economy to the electorate. 

The Bank of England cut the government some slack by cutting the interest rate to 4 percent. However, it’s unlikely there will be further cuts this year, with inflation still high and expected to rise higher, driven by food costs and energy hikes. And the reduction in interest rates so far have not made much difference mainly because consumer confidence is low. For most people, talk of GDP or productivity or the consumer price index have no real meaning but they sense that the government does not have control of the economy. For its part, the treasury is blissfully unaware that cutting pensioners’ fuel allowance, hitting welfare, and so on are all desperate measures that lead voters to conclude that things will get worse.

Starmer and his chancellor, Rachel Reeves, need a different approach. Either the fiscal rules around borrowing have to be changed, or income taxes have to be raised. Taxation at least has the merit of addressing the massively unfair distribution of wealth that is bending the British economy so badly out of shape. There is not enough new money from economic growth to cover the shortfalls, and nor is there likely to be anytime soon. All this has been obvious for the last year; knowing when to hold and when to change tack is the mark of leadership. But doing nothing is undermining business and consumer confidence in the economy. 

To add to the sense of crisis there are continuing protests against housing migrants in hotels whilst determining if they should be allowed to stay. These protests have been whipped up by right-wing politicians looking to undermine the government, though Starmer doesn’t seem to need much help on that score. 

But then migrants everywhere have been vilified, from the UK and Europe to the US and even India, which has been accused to dropping Rohingya refugees into the sea off Myanmar. Migration is absolutely built into human DNA, from the very earliest humans who walked out of Africa many millennia ago through to the poor souls washing up on European beaches in a desperate bid to live better lives. If the developed nations in Europe, America and elsewhere want to stop this then there is a simple solution; put more money and effort into helping poorer nations so that their people don’t feel the need to migrate in search of a better life. It will be cheaper and more humane than the millions we are spending on catching and returning these people.

Strangely, the US vice president JD Vance opted to take his family on holiday to an Islamist country with nuclear weapons, also known as the United Kingdom. Starmer must have feared that Vance’s opposite number, the British deputy prime minister Angela Rayner, might have broken someone as delicate as Vance, so it fell to the foreign secretary David Lammy to take him fishing and say nice things about the US leadership. Lammy then had to report himself for fishing without a licence…

It’s hard to imagine Vance, or any American leader, being troubled about such etiquette. The current American leadership has a different, less polite, way of dealing with bad news. So when the Bureau of Labor Statistics released figures showing that just 73,000 jobs were created in July, far below the forecasts of 109,000 new roles, Trump sacked the commissioner, Erika McEntarfer. The agency also amended its figures for May and June, which is normal practice as more data becomes available. That showed 250,000 fewer jobs in the US, which matches other data suggesting a slowdown in the US economy, which has been largely blamed on the uncertainty around the tariffs. 

Trump claims that he can improve the economic outlook by cutting interest rates, but the chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell says the economic data does not support further cuts. Trump has threatened to remove Powell in an effort to bully him into cutting the interest rates faster, but Powell has clung to his independence and held firm. So instead Trump has attempted to fire Lisa Cook, the governor of the Federal Reserve, though she has sued him and refused to go. Trump does not have the constitutional power to fire either Powell or Cook. 

However, he did fire Susan Monarez, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who opted to follow medical advice from America’s scientific community. This put her at odds with the US health secretary Robert Kennedy, who is known to be a vaccine sceptic, but not known to have any scientific or medical qualifications. Four other CDC officials resigned, citing misinformation and attacks on science from Kennedy.  

Also in August, Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, was fired after reporting that the American attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities was not as effective as Trump had claimed. Everywhere America is rapidly giving up its scientific leadership, turning its back on measurable data in favour of asserting ‘facts’ that promote Trump’s ideology. Anyone that disagrees is fired amidst false claims. 

On top of this, Trump has sent troops into Washington – citing a non-existent high crime rate – and has threatened to do the same to Chicago and other Democrat-run cities. We are watching the US slide into autocracy in real time, which is terrifying given the military and economic dominance the country exerts. The European leaders are running around like headless chickens as it dawns on them that the post-war era of dependence on the US is over and that it’s up to them to put on the big boy pants. Glancing at messrs Starmer, Macron, Merz and so on it’s obvious that we’re all in trouble.

Meanwhile, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that Trump’s so-called ‘reciprocal tariffs’ as well as his ‘Fentanyl’ tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, are illegal as only Congress, and not Trump, had the power to impose such tariffs. The tariffs will stand until October to give Trump time to appeal to the Supreme Court. Trump has responded on social media, writing: “If allowed to stand, this Decision would literally destroy the United States of America.” The only thing that would actually destroy the US would be to continue to allow Trump to undermine the constitution and to grab powers that he doesn’t have.

Trump’s tariff policy is also causing several of America’s former allies to reconsider their orders for the US F35 stealth fighter jet. The Swiss, Portuguese and Canadians are looking at other options, while the Spanish have already ruled out buying the jets, all citing their concern that the US is no longer a reliable partner. The jet itself appears to have some reliability issues, with technical faults forcing two RAF F35Bs to divert to civilian airports, one in June to India and a second in August to Japan. Meanwhile, Britain has signed a deal to supply Norway with at least five new warships based on anti-submarine variants of the Royal Navy’s type 26 frigates. 

There is some evidence that Trump’s policies are pushing other nations to take a more pragmatic approach with many of the global south countries tentatively moving closer to China. India, for example, has reached a rapprochement with China after the Indian PM Narendra Modi met the Chinese President Xi Jinping in China. Flights between the two countries, suspended after fighting on their shared Himalayan border, will be resumed with Modi saying there was now an “atmosphere of peace and stability” between them.

The US has also terminated its de minimis tariff exemption that allowed parcels worth up to $800 to avoid customs duties. It’s helped open up the US market to many small businesses overseas, and allowed many small American companies to shift their manufacturing abroad, but has also been exploited by large e-commerce giants such as Shein and Temu. According to research by the BBC, China was by far the biggest de minimus exporter, followed by Canada, Mexico and the UK. 

Meanwhile, Politico has reported a rise in air freight from China’s Xinjiang province to Europe. China has been accused of subjecting Xinjiang’s Uyghur ethnic group to forced labour and human rights abuses, which the British parliament described in 2021 as genocide. This freight is said to include e-commerce goods, textiles, footwear, electronics, auto parts and agricultural products – all areas said to have benefited from forced Uyghur labour. As David Alton, chair of the UK Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights, noted this “appears to fly in the face of the recent decision by the European Union to adopt a forced labour screening mechanism.”

Elsewhere, a UN meeting in Geneva to end plastic pollution ended without agreement. There’s plenty of evidence that plastic particles have made their way into the food chain, and into humans, including newborn babies. To counter this, roughly 100 countries, mostly from the global South but also including the UK and other European nations, have been pushing for reduced production of plastics and controls on hazardous plastic additives. However, many oil-producing nations, including Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iran, insist that it’s enough to simply manage waste plastic as they fear cuts will harm their incomes. 

It’s a further knock back for attempts to improve our planet’s environment amid increasing evidence of the harm we are causing to the place we all live. One of the most visible signs of climate change is the wildfires that are now breaking out every year in different regions. In Europe this summer has seen blazes in Spain and France. Fire crews in North Yorkshire in the UK have faced an added hazard when the heat from a wildfire started triggering unexploded ordnance left behind from a WW2-era tank training site. There’s probably some sort of lesson in this, if only we could see it…