: February 2026

February has brought the start of a new year – the fire horse of the lunar calendar – but the same problems. The Ukrainians have marked the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full scale invasion attempt. Pakistan has declared ‘open war’ on Afghanistan. And the Americans are continuing to move military assets, including two aircraft carrier groups, to the Middle East to put pressure on the Iranian regime. 

This has led to talks over Iran’s nuclear capability though it’s hard to see the Iranians completely abandoning their nuclear plans. The Americans may have the military superiority but their previous wars – in Afghanistan and Iraq – can hardly be claimed as great successes while the entire Middle East is like a powderkeg with the potential for a wider regional war. 

There is still some sporadic violence in Gaza despite the peace process. Some reports suggest that Hamas has reasserted its authority over the Palestinians with a mix of intimidation and extortion, which does not bode well for the next stage of the peace plan – the disarmament of Hamas. The US-led Board of Peace has met for the first time, minus America’s traditional allies who fear the US president Donald Trump will use it to undermine the authority of the UN. Several countries, mostly from the Middle East, have pledged a total of $7 billion towards the reconstruction of Gaza, far short of the $70 billion that the UN estimates will be needed. 

Elsewhere, the US Supreme Court struck down most of the tariffs that Trump has levied, ruling that the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act that he used does not actually give him the power to set such tariffs. This does not affect some tariffs, such as those applied to steel and aluminium, which were set under a different law. Trump immediately replied by setting a new 10 percent tariff on all nations, which he then raised to 15 percent, but dropped back to 10 percent the next day. However, the rate is expected to go up to 15 percent shortly. Trump has had to turn to a never-used law known as Section 122 that only allows him to set tariffs for 150 days so it feels more like a tantrum than a serious government strategy. 

“No one can make sense of it anymore – only open questions and growing uncertainty for the EU and other US trading partners.”

Bernd Lange

Naturally this ruling and the new global tariff wrecks most of the trade agreements that the US negotiated last year. The EU has already paused ratification of the deal that it hammered out last year, with Bernd Lange, who chairs the European Parliament’s Committee on International Trade, stating: “No one can make sense of it anymore – only open questions and growing uncertainty for the EU and other US trading partners.”

The ruling also implies that the US government should repay the roughly $130 billion levied so far to which Trump has threatened years of litigation over any claims for refunds. Nonetheless, some states may try to recoup some of this money, which will likely destabilise US politics even further.

The justification for the tariffs is itself a blatant lie. American companies were not ripped off by foreign nations. Rather, American companies outsourced their supplies and manufacturing to emerging nations to exploit their lower wage costs. The main beneficiaries within America were the companies who profited from higher turnover, and the middle classes who took advantage of a broader range of products at cheaper prices. The main losers were the American working class who lost out on jobs. This is also true in other developed countries, notably the UK and Europe, where the economies as a whole benefited but the working classes benefited the least. 

This same pattern of the haves feeling aggrieved and blaming the have-nots also plays into the current arguments around migration. Jim Ratcliffe, the billionaire British CEO of the Ineos chemicals group and part owner of Manchester United football club, accused migrants of colonising Britain, completely ignoring that Britain was one of the major colonising powers throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. Britain as a whole became wealthy through its colonialism, though only a small number of Britons directly saw that wealth. Nonetheless, migration is the bill for the West’s colonial past and the poor souls washing up on British and European beaches are a good deal less threatening than the invading armies we previously sent to their countries. Ratcliffe himself is resident in the Monaco tax haven to avoid sharing any of his wealth with the UK.

The scandal around the dead American paedophile Jeffrey Epstein continued to spread, as further leaks of his files this month revealed the scale of his sex trafficking operation, the network of rich and powerful men that he cultivated, and some of the business opportunities this might have brought him. For now, there is no suggestion that any of the people mentioned in these files have done anything illegal. That said, the former British prince, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, and the former British Ambassador to the US, Peter Mandelson, have both been arrested for misconduct in public office relating to files they are said to have shared with Epstein. Strangely there does not seem to be any appetite in the US, where Epstein mostly operated, to pursue any other persons of interest beyond attempting to smear Trump’s political enemies.  

The saga around Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has added fuel to the growing debate within Britain around whether or not a modern state still needs a monarchy. But it’s a debate hampered by the layers of secrecy that still surround the Mountbatten-Windsor family. That secrecy is maintained through rules and conventions designed to prevent any real scrutiny and this allowed Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor to continue his friendship with Epstein long after the paedophile’s conviction.

That secrecy is now being challenged, which may yet bring profound changes for the Royal Family. Thus the convention that the elected MPs cannot ask awkward questions in Parliament is now firmly in the spotlight, along with more challenges over the public money paid to the extremely wealthy family. So far the King has stated that no-one is above the law, which is easy for him to say as the one person in the UK who is quite literally above the law. The entire legal system in the UK is run in the name of the King, not the state, which is one of the things that could be addressed. 

Then again, there are many questionable heads of state that shouldn’t be left in charge of a barbecue, let alone a whole country. The roll call includes Donald Trump, president of the US, found liable for sexual abuse in a civil case; Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel, facing various ongoing corruption trials; Mohammed bin Salman, de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, widely believed responsible for murdering the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi; Vladimir Putin, president of Russia, indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court; Xi Jinping, president of China, widely blamed for the genocide of the Uyghur people in Xinjiang. And let’s not forget Nicholas Sarkozy, the former French president, who was jailed for criminal conspiracy. 

And then there is Boris Johnson, the former British prime minister, sacked from multiple jobs for lying, which ultimately proved too much even for the Conservative party. Johnson has recently been accused of colluding with a foreign head of state – Donald Trump – to undermine the British government’s attempts to hand the Chagos Islands to Mauritius as part of a general effort to step away from the UK’s colonial past. If Johnson were the sitting prime minister then he would likely have denounced such collusion as an act of treason. 

The US interest in the Chagos Islands lies in the Diego Garcia military base it leases from Britain, and the reported refusal from the UK to let the Americans use the base to bomb Iran. Which brings us back full circle to where I began…