Once again, April has been dominated by the conflict in the Middle East, despite the continuing ceasefire. America claims to have already won the war but other countries should still help even though America doesn’t need them. Yay – Team USA.
Everybody else on the planet understands that despite his rhetoric, Trump blinked first in agreeing the ceasefire, and again in extending it. Trump may claim to hold all the cards but so far Iran has fought the US to a standstill. Were Trump to follow through on his threat to bomb Iran back to the stone age, then it’s quite likely that a civilisation would end – but not the Iranian one – that’s made of much stronger stuff.
America on the other hand seems much more flaky, less sure of itself and its new found descent into fascism. Civilisations are defined by the way that their people think of themselves. And America still thinks of itself as a just and moral country. But destroying the infrastructure in another country that a heavily repressed civilian population relies on for survival would be a war crime both under international law and basic morality.
But who would point out this out to the American people, now that most US institutions are under the control of Trump’s hench people. After all, it’s hard to imagine that Pete Hegseth, Robert Kennedy or Kash Patel are the best possible candidates for their respective jobs as secretary for defence, secretary for health and head of the FBI? Perhaps this moral gap also explains the growing suspicions of insider trading from within the Trump administration following a consistent pattern of spikes in trading and online predictions just before major announcements that have netted millions of dollars in profits. This pattern started last year with some of the on/ off announcements around US tariffs but has continued this year around some of Trump’s statements that the conflict with Iran might end sooner rather than later.
The Iranians have also accused Trump of making misleading social media posts around the course of the war to game the markets and lower the cost of oil. So far the only country that has really gained anything is Russia, with Trump having relaxed some of the sanctions on Russian oil plus the rising price per barrel, which is helping to alleviate some of the pressure of sanctions on the Russian economy.
For most of this month the price of oil has averaged around the $100 per barrel mark despite continual fluctuations. For now, neither the Americans nor the Iranians appear keen to restart the shooting, but nor are they ready to make a deal. Instead there is a standoff with a certain amount of willie-wagging as both sides have imposed a shipping blockade while they wait to see who will buckle first. That could take a while which means that while supplies are still severely constrained there is a degree of stability that other governments and manufacturers can plan around, at least for now.
Some people have echoed Trump’s calls for more drilling, to extract more fossil fuels. But that would make no difference, as Trump must surely know since Americans are facing rising oil costs despite being net oil exporters because even domestically-produced oil is priced on the international market. A much smarter solution is to invest more in renewable energy in order to sidestep the supply problems we are currently seeing.
The International Monetary Fund has suggested that the UK will be the worst hit amongst the major economies because of its heavy dependence on importing energy. The IMF has also released its latest World Economic Outlook, which now estimates UK economic growth at 0.8 percent, down on the 1.3 percent forecast made before the conflict, due to rising inflation and the expectation that higher energy prices will persist into next year.
The Office for National Statistics reports that unemployment in the UK fell to 4.9 percent in the three months to February, an improvement on the expectation that it would have remained static at 5.2 percent. However, this measure does not include those people who are not actively looking for work. That’s covered by the Inactivity rate, which rose from 20.7 percent to 21 percent. Taken together, it appears that many students and young people are simply not actively looking for work. These figures pre-date the conflict in the Middle East, but the early indicators suggest that the number of workers in payrolled employment slipped by 11,000 in March and that job vacancies fell to 711,000 for the January to March period, the lowest level in nearly five years.
The British prime minister Keir Starmer has been able to distract attention from the worsening economic situation by creating a new farce around the security vetting for Britain’s former ambassador to the US, one Peter Mandelson, also known as the Prince of Darkness, which is not meant as an affectionate nickname. Mandelson has a certain, let us say reputation – he has been sacked twice before from government and was well known to have been friends with the paedophile Epstein – that should have warned Starmer off.
Instead Starmer insisted that Mandelson had passed the security vetting, even though he hadn’t. Starmer reacted to this revelation by blaming civil servants in the foreign office and claiming to have been mislead – how could he possibly have known that the prince of darkness might not be a fine and upstanding fellow after all? For now, Starmer has survived the row over what he did or did not know about Mandelson. Everyone is trying not to think about all the other things that Starmer should know about but doesn’t. Boy is he going to be pissed off when he finds out about the mess the economy is in.
Meanwhile, King Charles has been dispatched to whisper sweet nothings into the Trumpian ear in the hope of smoothing his ruffled feathers. Trump has just survived another shooting attempt prompting some panic amongst British officials over US security arrangements. What would the two men have to talk about? Perhaps the challenges of colonialism, and Trump’s view that the Falkland Islands should be handed over to Argentina, despite 100 percent of the population there identifying as British?
Then again, the US is getting into colonialism as well these days, having taken control of Venezuela while also threatening to take Greenland. Or Trump could explain that he simply sees all of America’s former allies as vassal states who should be punished if they don’t do as he orders them? How would Charles explain his take on sovereignty?
Nessan Cleary 
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