Is the Defence of Our Sceptred Isle Safe in Boris Johnson’s Hands?

Strange days, indeed, when we deploy four warships to contest the Narrow Seas with the fishing boats of a NATO ally.

The Channel is one of the busiest, if not the busiest of any of the seaways in the world’s oceans. Could the UK Government be sued for creating potential hazards to shipping?

Meanwhile, two weeks ago nearly a dozen warships and combat aircraft from Russia’s Northern, Baltic and Black Sea fleets gave a “show of force in the waters off the British and Irish coasts,” according to General Sir Nick Carter, Chief of the Defence Staff.

Unless the Black Sea Fleet ships were in transit to other duties then it was a lot of money to spend on fuel for them to participate in this exercise.

An exercise on a scale not seen since the last death rattle of the Soviet regime.

Admiral Johnson wears two eye patches on such occasions?

Or is General Carter’s contention that such a foray “… requires us to hold their backyard at risk, whether that’s in the Barents Sea, the High North, the Baltic or the Black Sea” in some way unpalatable to our latter day Winston Churchill?

Churchill was First Lord of the Admiralty between 24th October 1911 and 25th May 1915. He returned to the post on 3rd September 1939 and left it on the 11th May 1940, because he became Prime Minister that day.

The Russians have gained an agreement with the Sudanese Government to use Port Sudan on the Red Sea as a naval base.

Almost directly opposite from the port is Mecca. No comment from the Trump administration and none, seemingly from the Saudis, but what would be the point, if your major ally is looking the other way?

Generations of previous Russian leaders would have given their eye teeth for a naval base in the Eastern Mediterranean. Putin now has one in Syria, north of the Suez Canal, complimented by the base in Sudan, south of the Suez Canal.

The Suez Canal is way more important to the economic life of our nation than a few paltry fish in the Channel.

British foreign policy in the Eastern Mediterranean for centuries was one of containment, putting pressure, by fair means or foul, on the Ottoman Empire to keep the Russian Black Sea Fleet bottled up in the Black Sea. It then became NATO and US policy until President Donald Trump.

Finally, Boris Johnson has elevated to the peerage, the son of a former head of the KGB’s London Station.

Lebedev Jr once owned two wolves, the one was named Boris and the other, Vladimir.

A story idea that even John le Carré might have thought too outré for one of his novels.

The barbarians are not at the gates. They have been let in by Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party, Dominic Cummings, Nigel Farage, Claire Fox, Gisela Stuart, Kate Hoey et al and told to make themselves feel at home.

Why?

For today’s equivalent of 30 pieces of silver.

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