Just Pursuing Orders

As His Majesty's Government prepares to recognise a Palestinian state, albeit without recognising any right of such a state to self-defence, independent policy-making or its own airspace, Team Starmer has further demonstrated its moral fortitude by supplementing the empty gesture with an empty half-gesture. Representatives of the Israeli government will not be invited to a forthcoming biennial rah-rah for the international arms trade in London; but Israeli arms companies will be permitted to attend, in accordance with the sensible and moderate doctrine that governments are no more than middle management protecting the real people against their rebellious serfs. As when the beastly French implied that the Righteous State is subject to rules, the ban has elicited squeals of righteous indignation, this time alongside an intriguing reiteration of the Nuremberg defence that political decision-making and military professionalism should be subject to a strict and unyielding apartheid.