INFORMED COMMENT

                                         JOHN BARKER MA

                                Accepts commissions to write 
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REALPOLITIK AND TOKENISM

President Putin has clearly flouted the

international rule of law by annexing the Ukraine.

He is putting in place a strategy of real politik for

rebuilding Russia's former empire.This could well

be through the evential annexation of the twelve

countries where Russian is the main secondary

language and the insistence that the 'human

rights' of its speakers must be protected. The
similarities with Hitler's policy over sudetenland
in 1936 are stark.
 

The Russian President is assisted in planning his

aggressive domino effect by impotence and

indecision:policy paralysis caused by the

increasing dependency of the EU's major

economies on Russian trade and, of course,its

growing stranglehold on energy supplies.

 

At the same time, the inevitable schism that will

open up between the EU and the US on what to

do about the invasion of a sovereign country plays

into Putin's hands.

 

The Ukraine is the first piece in the jigsaw and the

question is not if, but when, others will follow in

Russian expansion, facilicitated by vacuous talk

and empty threats.

 

WIT OF ONE WHO WOULD BE LEADER

 

The changing name of the former secretary

of state for energy from Anthony Wedgwood

Benn, 2nd Viscount Stansgate to plain Tony

Benn, always raised a few eyebrows. Attempting

to present himself as a working-class warrior

and not a son of privelege could tend to

detract from something that never changed:

his rapier-like wit.

 

He once remarked "Clement Attlee had as

much charisma as a mouse. He was absolutely

mono-syllabic. People say conversation is

supposed to be like a game of tennis, but with

Attlee it was like tossing biscuits to a dog."

It has been said of Tony Benn that he made

enemies and kept enemies. Not so with the

Tory Party. His extreme left-wing views were

a factor in Margaret Thatcher's victory at the

1979 general election and in the eighteen years

of Labour opposition that followed.