Britain the Spectator State: Haunted by Iraq, Paralysed by Gaza, Irrelevant by Choice

From Brexit squandered to Afghanistan abandoned, Britain has slipped from trusted ally to global irrelevance — mistaking noise for power. As Trump meets Putin to redraw the world, the UK squabbles over a press release no one will read.

The world is shifting on its axis. Trump shakes hands with Putin in Alaska, JD Vance unloads in Munich about Europe’s decades of vanity, Gaza burns, Ukraine bleeds, and China quietly sharpens its knives. These are the defining movements of history. And Britain? Britain churns out bland press releases, stages another Saturday protest, and convinces itself that hashtags and Commons debates amount to power. We are a nation that mistakes noise for influence.

Enter Keir Starmer, straining every sinew to do his best Churchill impression — and depressingly that nodding dog from the car insurance advert was better. He signs Britain up to the so-called “coalition of the willing” on Ukraine, pretending this island is still a serious player. But it fools nobody. The armed forces are depleted, equipment stockpiles bare, recruitment in freefall

“This isn’t Churchill at the top table. It’s children playing dress-up.”

Macron, the EU’s Von de Lyon, and the German Chancellor — so irrelevant his name slips the memory — are making threats and demands with all the intimidation of wet cardboard. It’s pathetic, compounded by the fact they lack the self-awareness to realise their irrelevance.

The Spectre of Iraq still hangs over everything. Blair’s shoulder-to-shoulder obedience hollowed out Britain’s credibility, and every conflict since has followed the same script: swagger, collapse, retreat. Libya proved it. Cameron drove NATO’s intervention in 2011, Gaddafi fell, and then Britain promptly walked away. The result was chaos: ISIS footholds, trafficking gangs, and a Mediterranean migration crisis still destabilising Europe. Afghanistan was worse. We flounced in with talk of democracy and saving women, then bolted when Washington got cold feet and ran for it.

“Britain abandoned the very people it claimed to protect — twenty years of promises ended in betrayal.”

Though we did have a chance to reassert ourselves. Brexit should have been the reset. It wasn’t Brexit itself that diminished us, as far too many gleefully like to claim; it was our refusal to embrace it that finally sank us. We treated Brexit as an accident to be managed rather than a mandate to be seized. We half-left, half-stayed, sulked for scraps from Brussels, and muttered “Global Britain” like a nervous tic. The opportunity was squandered, and decline hardened into habit.

Meanwhile Starmer clings to globalism like a drowning man clutching the rulebook of a dead game. He still worships Davos, though Klaus Schwab has been dethroned and the WEF is little more than parody. But Gaza is where the pretence collapses completely. Britain, once a pillar of Five Eyes, once trusted with the highest intelligence, has been shoved aside by the United States and by Israel.

“An ally we stood beside for generations now shuts us out. That isn’t a setback — it’s a hammer blow to Britain’s standing in the world.”

And why should Netanyahu trust us? Labour panders to the Muslim vote as it clings to power, Gaza protests dwarf Remembrance parades, antisemitism spikes on our streets, and the government flinches at every rendition of “From the River to the Sea.” The BBC carries water for genocidal terror organisations but, according to some, Boris Johnson was the nation’s biggest embarrassment.

Across the Atlantic, Trump roars — and for once, his roar carries truth. Europe freeloaded for decades, obsessed with vanity projects, debating pronouns and microaggressions, ignoring the tanks on our doorstep, and letting America foot the bill. JD Vance said in Munich what no European leader dared admit: Europe is defenceless without Washington and it’s all our fault. Trump’s bark, crude though it is, forced Europe to rearm. And Britain? We’re not even in the game. When Kemi Badenoch couldn’t be bothered to meet Vance, it said everything. At home she’s struggling to make headlines in sympathetic press, abroad she can’t even get in the room. Britain still can’t get in the game.

From Suez to Iraq, from Libya to Afghanistan, our role has been one long retreat. Brexit is a handy get-out-of-jail-free card excuse rather than admitting we lost this game many turns ago and now rely on community chest and chance cards to keep playing. Now as Trump and Putin redraw the world in Alaska, Europe scrambles to save itself, and Britain isn’t even in the same building. At home, we rage about migration, Gaza, Trump, Ukraine — anything but the rot we could actually fix: crime, housing, productivity, the NHS, even the bloody bin collection in Birmingham.

Here is the truth, stripped bare. Britain at best is a spectator state. Haunted by Iraq, discredited in Libya, humiliated in Afghanistan, paralysed by Gaza, shoved aside by Israel, ignored in Washington, and reduced to Nigel Farage queuing for a selfie with Donald Trump.

“The world is playing chess. Britain is the fool still struggling with Connect Four."

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Peter C. Barnes is a Westminster insider turned broadcaster and writer. Having seen politics from the inside, he now makes a career out of dismantling it in public — with an exasperated honesty that leaves a mark. A regular contributor and presenter across major outlets, he also runs his own YouTube series and a noted Substack. He doesn’t comment — he confronts, in a way that leaves you asking the right questions.