This was my letter to Labour List last week, which they were kind enough to publish as their lead letter.

In your note on the pressures to suspend the whip from Diane Abbott you quite rightly said that contentious issues should be dealt with as debates, not disciplinary matters; particularly matters of enormous importance, like the war in Ukraine. That is particularly urgent now, as the war shows signs of escalating into a wider European conflict which, if it escalates far enough, will lead to a nuclear war; which poses the need to step back and take a long hard look at the course we are on – which has no other conceivable result.

In so far as there is any debate at all on the war in Ukraine and relations with Russia in this country, it is between those who favour a slow escalation of the war and those who want it faster based on two delusions. 1 that the war in Ukraine can be “won” and 2 that Russia has the capacity and intention to launch a war with the rest of Europe. If you think about it, neither of these are anything other than fantasies. The 19% of the pre war Ukrainian population who primarily identified as Russian, and who live in the areas currently occupied by the Russian army, would hardly welcome reconquest by Kyiv, even if it were possible. How possible do those arguing that the Russians are itching to launch columns of tanks Westward think it would be for those forces to get through European NATO armies that are already twice as big and, if they did, make a successful occupation of large countries like Western Ukraine or Poland? The whole notion is absurd.

The alternative option that – to 1 avoid nuclear war 2 to allow Europe to recover from the war’s economic blowback and avoid the burden of greater military spending – 3 to relieve the burden on the Ukrainian population, which now includes forced conscription – Europe itself should have peace negotiations with Russia to de escalate towards a continental modus vivendi, is systematically deplatformed. Hence the kneejerk reaction to anyone prominent, like Diane, who steps out of line and asks awkward questions.

In this context, you argue for an open debate, on the presumption that the merits of “international defence cooperation” are self evident, without specifying what the purpose of that cooperation is and, linked to it, with whom. At present the UK “cooperates” primarily with the United States. As

• the US is perceived by popular majorities in every country in the world, bar about a dozen of its allies, as the country that is the greatest threat to world peace, an opinion based on what it has done in the past and is doing now.
• and any military risks that the UK now faces result from blowback from that cooperation, 

that debate is long overdue. I should add that the view that the US is the greatest threat to world peace is also the majority view in the UK and…the United States.