I have lost faith both in Western social democracy, and in the institutions of international law. As both have been fundamental to the work of my life, this is rather a blow as I approach 70.

A number of deeply shocking things have happened this past three years, not as extraneous events, but as conscious acts of western governments acting in unison. The Genocide in Gaza has been the most obvious.

When social media started to show us relentless imagery of shredded children and human suffering beyond belief, it was astonishing to me that the governments of the western social democracies almost unanimously continued to support Israel. The UK is actively complicit in the Genocide, providing weaponry, aerial surveillance, intelligence cooperation and vital diplomatic and political support to Israel.

Somehow I thought this would all stop. Equilibrium would be restored, the innate decency of the British people would prevail, and the support for Israel would be reversed. Indeed, I reasoned, in the long term this could break the hold of the Zionist donor network on British politicians, so deep was the popular revulsion at the most public and vicious genocide imaginable.

None of this happened. Instead the more indefensible Israel’s actions have become, the more the UK’s political and media Establishment have rallied to Israel. In the UK as throughout the world, our rulers have responded to dissent over Israel with harsh repression of their own people. To see Burnham stand at the podium of the UN General Assembly in New York and declare the UK’s support for Israel, while the genocide continues and Israel is relentlessly destroying southern Lebanon and is occupying southern Syria, was instructive.

His tactical change of tone to notice Israeli crimes has no practical effect. The UK implements new sanctions on Russia within 48 hours of announcement, or even less. The “sanctions” on Israeli illegal settlements are going to take a year to design and implement, to make certain they don’t work.

When they proscribed as “terrorist” a civil disobedience group and police started arresting little old ladies as terrorists for protesting about it, I thought this too was a temporary madness which would pass. I witnessed outside the Royal Courts of Justice the police lifting up elderly people in wheelchairs to arrest them for holding a sign, and I thought ultimately the system will repudiate this madness.

It has not repudiated the madness. It turns out that policemen are happy to arrest octogenarian priests for expressing the wrong thoughts, and judges are prepared to impose vicious “terrorist connection” prison terms for property damage by persons seeking to hinder a genocide. The English Court of Appeal stated coldly:

The vast majority of those arrested had chosen to hold signs which read, “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action”. We attach little weight to this when it comes to assessing the extent of the interference with Convention rights in this case. All those holding such signs either did or ought to have realised that what they were doing was showing support for Palestine Action.

It is one thing for people voluntarily to hold a placard supporting Palestine Action which they know to be a proscribed organisation. That is a criminal act.

I have mentioned this to you before but I was very struck when I read Irmtrud Wojak’s life of Fritz Bauer by the continuity of individual judges and lawyers, who served on with equanimity under the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich and West Germany without evidence of guilt and remorse. About 70% of West German judges had been Nazi judges administering “Nazi justice.”

Fritz Bauer, a radical German Jewish prosecutor, was continually blocked in his heroic efforts to bring some justice. The book held me so strongly because it is the granular narration of the banality of evil, in its tale after tale of Nazi criminals protected by compromised judges.

The realisation that the law is nothing to do with justice, and that courts are imposing the power of the state rather than seeking some higher ideal, came home to me on Friday as we sat through the expedited hearing of our appeal at the Court of Session in Edinburgh, where we are trying to make the Scottish judicial review of the proscription of Palestine Action actually happen.

This was our sixth or seventh time in court and we have spent about £250,000 trying to protect the liberties of people in Scotland from oppression. Very decent people are being branded as terrorists, with potentially life-changing consequences, for merely holding a placard or wearing a T shirt. I met one person in Glasgow whose home and vehicle insurance had increased by over £600 as a result of a terrorism charge for a T shirt. Others have been debanked. International travel is restricted. The jail sentences are still to come.

The Court of Appeal of England and Wales has ruled all this as proportionate in the interests of “National Security”, to protect the nation from those who would disrupt the Israeli weapons supply chain. Our effort to challenge it in Scotland has met with delay after delay, and a blistering exhibition of trench Lawfare by the UK government.

I don’t think the judges of the Inner House of the Court of Session who heard us on Friday could have been less engaged. Aidan O’Neill KC spoke for us for over an hour about the constitutional right of Scots to have their liberties protected by a Scottish court, about the lack of any provision in Court Rules for suspending – “sisting” – a judicial review as this one had been – about the perverse decision to grant the Review and then continually suspend it, causing us great expense.

What he did not talk about – because this was a purely procedural hearing – was the arrests and lives in turmoil in Scotland, still less the lives destroyed in Gaza.

The three judges sat making notes but did not engage with Aidan, asking almost no questions. This was entirely different when the UK Government lawyer spoke, Mark Lindsay KC, addressed the court very briefly. The judges engaged with him constantly, to reinforce his points or to suggest additional helpful points he might have missed.

Lord Pentland, the Lord President of the Court of Session (and former Tory parliamentary candidate) got most animated when discussing the secret closed court sessions where secret intelligence evidence is heard that we are never told about. Pentland seemed extremely pleased with the notion that these are difficult and time consuming and there could not be enough time for them before the UK Supreme Court hears the English appeal on 4 November.

Mark Lindsay added here the incredible point that the judgement in the judicial review must be cleared with the security services, which would take at least five days. He explained that one reason it takes so long is that it needs to be typed on special secure laptops.

So that is where we are in 2026. Courts hearing secret evidence from the security services that the petitioner in the case will never see, and the security services vetting the judgement of the court.

The other reasons Lindsay advanced for not having a judicial review were equally jaw dropping. It would cost money, and use judicial resources that might be better deployed on something else. It would simply be too expensive for Scotland. Best just follow whatever England said.

I have to say I left court deeply depressed. Judgement is reserved – itself significant when we were arguing for the judicial review to proceed urgently before the Supreme Court meets.

Currently the full video of the hearing is still available here.

If that was not miserable enough, we also had to endure the UN General Assembly being treated, not as a meeting point for nations to speak peace and reach agreement, but as a rostrum for crazed fascism.

We had Donald Trump threatening to annihilate Iran and destroy Iranian culture. We had ICC-wanted war criminal Netanyahu waving around pagers to glory in terrorism while taunting the world. Both spoke from a position of confidence in military power enabling them to defy and humiliate the world community. It may be hubris, but it is currently in the ascendant. China shows no interest in countering it and nobody else really can.

Neither China nor Russia were strong in condemnation of Israel over Gaza – they did not speak the language of war crimes at the General Assembly, let alone Genocide. Both made anodyne remarks about a two-state solution, and said that Israeli actions were endangering its viability. As it is blindingly obvious that a two-state solution is now impossible, this was pathetic. Remember – and this is key to understanding the world today – neither Russia nor China vetoed the UN Security Council resolution endorsing Trump’s Board of Peace and giving it a firm right in international law to control the destiny of Gaza.

The European powers used the UN podium to spout Russophobia and amplify the demand for war with Russia.

I despair for the United Nations. I despair for the International Criminal court, which seems fatally undermined. Its arrest warrant for Netanyahu is ignored by the Western powers. Three EU states allowed his plane to overfly their airspace en route to New York. Karim Khan was ousted as Chief Prosecutor for obtaining the warrant against Netanyahu, on flimsy sexual abuse allegations for which an inquiry by three judges found no firm evidence. The Western powers led a fierce campaign for his dismissal by the member states.

The judges themselves have been subject to US sanctions and debanking. I had always hoped – and believed – the ICC would develop beyond a role of punishing the West’s designated enemies and keeping Africa in line. I did not realise that as soon as the ICC did this, the Western powers would move to destroy the ICC.

The venerable International Court of Justice is also creaking. I had expected it would take three years or so for it to reach a decision in the South Africa vs Israel genocide case. That timetable now looks more like eight years.

In part it seems that South Africa may have blinked. It was South Africa which requested an extraordinary 18 months to reply to Israel’s response to their petition. The Court had already granted Israel two lengthy postponements of their reply. The Israelis will then get to reply again and a further 18 months. I suspect South Africa is going along with kicking the can down the road under US pressure, and the new timetable will take us beyond Trump.

It is however not a good look for the Court to take so long in deciding on a case over a Convention which is supposed to prevent Genocide, not to punish it. It is also notable that Israel has entirely ignored the interim orders the Court gave two years ago, and ignored the separate judgement on the status of the Occupied Territories.

The truth is the Court has no armies, and as the Western powers are actively abetting Israel in its actions the ICJ is, sadly, a dead letter.

The UK is now going to ignore the ICJ decision on the Chagos Islands. The court ruled that the UK must give them back to Mauritius. The US airbase on Diego Garcia is irrelevant to that ICJ decision. The UK has now decided to defy the ICJ because the US has declined to pay for the lease of the airbase from Mauritius. That in no way negates the duty to return the islands. But the UK media have reported Streeting’s decision to cancel the return of the islands with, so far as I have seen, no reference to the ICJ at all.

It is not just that the institutions of law, both domestically and internationally, in which I have lost belief. The social contract of Western nations, in which the government provides for the welfare of the population in return for their loyalty and taxes, appears to have broken down.

The trend towards greater wealth inequality in late-stage capitalism is incredibly, exponentially rapid. Living standards for ordinary people have been static for two decades and, whatever official statistics may say, to many if feels their standard of living has declined. Social mobility is gone. Graduates are stacking shelves and delivering pizzas. Heating and fuel costs are extraordinary. So is rent, and landlordism is rampant.

It is impossible to look at social media without hitting the stark reality that Islamophobia and racism are now deeply seated in a large proportion of the population. The propaganda model has been reinforced by the billionaire capture of all the major social media gatekeeper apps. Rather than being a possible solution to state and billionaire propaganda, social media has become a major part of the problem. It appears particularly effective in amplifying and spreading racism.

We are now faced with a Ministry of Truth in the UK to enforce state propaganda narratives – like the ridiculous Skripal story, the ambulances false flag or the Fairford farrago. The one thing we know for certain about “RAF” – truly USAF – Fairford is that hundreds of tonnes of high explosive have been dropped from Fairford on Iran. The notion of “defensive bombing” – parroted by the entire media – is an Orwellian symptom of what we have become.

There is no escaping the fact that large numbers of people are very susceptible to the propaganda. I know well-meaning left-wing people who believe that Iran machine gunned 50,000 dissidents and that nothing significant happened in Ukraine before 2022.

The focus of hate away from the billionaire class who are enslaving society, and towards immigrants, is most worrying of all. It of course feeds both domestic and foreign policy views – there are vast numbers of people delighted at the mass murder of Iranians, Palestinians, Lebanese or Yemenis because they are brown or Muslim. The same people think that immigrants in small boats are responsible for the decline in standard of living of working people in the UK.

Western social democracy is dying.

The democracy bit offers no meaningful choice at election in terms of wealth distribution or the structure of capitalist society. It offers no significant variation on the increasingly authoritarian nature of the state. It certainly offers no choice in foreign or defence policy. It really only offers a bit more or a bit less racism in immigration and welfare policies.

The social bit is decaying even faster. The very fabric of our cities is visibly crumbling. In the UK the health service is strained beyond utility in a great many cases. State pensions are miserly and insufficient. Many young people have no prospect but to pay rent to landlords for poor quality housing their whole life. Many graduates will never find meaningful or satisfactory employment. All of this is getting palpably worse year by year.

That’s me in the corner

That’s me in the spotlight

Losing my religion

I feel that the rather pleasant world I grew up in has been replaced by something much nastier and more raw. Literally dozens of my friends have been arrested these last three years, simply for what they say and think.

The problem with losing faith is how you replace it.

Another problem is that the legal battle for Palestine Action still has to be paid for. Our CrowdJustice crowdfunder was closed down by the card processors as a result of pressure from the USA. I was informed by the legal team on Friday that legal fees due currently outstrip available funds. If you can help, please do. If you know somebody else better placed to help, please ask them.

These alternative donation methods are still working as of 29 September 12 noon. Any funds received will checked hourly and be paid immediately to the lawyers to avoid possible seizure.

Other donation methods are currently still available even though the CrowdJustice route has been closed.. Obviously we now need funds more than ever to carry on.

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