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'Broken Britain. Lawless London'.

The way some politicians and political commentators denigrate our capital city and country makes you wonder why they choose to live here.

London, they'll tell you, is some dark, dystopian backwater. A city where, whenever you step out onto the street, you will be the victim of a violent mugging or worse.

This image - this fiction - is not the London I know and millions love. It's not the London I was born and raised in. It's not where I studied, where I met my wife, where I raised my daughters. And it's not the city I'm now proud to serve as Mayor.

London is the greatest city in the world.

It's a place that's bursting with ambition, innovation, and creativity - down every street and in every borough, you'll find some of the world's finest people, theatre, music, food, and art.

In London, you can get a world-class university education as we boast more top universities than any other city. Or you can get a job at one of the most exciting, established multinational or fast-growing companies on Earth.

The London Londoners know is a place for doers and dreamers, of every colour and creed. A city where you are free to be who you want to be, love who you want to love, and celebrate whatever culture or background you come from.

That's why people from across the UK, and around the world, come and make this city their home - including, in recent months, a record number of Americans.

And, despite what the doomsters say, things haven't been getting worse. Across many areas, they've been getting better.

If you're living in London today, the air you breathe is now dramatically cleaner than it was 10 years ago, thanks to our policies.

If you want to travel around our city, you can now use the night tube, the Elizabeth Line, and the Superloop, and a cycling network that has increased more than fivefold since 2016.

If you're a young Londoner, when you go to a state primary school, as well as a first-rate education, you can benefit from a free nutritious meal.

I am well aware that our capital city has challenges - from the cost of living to the housing crisis. As Mayor, the safety of Londoners is what keeps me up at night.

But what those who peddle the 'lawless London' line won't tell you is that despite significant central government cuts to the budget of the Metropolitan Police since 2010, fatal shootings, burglaries, and violent assaults causing injury have all decreased since I became Mayor in 2016. The number of homicides recorded last year was half that in 2003, and murder rates in our capital are significantly lower than in major US cities, including New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. They are also lower than those in Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, Toronto, and Berlin.

And according to official statistics, you are less likely to be a victim of violent crime with injury in London than you are elsewhere in England and Wales.

I know many Londoners are worried about phone theft, which is why we are increasing the number of police officers patrolling hotspots in the West End by 50%. This has already led to a reduction of personal robbery which I'm determined to build on.

Of course, I'm not complacent. I don't say this to sugarcoat. One future stolen, one act of violence, one home burgled, is one too many. But the facts show: we're making progress.

So, if improvements are being made, why is there such a concerted effort - often led by those who pose as patriots - to talk down our great capital city?

The fact is: these people can't stand what London represents.

They believe a city that is as diverse and progressive as ours cannot be allowed to thrive. Because if it does, it makes a mockery of their entire worldview.

We expose their politics for what it is: fearmongering nonsense.

But the fact is, whether they like it or not, London is a success story.

It ...

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Earlier this week on the BBC News Channel, a presenter blithely asked their guest: "Obviously international organisations like the BBC cannot go in [to Gaza]… so Al Jazeera is using local people there. Are they able to operate truly independently?"

The words "local" and "independently" were doing a lot of heavy lifting in this statement. What is it about being "local", after all, that must render a journalist irredeemably biased and unable to report accurately? Why are Palestinian journalists forever belittled and subjected to this accusation?

The interview was meant to discuss 28-year-old Palestinian journalist Anas Al Sharif, who had been killed along with the rest of Al Jazeera's entire Gaza City team, in a targeted Israeli attack on their media tent.

Anas had been reporting bravely since 2023, and Israel produced no convincing evidence for its claim that he was head of a Hamas cell. Nonetheless, a separate BBC presenter on the Breakfast show earlier that day reported: "Anas has been accused by Israel of leading a Hamas cell, something he denied." There was no caveat around the reliability of Israel as a source.

Between these two BBC presenter quotes, you would be forgiven for thinking that the journalism coming out of Gaza is compromised, and that this is the root of calls to allow international journalists into the strip.

For nearly two years, Israel's wildest claims have been allowed to gain purchase in mainstream media - repeated by widely trusted outlets like the BBC, Sky, CNN, the New York Times, with little pushback, context, or verification.

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Many of these claims have elided both Gaza's key workers - journalists, doctors, teachers, civil ministers - and its civilian infrastructure of hospitals, schools, homes - with Hamas' military wing and ongoing operations, positioning them all as legitimate targets.

Little work has been done to make clear that the military and civil wings are separate, or that hospitals and schools are protected under international law. A number of us within the BBC warned the executive that this was dangerous, and that it had to critically engage with every source - including the Israeli military.

My focus here is on journalists in particular, and the work Israel has done to delegitimise them. Israel's modus operandi - throughout what many aid organisations now call a genocide - has been to claim that a journalist is an active Hamas combatant and kill them, sometimes alongside their whole families. Hossam Shabat. Eman Shanti. Anas Al Sharif. The list goes on.

The blue press vest - an emblem of protection - is now a target in Gaza. The Committee to Protect Journalists says 184 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed by Israel since October 2023.

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Propping up this claim that journalists in Gaza are largely Hamas combatants is a Western media landscape that refuses to align with Palestinian journalists as credible colleagues, deserving of journalistic protections.

The insinuation behind calling them "local people", operating with questionable independence, is that they are inherently "biased": unable to report accurately because they exhibit passion, are close to the story, know the local language, have the trust of their communities, and have specialist knowledge.

These are all skills that, far from o...

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Since journalists are not allowed into Gaza freely, to hear what is happening there we must speak directly to those living amid the rubble.

According to the International Federation of Journalists, at least 195 journalists and media workers, including 181 Palestinians, have been killed since 7 October 2023, making this the deadliest war against reporting in recent history.

So we have interviewed a mother and nurse, Alaa Jaber.

Alaa has with her, in a battered tent in near Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, her two children; Ayla (2 years, six months) and Muhammed (1 year, six months). She is also with her husband Ibrahim, and is looking after her mother.

Josiah: Thank you for speaking, Alaa. Tell me about you and what you were doing before the conflict.

Alaa: My name is Alaa Jaber, I am 27 years old. I am currently living in the middle of the Gaza Strip. I was working as a nurse before the destruction, and now I volunteer my nursing work to those in need if I can and have the means to do so.

Josiah: How are you and your family surviving?

Alaa: I am now with my husband and children, and I am responsible for my mother since my father was killed. She is 70 and suffers from high blood pressure and diabetes. My husband, my daughter, and I have all been injured in the war.

I was displaced from my home after it was bombed. My father's house near Deir al-Balah was also bombed, and he was martyred on October 26th 2023.

My daughter, Ayla, my husband, and I, when I was pregnant with Muhammad, were injured and pulled out from under the rubble. I have burns on my body and Ayla has burns on her hands. My husband has injuries to his head and foot.

I was seven months pregnant with my child [Muhammed]. When I had labour pains, the occupation forces were targeting the ambulances. There were no cars to take me, so I walked, bleeding, until I reached the hospital. He was born prematurely, twenty days after my injury and as a result of what happened to me.

Because the hospital was so crowded with the wounded, murdered and injured, a quarter of an hour after his birth, they ordered me to leave the hospital. After giving birth, I suffered from postpartum complications due to lack of medication, care, and water.

Now we have no source of income and nothing. I live on people's help and we go for days at a time without eating. My daughter suffers from malnutrition. Muhammed suffered from intestinal obstruction.

Josiah: What is happening with aid where you are? Are you receiving any? Have you had to relocate?

Alaa: We are now in a tent and we are not receiving any assistance. Our situation is very difficult. My children need help.

Josiah: Do you witness the bombings and shootings? What have you seen in terms of the violence?

Alaa: Yes, of course. There is no safe place at all. We are bombed daily next to us and in front of us, and we've been displaced more than once. There is no humanitarian safe place as they claim.

These are some of our daily struggles.

Josiah: Do you have access to electricity?

Alaa: There is no electricity in Gaza to begin with, and I wish I could get a battery to light my children at night because they are afraid of the dark, as are all children.

Josiah: Are Hamas still active where you are? What role do you think they still have in the conflict?

Alaa: We cannot talk about political matters because of their seriousness, and we do not have the slightest information about what they are thinking. We are just victims between the two parties.

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Josiah: You have said you saw aid being dropped into the sea. Is any aid getting through?

Alaa: Most of them fall into the sea and the others are in the red areas where no one can go. A little arrives, but armed thieves seize it.

Josiah: I hear any food you get is very expensive - can you tell me what ...

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One of the most remarkable things about the current backlash against the Online Safety Act (OSA) is that it is emanating from the very same newspapers that have agitated for internet censorship ever since the World Wide Web became accessible to the public in 1993.

The press campaign against the internet had already reached such a pitch by 1996 that the Observer's technology correspondent, John Naughton, felt impelled to write a column headed 'Monsters from cyberspace' in which he complained that, to judge by British press coverage of the internet, there are basically only three stories about the online world: 'Cyberporn invades Britain', plus its variant 'Police crack internet sex pervert ring'; 'Net addicts lead sad virtual lives'; and 'pupils get bomb info on Net'.

Such stories, he claimed, were produced by journalists who were "hell bent on misrepresenting it [the internet] in the interests of sensationalism and easy news bytes. Where there is ignorance, they sow fear; and where there is fear, they sow technophobia".

He also argued that they deeply disliked the arrival of competing sources of news, which "enable people to get whatever they want rather than whatever pap an editor or a proprietor deigns to give them, which liberates rather than enslaves its users".

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One of the flood of stories that Naughton could well have quoted to illustrate his point appeared in The Telegraph, 13 September 1995. Headed, 'Electronic porn floods network', it complained that "paedophiles and pornographers are becoming the biggest users of the Internet" and claimed, without any convincing evidence, that "half the non-academic material in the 'global village' is pornographic".

Jumping forward to 10 June 2018, less than a year after Theresa May's Government had launched its Internet Safety Strategy Green Paper, The Telegraph was agitating for what would eventually become the OSA by launching its campaign for a statutory duty of care, administered by Ofcom, to be placed on all social media companies that allow young people access to their systems.

This on the grounds that the internet "allows content, images and opinions that would once have been curtailed or forbidden to be easily available at the touch of a button. Whereas children in the past could not access pornography, watch violent films or join adult communities without great difficulty, now it is commonplace for them to do all three". And, confirming that nothing had changed since Naughton's malediction, it linked to a contemporaneous Telegraph story, headed 'Sexting, suicide and addiction - the children whose lives have been ruined by the Internet'.

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However, since 25 July, with the coming into force of the parts of the OSA requiring companies to introduce safety measures to protect children from online content deemed harmful to them, measures which include pornographic sites having to put in place rigorous age-checking procedures, those papers that once so enthusiastically demanded internet censorship have considerably changed their tune.

And, The Tele...

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A former British Army commando and defence attaché has accused the Government of acting like a "dictatorship" after he and over 500 others were arrested protesting against the ban on Palestine Action.

Retired colonel Chris Romberg, 75, was at the Defend Our Juries protest outside Parliament on Saturday, alongside hundreds of others.

Romberg served in the Army for 33 years, including in 29 Commando Regiment, and was defence attaché for Britain in Egypt and Jordan until 2007. He is the son of a Holocaust survivor, with his father, grandparents and aunts having to flee from Austria in 1938 after the German takeover as they were of Jewish descent.

After holding up a sign saying: "I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action" - which now carries a potential prison sentence of 14 years - Romberg was arrested and escorted by officers to be processed in a make-shift facility near Whitehall, where hundreds were arrested and handed bail conditions not to attend similar demonstrations.

He told Byline Times: "Of those who were arrested as terrorists on Saturday - about half of them were pensioners…You had disabled people in wheelchairs. Right next to me, an 89-year-old woman was arrested and carried off.

"Are these really the terrorists that the Government is supposed to be fighting? This may continue, more people will join. People are seeing this not as a determined movement by the Government to stop terrorists, but as criminalising pensioners."

The Prime Minister's spokesman told journalists on Monday: "Palestine Action was proscribed based on strong security advice following serious attacks the group has committed involving violence and injuries and extensive criminal damage.

"This follows an assessment from the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre that concludes Palestine Action has committed three separate acts of terrorism…You'll understand we can't go into all the detail at this stage. However, further evidence and security assessments have been provided in closed court, and the assessment supported the proscription."

Chris Romberg responded to the claims of secret evidence against Palestine Action, saying: "I feel it's all too easy to start claiming national security, claiming you have secret information, slightly frivolously.

"Years ago, Monty Python did a sketch about gangsters called the Piranha Brothers, and one of the characters in this had his head nailed to a coffee table by the Piranha Brothers. When asked why, he said, "Oh, they said I'd broken the unwritten law." They said, "What was it?" "I don't know. They wouldn't tell me."

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"We feel the Government is getting into this sort of situation. In the court case, they also produced supposed evidence, for which everybody had to leave the court and neither the claimants nor their lawyers were allowed to know what it was, or even be present, and this was then put before the judge without any [cross-examination].

"This sounds like what we would normally expect from an absolute dictatorship."

On Tuesday (12th August) organisers Defend Our Juries said a Telegram channel that was set up prior to their 'Lift The Ban' campaign launch was taken down without prior warning. The channel was used for 'sharing information on peaceful protests and legal advice'.

A spokesperson for the group said the 'latest interference' with the organising tools for the Lift The Ban protests followed the Defend Our Juries website being taken down last Wednesday, and an open call being cancelled by Zoom just one minute before it was due to start last Thursday, apparently at the request of the Met Po...

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A few weeks ago, the authors of a study from the British Runnymede Trust wrote that in political debate and media coverage in the UK on the topic of immigration, the pattern was one marked by "hostile language" and that, "the defining characteristic of migrants has been cemented as illegality over the past decade."

Just a week later, a YouGov poll asking UK residents about immigration revealed what can only be described as catastrophic levels of ignorance.

When asked if there are more immigrants staying in the UK legally or illegally, 33% of all YouGov poll respondents said there were "much more" in the UK illegally, while 15% said there were "somewhat more." 14% said the opposite: that there were "much more staying legally than illegally."

For respondents who said they want large numbers of immigrants to leave the UK, the levels of ignorance were even more dramatic, with 55% who said there were "much more" in the UK illegally and 17% answering "somewhat more." Just 4% of those who want to deport immigrants answered that there were "much more staying legally than illegally."

The actual numbers?

According to the 2022 UK census, there were 10.7 million legal immigrants in the UK, while Oxford University's Mirrem Project on migration put the number of illegal immigrants at 750,000. In other words, there are roughly 14 times as many legal immigrants in the UK as there are illegal. In other words, "much more staying legally."

This should ring alarms bell about political rhetoric, media focus and media silence.

These numbers are all the more disturbing because they come after a Brexit referendum that revolved almost entirely around immigration. For years running up to the vote, and for almost a decade after the vote, UK media broadcast thousands of hours and published thousands of articles about immigration.

It has been nothing short of an obsession, particularly on the part of right-wing media such as the Daily Mail, Daily Express and GB News. And, yet, despite the avalanche of coverage, half of the country are completely wrong in their assumptions about immigration to the UK.

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One explanation could be that the UK media that pushed for Brexit have absolutely no interest in facts or context on immigration that contradicted their line. For over 20 years, that same press has written countless emotional pieces about "swarms" and "floods" of "illegal migrants" coming to the UK. It's no coincidence that the target audience for these media - those in the UK who favour deporting immigrants - were 50% more likely to be completely misinformed about immigration than a general population that is itself misinformed.

But the deep lack of knowledge about immigration also suggests a broader failure of journalism beyond just outlets favouring the political right. It is also a failure of mainstream journalism that often amplifies immigrant stereotypes or fails to provide proper context.

Consider another poll conducted by Ipsos in 2016 (the year UK voters opted for Brexit), where respondents were asked to estimate the current Muslim population, and to then estimate what that percentage would be four years later in 2020.

In 2016, UK respondents estimated that Muslims made up 15% of the UK population, which would equal 9.9 million residents. The actual number was 5%, or 3.3 million. The same respondents then estimated that by 2020 Muslims would make up 21% of the UK population, or 14.1 million people. The actual percentage by 2020 was 6.5%, or 4.4 million.

Thi...

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Reform UK's Director of Local Government declared a company he owned insolvent two months before the local elections, leaving hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of unpaid debts - including a £31,000 Covid Bounce Back Loan.

Cllr Jaymey McIvor, who now represents Ongar in Epping Forrest (Essex), became Reform UK's first county councillor last year after being expelled by the Conservative Party over allegations that he sent an "unsolicited picture of his genitals".

He is an up-and-coming figure in Reform UK, regularly representing the party on TV and speaking at protests against an asylum seeker hotel in Epping. He was recently appointed as Reform's national "Director of Local Government".

But in March this year, Infinitus Group, a Florist run by Cllr McIvor with him as the sole director, entered liquidation after the firm voted to voluntarily wind itself up.

A liquidators report shows that Infinitus owes £141,025 to creditors. This includes £42,370 to "trade creditors", £31,000 of a Covid Bounce Back Loan and £5,154 owed to HMRC in corporation tax.

McIvor founded the company in 2018 and remained director until October 2020. He returned as director in June 2021.

The emergency Bounce Back Loans are state backed, leaving taxpayers footing the bill if companies holding the loans default on their debts.

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The scheme is credited with saving thousands of businesses during the pandemic. The latest government figures show that £11.9 billion has been paid by the government to banks to cover Bounce Back Loans. But officials estimated in 2021 that nearly 40% are unlikely to be repaid. A further £1.94 billion worth of the loans have been flagged as suspected fraud.

Under the Bounce Back Loan Scheme rules, companies could receive up to 25% of their annual turnover in loans, or no more than £50,000. The scheme ran until 31 March 2021. To receive £31,000 in a Bounce Back Loan, Infinitus would have to have had a turnover of £124,000 the previous year.

However, the unaudited financial statements filed on Companies House for the year ending November 2019 show the company making a loss of £-367 with total assets of £7,635 and liabilities of £8,002. It is not clear if the firm had the required £124,000 turnover needed for a £31,00 Bounce Back Loan.

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Further unaudited financial statements for the year 2020 show that the company registered a profit of just £1,621, while holding £51,335 in "bank loans and overdrafts".

The company appears not to have filed any accounts with Companies House since 2021. It is possible that a compulsory strike off order was withdrawn in order for creditors - including the taxpayer - to claw back any possible debts..

In this position at Reform UK, McIvor has railed against waste of taxpayers' money and promoted Reform's Department of Local Government Efficiency or DOLGE, named after the DOGE unit formerly hea...

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JD Vance has berated Europe for its free speech record again. In conversation with the United Kingdom's Foreign Secretary David Lammy, he said we "got a little too comfortable with censoring rather than engaging with a diverse array of opinions". He's right. We have.

But here's the kicker - Vance failed to address the key issues of the administration of President Donald Trump.

Vance said he worried about free speech in the USA, only he linked it to the years 2020-2024 when the country was led down a "very dark path under the Biden administration", thereby sidestepping what Trump's administration is doing to free speech in the present.

Let's be clear here - free speech in the supposed land of the free is far worse today than under President Joe Biden. It has become so dire that at Index on Censorship - an organisation established in 1972 within the context of the Cold War, when the USA was more friend than foe - we have made the country the focus of our latest Index on Censorship Magazine.

The attacks are happening across the board, impacting all the central pillars that support free speech.

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Let's start with the press, an institution specifically name-checked in the First Amendment, Trump has spent years calling journalists and broadcasters who challenge him "fake news" and "enemies of the people".

One can become inured to his attacks. It's important not to be. I often remind myself of the words of Nina Khrushcheva, Nikita Khrushchev's great-granddaughter, who wrote for Index in 2017 about her horror at hearing such Stalinist words repeated in the USA. "When I was growing up in the 1970s, not even Pravda used such ominous language for Kremlin critics," she said.

Trump doesn't just call the press enemies - he treats them as such. Journalists are barred from the Oval Office press pool for not renaming the title Gulf of Mexico; they're targeted with billion-dollar defamation lawsuits. A Damocles' sword hovers overhead; Trump has called for the overturning of the Supreme Court's 1964 ruling in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, legislation that reaffirmed the media's essential role in US democracy.

Some say journalists are the canary in the coalmine; others say it's writers more broadly. That's partly why we harp on about book bans at Index.

Of course there have always been efforts to censor literature. It's just that today it's happening at scale. Consider this: in 2014, there were 183 titles targeted for removal from public and school libraries; in 2023, that figure rose to 4,240, according to the American Library Association.

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Most of these challenges come from politicians and parents in Republican states, and there's a tiresome predictability to the titles singled out - Margaret Atwood and Jodi Picoult books, ones with queer and race-related storylines, for example. The calls are expanding, too.

In early April, the Navy removed 381 books supposedly promoting DEI from the US Naval Academy Library following an order from Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth's office. And the attacks go beyond the page. When we interviewed Kim A Snyder, director of the film The Librarians, she told us some librarians even had stalkers.

As for protest, it does still exist in the USA. The No Kings rallies across the country saw millions turn out. Except they came at the ...

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Reform UK leader Nigel Farage told a right-wing US podcast that there is "no money in politics" before running to be a Member of Parliament last year.

In newly-resurfaced comments from June 2024, while he was still reportedly weighing up whether to stand in the July election, Farage appeared on a pro-Trump online show, 'Ash Wednesday' with MAGA pundit Steven Crowder.

Crowder's platform has been repeatedly sanctioned by YouTube for use of racist and homophobic slurs (2019), false claims about the 2020 election (2021), and for violating the platform's harassment, threats and cyberbullying policy (2022).

Speaking freely to Crowder, Farage explains that as a broadcaster with GB News he's been earning 'good money' for the first time in 30 years. He is paid around £2,300 per hour with the controversial channel, according to his current register of interests.

Farage adds that "people laugh when you tell them this": "There's no money in politics, there's no money if you're straight [i.e. not corrupt]…There's no money in politics."

"[I] had four kids to bring up, dependents etc…So for the first time in 30 years, right, I'm earning good money [and] I'm enjoying life".

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But he then told Crowder: "Maybe there's a historical opportunity in British politics…if anyone can re-galvanise the forces of conservatism in something that is coherent, consistent, bold, but ambitious in terms of the vision, then maybe I'm that soldier. So I've got a big decision to make."

The Brexiteer's constituents may raise an eye-brow at the thought of there being "no money" in an MP's annual salary. The MP wage rose to £93,904 this April, from £91,346 when the anti-migrant politician was elected, and they can claim generous housing and travel allowances. The average salary in Farage's Clacton constituency is around £35,000 a year.

Nigel Farage, who was recently crowned as Britain's highest-earning MP due to his plethora of outside interests, frequently rails against "the political elite". It tallies with his apparent avoidance of Parliament: a recent Hope Not Hate investigation found that in the past year, Farage has spoken fewer times in parliament than any other leader of a British political party with a seat in Westminster.

Farage spoke just 45 times, compared to 226 for Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, 97 for Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey, and 152 and 86 respectively for Green Party co-leaders Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay, according to the analysis.

The Reform UK leader has also missed a swathe of crucial votes, including key divisions on planning reform, renters' rights, and the winter fuel allowance.

And in May, Farage went on an overseas holiday while parliament was sitting, meaning he missed a debate on the government's post-Brexit EU negotiations.

The former financier has made nearly £135,000 from making personalised C...

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When Donald Trump sits down with Vladimir Putin in Alaska this week, the ghost of 1938 will be in the room. Not because Trump is Chamberlain, but because Greater Europe faces the same fundamental choice: assert agency by punishing aggression, or live with the consequences.

The Kremlin's objectives have not shifted: wipe Ukraine from the map, break NATO, and erode American power. To grant legitimacy to such an agenda in talks with a wanted war criminal is to betray peace - not bring it closer.

European leaders understand this, but it merits relentless repetition: there is no conflict in Ukraine, no tension between two sides with competing claims. There is a war of choice that Moscow wages - a criminal act under the UN Charter. It will end, not when Ukraine stops defending, but when Russia stops attacking.

In March, Ukraine accepted an unconditional ceasefire proposed by Washington. Moscow didn't just reject it, but escalated its wanton violence. April. May. June. July. Schools, hospitals, kindergartens, apartment blocks, even a sleeper train - bombed. The latest attack on Kyiv took 31 innocent lives, twelve children among the injured.

But let's be frank: if you live in Western Europe, you may support Ukraine and scorn Russia, but this is not your war. It is their war. And if they - the Russians, the Ukrainians, whoever they are - could just abandon their savage ways, we, the dignified and enlightened, could go back to our normal, peaceful lives.

It's a natural reflex to disassociate from horror, to avoid the burden of reckoning with genocide in plain sight. Russians are killing Ukrainians for daring to exist, and Europe - fully capable of stopping it - has chosen not to for over eleven years now. Layered on top is the ever-present orientalism, dividing the world into the civilised and the uncivilised.

But this latent othering of Ukrainians - the first to die beneath an EU banner that still counted Britain among its own back in 2014 - is a moral failure, a historic regret in the making, and a one-way ticket to a much bigger war. One that has been at Europe's door for years, knocking louder with each passing season.

The moment we realise that Ukrainians are not them but us, the imperative becomes clear: mobilise every resource to drive the aggressor out of Europe, out of Ukraine that is.

EXCLUSIVE

Trump Made 'Mistake of Historic Proportions' on Ukraine Says His Former Ambassador

The United States' former ambassador to Ukraine, Bridget Brink, tells Alexandra Hall Hall that she couldn't "in good conscience" execute the President's plans for the country

Alexandra Hall Hall

Here's how: seize Russia's frozen assets and put them to work defending Ukraine. Arm Ukraine not in dribs and drabs, but fully - with the long-range missiles and precision tools needed to expel the invaders. Extend Europe's protective shield over Ukrainian skies. And finally, stop talking about resolve and show it - raise defence spending not because America is losing its patience, but because European security demands it. Not because Europe is spoiling for a fight with Russia, but so it won't have to fight.

None of this is charity. In fact, Kyiv is a deeply underappreciated security provider for Europe, if not the ultimate guarantor. The uncomfortable truth is this: if Ukraine falls, Europe won't be debating whether to confront Russia, but when.

Until this realisation takes hold among the public, European politicians will struggle to act decisively in the face of criminal aggression. Wars of conquest don't end until a winning coalition emerges to hold the revanchist belligerent to account. A capitulation dressed up as diplomacy - while Russia still occupies Ukrainian land - will not bring peace. Half-measures will invite more war. That's not conjecture; it's how we got here.

In 1938, Neville Chamberlain...