Kernow Damo

Right, so Andy Burnham says Britain has just gone through the biggest political shake-up in forty years. Apparently all it took was a few new faces that actually weren’t that new at all. Forty years. Thatcher. Blair. Austerity. Brexit. The full Olympic relay of national self-sabotage. And now, it seems, all it takes to wipe away forty years of wreckage is Rachel Reeves and David Lammy hauling cardboard boxes out of Downing Street while the press corps counts them like it’s the royal family’s recycling day. Well, that’s that, then. Mission accomplished. Somebody fetch the bunting, there’s a new king in town, the King of the North. Except before the applause had even stopped echoing off the Downing Street cobbles, Burnham’s big electricity giveaway had already shrunk to the size of a supermarket loyalty card, Palantir was still nesting in the NHS like a stubborn parasite, Labour’s Israel links were still threaded through the Cabinet like athlete’s foot, and Donald Trump apparently still had the keys to British airbases for his next round of fireworks. But hey, Reeves had left the building. So naturally, the entire old order must have packed up and gone with her, right? Some people have gone. That’s true. Reeves is out. Lammy is out. Several Starmer loyalists have been cleared away. I’m not going to pretend that didn’t happen, because I don’t need to. The trick is getting everyone to stare only at the people leaving. Who got sacked? Who looked furious? Who lost the ministerial Jag? Which faction won? Westminster spent the day treating the Cabinet like football transfer deadline night, while the real question sat in the corner without even a cup of tea. Who still has access? Which contracts remain? Which foreign-policy commitments survived? And what exactly has Burnham changed here?

Right, so Israel has torched millions on a US influence operation that includes telling Americans that the starving children, shattered buildings, and eyewitness footage coming out of Gaza might all be some elaborate ruse. Nothing to see here, really. Move along. Don't trust any of that, says the advert. It might all be a coordinated propaganda effort and it’s not like Israel would ever do such a thing is it? Here's a right wing mouthpiece. Here's a hospital. Here are tunnels. Here's Trump. Here's Netanyahu. Here's the word PEACE in letters large enough to be spotted from the Moon. And then, right at the bottom, once the music has done its work and the messaging has been pushed into your head, comes the bit they hoped you wouldn't read, but that by law they had to tack on.

Distributed by Clock Tower X LLC on behalf of the State of Israel. Israel paid for an advert warning Americans about propaganda, then literally signed off on the propaganda at the bottom. Honestly, you could hardly script it any better. Here’s a figure for you, and no, this one thirty-second advert did not cost fifteen million dollars. That is the reported scale of money the Clock Tower received through the wider operation, not the cost of this particular advert itself. Fifteen million dollars to glue a fake moustache onto Israeli government propaganda and hope nobody notices the Tel Aviv accent peeking out from underneath. A king's ransom blown on a disguise, only to walk into the masquerade with a massive “Hello, My Name Is: Israel” sticker on your chest for good measure.

Right, so that’s an Israeli journalist describing what Israeli scientists have found on their own crops.

Forever chemicals on potato leaves from the Gaza Envelope, that being the Israeli term for the communities, farms and agricultural land on the Israeli side of the boundary surrounding Gaza, mainly to Gaza’s north and east. Detectable amounts in most of the potatoes themselves. And a chemical pattern that the soil underneath those plants couldn’t explain either.

Netanyahu’s Gaza war has reached the Israeli dinner table.

Now, before anyone starts shouting that the research is nonsense, let’s be clear: nobody has matched a specific missile to a specific Maris Piper here. There’s no bomb serial number carved into a spud. The scientists didn’t stand in the fields catching air samples during every explosion, and they can’t tell us which blast dropped which chemical.

What they can say is that something unusual was sitting on those plants.

The soil was already soaked in old PFAS pollution, thanks to Israel’s habit of watering crops with treated sewage and using sewage-derived materials in agriculture. That was already a disaster.

But the leaves? They were carrying a new mix, heavy on shorter-chain chemicals, at levels the dirt underneath couldn’t explain. The old mess and the new mess weren’t telling the same story in other words.

Old contamination in the soil. A fresher signal on the leaves.

Old poison, new poison.

Israel had already damaged its environment so badly that the old pollution made it harder to spot the newer fallout piling on top.

Right, so, remember those Saudi oil facilities going up in flames a few years back?

Keep that picture in mind, because the war Riyadh spent years pretending it had settled may now be kicking off again and they’ve done it all to themselves.

The Saudi-backed government in Yemen decided to lob a missile at Sanaa Airport because a few Iranian VIPs had the audacity to show their faces in Houthi territory.

Not exactly tourists with selfie sticks here.

Saudi Arabia, desperate to play the innocent bystander, insists its air defences leapt into action and heroically intercepted the retaliation before Abha Airport on their side of the border could get an unscheduled sunroof.

Yet, mysteriously, flights still evaporated, and the panic now stretches far beyond one unlucky runway.

Riyadh. Ports. Oil facilities.

That’s how a single Iranian handshake sends the entire Saudi establishment into a full-blown national panic attack.

Now Mohammed bib-Salman, MBS gets to choose between yanking his own side back and crossing his fingers that the next fireworks display doesn’t end with his palace as the grand finale.

Now, I’m not going to retell the whole Iranian plane story again; I told it the other day in another video.

We’ve done that part.

But by way of a brief summation, in case you didn’t catch it, what basically happened was the main Yemeni airport at Sanaa was struck; the Iranian delegation aboard the plane still managed to reach Houthi-controlled Yemen, landing at another airport, and everyone was left shouting about their sovereignty being impugned with potentially explosive consequences ongoing.

The key point now is the outcome: this strike dragged Saudi Arabia back into missile alerts, cancelled flights, and threats to airports, ports and oil facilities, reviving a war it had spent years trying to contain.

Right, so Benjamin Netanyahu has made himself a victory film, because, of course, he has. Explosions. Soldiers. Trump is praising him. Congress clapping. Netanyahu in body armour, looking as though he personally carried the entire Israeli military up a hill before breakfast.

Lots of fire, lots of flags, and absolutely no sign of the people who have to keep making it all happen, because there is one scene missing from Netanyahu’s film.

The one where Israel’s military chief warns that severe manpower shortages, repeated reserve call-ups, and too few new recruits are pushing the IDF towards its limits, with a risk of it “collapsing in on itself.” That bit did not make the final cut.

Neither did the manpower shortage. Nor the exhausted reservists. Nor the coalition deal protecting tens of thousands from service while those already serving are told to stay longer.

Now the Israeli parliament has shut down, an election is coming, and Netanyahu needs votes from the same people his politics have been grinding into the floor.

Some victory. And that’s it. The Knesset is closed.

Not the government, mind you. Netanyahu is still welded to the prime minister’s chair like it’s the last seat on the escape pod. His cabinet is lurking in the shadows as ever. He can still order airstrikes, summon meetings, and parade around as if the Middle East is his own personal game of Risk, where only he, the galaxy-brained mastermind, is able to grasp its cosmic complexity.

What’s over is the luxury of running the show with no closing time, because last orders have been called.

So every new casualty, every unsuccessful operation, every additional call-up, every row with the army, every grubby little coalition favour now comes with the same additional question looming over it.

What will voters make of this?

Right, so this is Ben Gurion Airport, Israel's main civilian airport. Open, technically. Except the Americans have parked so many airborne gas stations on the tarmac that airport officials are now warning that 50,000 booked journeys could be disrupted. That 50,000 is not a confirmed body count of stranded souls, just the number of bookings at risk if the military keeps treating Ben Gurion like a drive-thru. Each of those bookings belongs to someone desperate to leave, but nobody knows how many will actually end up staring at the departure board. Those are the planes meant to protect Israel aren’t they? Now they're doing a fine job turning the airport into a high-security waiting room for the world's most patient hostages. And yes, there is an asterisk on that 50,000. The figure refers to bookings, and we do not have a confirmed headcount of separate passengers, though it could be for all we know. It is still a lot of people, but we will return to that point. Every one of those bookings still belongs to somebody trying to get out. The airport doors are technically open. Whether your plane can actually depart, however, is another act in this three-ring circus.

That is a civilian airport trying to function around America's flying petrol stations. Netanyahu wanted the machinery of war close at hand. Very close. Close enough to keep Israeli and American aircraft in the sky over Iran. Well, he got it. It is now close enough to start chewing through the summer flight schedule.

They would love this to sound like a dull row over airport capacity. A bit busy, isn't it? A few parking problems. Someone from operations will sort it out after lunch. Except airport officials have been warning for months that military use has swallowed a huge share of Ben Gurion's working space. At one stage, it was reportedly operating at around one-third of normal capacity. You can call the airport open all day long. That does not help the passenger whose airline cannot get a stand, whose flight gets cut, or whose booking suddenly becomes an entry on a cancellation board. It’s like taking bookings for a hotel, filling every room with military kit, then telling the guests their reservation still exists in principle. Yes, you can leave. In theory. You just need the United States military to move first.

Right, so there’s Israel Katz, standing in the ruins of northern Gaza, being asked how all that destruction makes him feel.

And he says he feels good.

Good.

Homes flattened. Whole neighbourhoods turned into rubble. Families were driven from whatever was left. And Katz stood there looking pleased with himself, as if somebody had finally just approved his second floor extension.

He goes on to call the destruction a deliberate policy.

Well, at least nobody has to spend six months waiting for a leaked memo I suppose.

But then comes the next bit.

Three proposed military-linked outposts in Gaza.

Thirty-four newly recognised settlements in the West Bank.

Settlement activists are walking into Lebanon and announcing they fancy staying there.

All of which requires rather a lot of soldiers.

Small snag.

Army Radio is reporting that reserve formations are now so badly depleted, all on top of what I covered the other day in regards to IDF numbers and supplies, that one company came back from Lebanon with just one officer remaining.

One officer.

Right, so Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces have struck the runway at Sanaa International Airport because they wanted to stop an Iranian aircraft landing there.

That was the official justification.

The internationally recognised Yemeni government said the flight had entered Yemeni airspace without its permission, that Ansarallah, the Houthis were trying to establish direct Iranian flights into territory they control, and that this was a violation of Yemeni sovereignty.

So they bombed the runway.

Very decisive.

Very muscular.

Very “we are absolutely in charge here”, provided you ignore the awkward detail that Sanaa itself is not actually under their control and the aircraft had already crossed into Yemen before anybody started congratulating themselves.

The plane was a Mahan Air aircraft coming from Iran, reportedly carrying an Ansarallah delegation back into Yemen. The Saudi-backed government wanted it stopped from landing at Sanaa. That was the point of the strike. Not to send a vague warning. Not to make the arrivals board look untidy. To stop that aircraft entering through a Houthi-controlled airport.

And yes, they did stop it landing at Sanaa.

For about five minutes, that probably looked rather clever.

Then the pilot diverted roughly 150 kilometres down the coast and landed at Hodeidah instead.

The plane arrived.

The passengers got off.

The delegation entered Yemen, back in Houthi controlled territory.

So the grand operation to stop the Iranian flight had managed to change the airport code.

That was it.

Right, so Donald Trump has declared himself guardian of the Strait of Hormuz.

Guardian. Protector. Toll collector. Apparently the man saw one of the world’s most dangerous shipping lanes, made dangerous by him of course and thought, yes, what this needs is branding.

And a fee, bearing mind Iran was told it couldn’t do that. The orange one has decided he can though. Small thing Donnie, you still don’t control the Strait, but let’s no stop him from hoisting himself by his own demented petard.

A 20% fee, no less, because naturally, if there is one thing global trade has been crying out for, it is Donald Trump standing at the mouth of the Persian Gulf with a clipboard and a card reader.

But there is one other, rather significant problem with this idea, aside from the idea Trump would have a scooby about how to operate a card reader, he’s more likely to chew it I fancy, and quite aside from the whole who is in control here angle.

Hardly anybody is crossing the Strait.

MarineTraffic tracked only two tankers completing passage during one twenty-four-hour period. Two. Trump says the strait is open, Trump says America controls it, Trump says America is protecting it, but the ships appear to have missed that memo.

Then two UAE-linked tankers were struck, one sailor was killed, eight more were injured, Trump’s scheme has been called piracy and not by who you might expect, and America’s latest contribution to maritime safety involved sending exploding robot boats towards Bandar Abbas.

So yes, Trump’s Hormuz protection racket has suffered two fairly substantial blows.

The ships don’t trust it.

And quite a lot of the world think Trump is doing his best impression of a bright orange Blackbeard.

Right, so Israel is once again rattling the sabre at Iran.

Another operation. Another historic mission. Another promise that this time, somehow, the same people who have spent years chewing through soldiers, reservists, vehicles, ammunition, money and basic supplies are going to produce a fresh war out of the cupboard like there’s another fully staffed army hiding behind the beans.

There isn’t.

The IDF says it is thousands of personnel short. Active reservist numbers are being cut at the same time, which defies logic. The army is still chasing billions of shekels it says it still needs. There are reports of spare-parts shortages, repair backlogs and units struggling just to get basic supplies now on the war fronts they are already on, including water.

And yet here comes another Iran plan, because of course it does.

Because Netanyahu’s answer to an army worn down by war is apparently more war. The man has one button and he has absolutely battered it.

Now, of course this does not mean every Israeli soldier has vanished, every water container is dry and every tank has been abandoned at the roadside with the bonnet up.

It means something far more politically damaging than that.

The army is still there. It is still dangerous. It is still capable of inflicting enormous destruction as it carries on doing every single day in Gaza, in Lebanon, in the West Bank and so on.

But it is also telling its own government that the gap between what Netanyahu wants it to do and what it can keep doing, given all of this, is getting wider.

It’s not that “Israel has no army”, it’s that Israel has a government that can’t get it through their heads that the army is finite.

Yet when this became too obvious to ignore, Netanyahu and Smotrich appeared together in the most tin-eared way they could.