Is Liz Truss potty or very very clever?

For the moment the jury is out. Either Liz Truss has thought up some crackpot scheme to boost the UK's economy based on wishful thinking and back-of-the-envelope mathmatics or she has a brilliant brain which has worked out everything very carefully and we shall all be in clover in the not too distant future. The trouble is all the best economic brains are saying she has got it wrong and that her tax-cutting strategy will doom the country to becoming a banana republic, or rather, a banana monarchy, as Politico put it. Of course Truss's rival for Number 10, Rishi Sunak, said during his campaign for the leadership that tax-cutting would have to wait and that the first priority was to deal with inflation. That to me sounds like common sense. If only the Tory party members had listened. I can understand Truss's desire to do something bold and dramatic in her first weeks in power but to launch into a crazily risky economic venture when a recession and inflation are kicking at her heels would seem to be the height of folly. Now of course she is digging a bigger hole for herself by refusing to change her mind and indeed saying she has more, much more, tax-cutting up her sleeve. I fear the answer to my question in the headline is that our new prime minister is verging towards being bonkers.

Putin annexing like Hitler did

Putin is due to annexe four provinces of eastern and southern Ukraine tomorrow. Just like that, as Hitler did when he annexed pat of Czechoslovakia in 1939. The provinces are Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizka and Kherson. The question is, what will Ukraine and what will the West do about it? There is still serious fighting going on in all four provinces, so will Putin say that any action taken by Ukraine against these provinces is the same as attacking Russia, giving him an excuse to launch a massive, possibly nuclear strike? Well, he did nothing when Ukraine launched attacks on military targets in Crimea, annexed by Putin in 2014. So I think it's all bluff. The Kyiv government is committed to recovering all territory taken by Russian troops. They cannot and will not stop fighting in these provinces, and Nato will continue to provide the weapons for them to defeat the Russians. So Putin's bluff will be called. The annexing of these four provinces is illegal, so the fighting will carry on. The danger is clear, however. The potential for a wider war, involving Nato in a more direct interventionist role is getting closer and closer. Are Joe Biden, Liz Truss, Emmanuel Macron and other Nato leaders ready for this?

Liz Truss in the middle of an economic whirlwind

Only three weeks into her new job as prime minister, Liz Truss gambled everything and is currently losing big time, or I should say we are all losing big time, with mortgage rates shooting up, inflation looking recessionary, investments tumbling in value and imported goods significantly more costly. How much longer can she wait before she changes track and reverses the huge cuts in taxes, especially for the rich? Is she a "this lady is not for turning" Maggie Thatcher or will she crumble and admit she and her chancellor, Kwasi Kwateng, got it all wrong? I guess she will hold on for as long as possible, desperately hoping that the value of the pound will start to rise against the dollar and all will become shipshape as, I presume, she had envisaged. But with the unprecedented criticism from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), there are growing accusations that she has acted irresponsibly and recklessly. She must be under huge pressure behind the curtains in Number 10. If she did reverse everything that would be the end of her politically. She would never be able to live it down, and the Labour party would be triumphant. So she will stick it out but meanwhile the economy will go down the tubes and if it doesn't improve she is going to be finished anyway. I don't feel sorry for her, but I do feel anguish for the millions of people who are now suffering financial hardship across the country. What a mess and at a time when Putin is doing his best to ruin the whole world.

Flying saucers "officially" a threat!!

America’s spy chiefs appear to have been victims of a suspected insider prankster after a new logo was published on an official government website highlighting flying saucers as one of the top aerial threats facing the United States. The image of a flying saucer appeared over a map of North America on an intelligence logo that also included a Russian Su-57 fighter jet, a wedge-shaped hypersonic-style air vehicle and a drone similar to versions produced by China and Iran. The Pentagon now has a new department which studies “unidentified aerial phenomenon”, otherwise known as UFOs. However, the appearance of a flying saucer on the logo of the aviation section of the Office of the National Director of Intelligence (ODNI), caused quite a stir before it was hastily taken down. The claimed new logo was published by the ODNI’s National Intelligence Manager-Aviation (NIM Aviation), headed by US Air Force Major-General Daniel Simpson. The previous and now reinstated logo is less dramatic and features a flying golden eagle above the Great Seal, the principal national symbol of the United States. The flying-saucer image seemed at first to be an appropriate update following a resurgence of interest both in the military and in Congress over potential alien spacecraft witnessed by pilots and UFO fanatics. Multiple drone-like aerial vehicles that flew at speed over US warships off the coast of California in 2019 were initially claimed to be alien spacecraft. But the US Navy concluded they were drones from a Hong Kong -registered spy ship. The establishment of a new Pentagon department to examine all sightings of unexplained fast-moving objects in the sky underlined the continuing interest in ensuring that alien phenomena were not entering American airspace. The mission of the aviation section of ODNI is to identify, analyse and warn of potential threats to the US in the “air domain”. The inclusion of a flying saucer alongside the genuine threat posed by hypersonic glide vehicles developed by China and Russia, seemed far-fetched. But the “new logo” was instantly seized on by UFO fans as evidence of the US government taking the alien spacecraft threat seriously. However, a spokesman for the ODNI said: “NIM Aviation erroneously posted an unofficial and incorrect logo.”

How will Biden react if Putin launches nukes at Ukraine?

If Putin in desperation hits Ukraine with tactical nuclear weapons (still I believe a very remote possibility) how on earth will Joe Biden respond? He will have the almost impossible job of deciding whether to answer in kind (surely not), launch massive conventional strikes against Russian troops in Ukraine or even in Russia itself (the US military top dogs might well advise that) or just double up on sanctions to isolate Russia even more? The trouble is, using nukes would be such an enormous step, both for Putin and for the whole planet that a sanctions response would be seen everywhere, especially in Moscow, as weakness and an admission that deterrence had failed. But any form of military retaliation would lead to unpredictable consequences, even to the one thing the Cold War succeeded in preventing - nuclear exchanges between the US and Russia. Thus Armageddon for all of us. We had this in 1962 during the Cuban missile crisis when Nikita Krushchev, as Max Hastings has pointed out in his new book on the crisis, hastily stepped back when he realised the potential consequences of his reckless gamble - putting nuclear missiles on Cuba to threaten the US. But is Putin more reckless than Krushchev? Is Putin a bigger gambler knowing he has Biden to outsmart rather than John F Kennedy? There has to be a serious risk that Putin might go for the high stakes option because he might convince himself that Biden will do nothing except increase sanctions. But going nuclear would be an unbelievably dangerous move and Putin must know that. So Biden has to make clear to Putin, if he hasn't already done so, that if he launches a nuclear strike on Ukraine, the US WILL respond with a military attack and leave the targets and scale ambiguous, to make the Russian leader sweat. The White House is talking of catastrophic consequences in the event of a Russian nuclear attack. Catastrophic for Ukraine and for the world but will it be catstrophic for Putin and Russia? That's what Putin needs to be convinced about. Then he will leave the nuke option well alone.

Could it be that the Putin era is coming to an end?

Russia is a vast country and when newspapers report of mass protests against Putin's call-up of 300,000 reservists for the war in Ukraine, that doesn't mean the whole nation is in uproar. But the very existence of protests at all when criticism of the war in Ukraine is banned by law does demonstrate that Putin is rapidly losing his popularity. At some time, if there are more and more arrests of men who refuse to fight in Ukraine or of protestors who demonstrate in the streets, there could be a tipping point when Putin's continuing role as president might come under scrutiny. If he fails to get the 300,000 reservists he is after, will this be another ingredient in his downfall or will he just blame the military and sack a few more senior officers? I think there is little doubt that Putin will fight his corner to the end. He is not going to give up, either the war or his presidency, because of failings by the military in Ukraine or protests in the streets. However, the other powerful elite components of the regime that props him up might begin to wonder if he is still the right man to be the boss in the Kremlin. If that were to happen, then there could be bloody reprisals. To survive, Putin needs a victory in Ukraine to prove that his strategy is working, but the chances of that happening are getting less and less likely. As I wrote before, the 300,000 additional troops will just be cannon fodder for the Ukrainian artillery and advancing combat units. The next few weeks will be decisive. And dangerous.

Will Putin ever be held accountable?

The UN commission of inquiry examining evidence of war crimes by Russian troops in Ukraine have come up with numerous examples of torture, rape and brutal murder. The victims, the UN said, ranged from four to 83. The details are horrific. Will the soldiers who perpetrated these crimes ever be arrested and charged? But more importantly, will Vladimir Putin who is in total charge of every obscenity going on against Ukraine and its people, be held fully accountable? After reading the evidence of war crimes, I believe every decent leader in the world should be calling for Putin to be subject to an international arrest warrant. Wherever he goes outside Russia he should be detained and sent to the international criminal court in The Hague. I have a strong feeling, especially after Putin's mobilisation of 300,000 reservists, many of whom are desperately trying to avoid being pressganged by leaving the country, that the majority of Russians will be happy and relieved for this monster of a leader to be put on trial for his crimes. It is time for the international community to act.

How much is Donald Trump actually worth?

No one really knows how rich Donald Trump is. It has always been assumed and reported that he is a billionaire with properties and golf courses and hotels all over the place, a portfolio that cetainly sounds like he is a man of substance, rich beyond measure. But Letitia "Tish" James, New York attorney general, has been delving into his businesses like a woman obsessed. Her report claiming that Trump and his family inflated everything from the value of properties to the actual size of some of his apartments has been spectacularly revealing. For example, Trump claimed his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida was worth $739 million whereas she stipulated that it was worth a tenth of that. He made his valuation based on the fact that if he sold it all up for residential housing it would be worth that much but he had signed deeds which prohibited his residence from being sold for housing. Then there is his apartment in Trump Tower in Manhattan. I love this one. He said it was 30,000sq ft in size but the attorney general said it was actually only 11,000sq ft. This is Trump to a T. When he was president everything he said was peppered with hyperbole. When Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, was making noises about attacking the US, Trump said he would annihilate North Korea if it launched any sort of attack on America. Then he declared the US had bigger and better nuclear weapons than any other country, and, of course, he also claimed he won the 2020 presidential election when the voting numbers said different. So Tish James has her work cut out. Her case against Trump looks well founded but the former president has dismissed it all as a political witch hunt. As usual.

The allegations against Trump are proliferating

It's one of the bizarre aspects of American politics. However many allegations and accusations are made against Donald Trump, his businesses, his presidency, his personal life et al, his popularity ratings remain the same. None of his loyal supporters seem to mind that he has been accused of taking home 100 of the most classified documents and hanging on to them without any explanation, allegedly ramping up the value of his properties and businesses which is contrary to the law and facing a potential court case for alleged rape way back. No, his supporters say, just carry on and please become our president again in 2024. Boris Johnson was accused of all kinds of things when he was UK prime minister, including not telling the truth about parties held at Number 10 during the pandemic lockdown and appointing a man to an official role in his government who had been accused of groping other men in a Conservative club, and he was forced to resign. He is no longer prime minister. Trump, by contrast, still refuses to agree he lost the 2020 presidential election and removed more than 10,000 classified documents, including those 100 top top secret ones, from the White House when left for his residence in Florida and now also faces a potential fine of $250 million for being loose with the truth about his businesses and yet the whole world expects him to stand for reelection in 2024. The rape allegation comes from writer E Jean Carroll who has decided to file a new lawsuit against Trump. In his usual way Trump just dismisses all this stuff as Democrat-inspired witchhunting. The fact is that between now and when the 2024 presidential campaign starts to get serious next year, Trump is going to find himself facing a plethora of allegations that would bring down most men. But will it make a difference to Trump's hopes of sitting down once again in charge in the Oval Office? It seems not.

Putin now consumed by paranoia which is highly dangerous

Vladimir Putin and his closest cohorts firmly believe, or at least they say they firmly believe, that it was actually the West which started the war in Ukraine and that as a result the very existence of motherland Russia is now at stake. Putin, like his predecessors, with the exception of Gorbachov and Yeltsin, is suffering from a huge dose of paranoia. He believes everyone in the West is plotting to destroy his beloved country. If only he knew the truth and accepted it. He ordered his troops across the border into Ukraine and they are doing very badly. OK it's largely thanks to all the heavy weapons provided by the West, but Nato, Mr Putin, is not plotting to conquer Russia - you can keep Russia - but to defend a sovereign country from Russian occupation. But Putin's closest aides seem to think Ukraine is full of Nato troops fighting alongside the Ukrainians. This is all geting highly dangerous. Now Putin has ordered a partial mobilisation of 300,000 reservists, all of whom at some point will have received military training. They will be the latest cannon fodder for the Kremlin's disastrous war strategy. As for threatening to use nuclear weapons and his steely statement that he is not bluffing are obviously intended to frighten the West. But western support for Ukraine appears to be rock solid. The general view of Nato governmens and military is that everything Putin is now doing is further evidence that he has failed in Ukraine. He is reacting like a bully who knows he cannot win. The trouble with this assessment is that we are dealing here with a leader who thinks the world is against him and he wants to strike back with everything he has got in his weapons cupboard. As every day goes by and as the latest setback in Ukraine unfolds the more likely it is that Putin will do something catastrophically bad. Firing off tactical nuclear weapons cannot be ruled out, not with a man like Putin with his fnger on the button.

Top Russian tank captured in Ukraine

One of Russia’s most advanced tanks operating in Ukraine has been captured in near-perfect condition during advances by Ukrainian troops in the Kharkiv region. The T-90M battle tank was found abandoned with one of the tracks missing. The recovery of the T-90M will provide Ukraine and Nato allies with a unique opportunity to examine Russia’s most capable operational tank. Although the Ukrainians have destroyed at least one T-90M tank since the Russian invasion began nearly seven months ago, this is the first time one has been captured and it will be seen as an intelligence gift for the Kyiv government and for the western alliance. At the start of the war in Ukraine, the Russian military deployed older-generation tanks such as the T-72 and T-80 which were built more than 40 years ago. They proved to be vulnerable to man-portable anti-tank weapons supplied by Nato and to armed drones such as the Turkish Bayraktar TB2 combat aerial vehicle. Hundreds of T-72s and T-80s have been destroyed. The T-90M was first brought into Ukraine in April, although only in small numbers. Russia’s T-14 Armata tank is more technologically advanced than the T-90M but it has not been sent to Ukraine and is yet to become officially operational. The T-90M which is also known as the Proryv-3 or Breakthrough-3, is not a revolutionary tank. The first T-90 model entered service with the Russian army in 1992. The T-90M version became operational in April 2020. However, the captured tank will still provide the alliance with valuable intelligence. It has a new gunner’s thermal sight called PNM-T which was designed using exclusively Russian-made components. Previously Russian tank manufacturers had relied on western technology for key parts but after international sanctions were introduced they were forced to depend on domestically-produced components for the gunner sights. The T-90M also has advanced protection to reduce the impact of the latest western armour-piercing tank rounds, and a new turret design. The tank’s 125mm cannon fires both standard shells and anti-tank guided missiles. A Pentagon official disclosed this week that it was possible US tanks might be supplied to Ukraine. There had been hesitation in the past about providing tanks. Other Nato allies, however, have sent tanks. The Czech Republic was the first to do so. The US has encouraged Nato countries with Russian-made tanks to help Ukraine which has its own stock of ex-Warsaw Pact tanks and armoured vehicles. But it’s the first time a senior US defence official has acknowledged that the Pentagon is also now prepared to provide tanks.

Farewell to Queen Elizabeth II

There is no nation in the world who does ceremonies - let alone state funerals - the way Great Britain does them. The state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II was the most perfectly organised and implemented ceremony for seven decades. And now we have the coronation of King Charles III to look forward to. For those in the world who don't believe in monarchies or who live with presidents as heads of state, the funeral of Queen Elizabeth today will still surely be a cause for wonder at the sheer majesty of the whole procedure. For us Brits today was truly a unifying moment for the country. There may be exceptions somewhere around but the vast majority of people not only respected the Queen but felt enormous affection for her and gratitude for what she achieved in her life. Her smile was mesmerising and we shall all miss her. I am sure that literally billions of people around the world will have watched the state funeral as it unfolded. The only thing that went wrong as far as I could see was when one of the senior clergy in Westminster Abbey dropped a piece of paper that fell from his service sheet. It lay there prominently for about ten minutes before being picked up away from the gaze of the television cameras. I know the royal houseold spent years preparing for the death of the Queen but it was still an awesome sight to see the cortege procession from the Abbey all the way to Buckingham Place and then on to the Wellington Arch at Hyde Park where the coffin was transferred to the royal hearse. About 3,000 members of the armed forces took part in the one-and-a-half mile procession with the key members of the royal family walking behind, keeping in perfect step to the banging of the drum and the slow funeral march music. Just totally immaculate. Many American commentators have cast doubt on whether the monarchy in this country will survive now that the Queen has died. But King Charles III looks the part to succeed his mother and the next generation of potential kings and queens were all there in the procession - Prince William, the new Prince of Wales, and his children, George, Charlotte and Louis. The monarchy, I think, will survive. Very few people in Britain, I suspect, really want to have as their head of state some politician chosen to be president.

Putin's alleged friend Xi Zinping

Vladimir Putin went to Uzbekistan to meet with Xi Zinping and came away with....nothing much. The Chinese leader, as enigmatic as ever, called Putin his old friend and Putin called President Xi his dear friend. But apart from that, Putin got very little. He got no support for his war in Ukraine and even had to acknowledge in public that his Chinese friend had concerns about what was going on in Ukraine. You bet Xi has concerns. It would have been all right if Putin had done what he promised Xi at the Winter Olympics he would do which was to invade Ukraine and subjugate the whole country in days. Xi could have put up with that, especially since Putin had always been so supportive about China's plan to grab Taiwan. But not only has Putin failed to subjugate Ukraine but he provoked the hated western alliance into arming the Kyiv government with missiles, rockets and artillery that have forced his troops to run or surrender. Putin and Xi share their dislike of everything western especially democracy and human rights values but the Chinese leader has to do business with the US and others because in this globalised world Beijing has little other choice. Whereas Russia is now isolated from most of the world and its economy is going to be so badly damaged by the war and western sanctions that Xi might think there's not much point in allying himself to the pugnacious Putin for much longer. Sergey Lavrov, the so-called Russian foreign minister, claimed the talks in Uzbekistan had gone really well and the two leaders were of like mind about everything but it is patently not true. Xi doesn't want the embarrassment of helping his "old friend" while the war in Ukraine continues and certainly won't give him weapons to finish it off. So Putin returned to Moscow with empty hands and empty pockets. The "old friend" nomenclature might not last much longer.

Donald Trump's veiled warning about any move to indict him

Donald Trump is expert at giving ominous warnings while claiming he is doing no such thing. In a television interview the former president said when asked if he faced indictment for keeping classified documents at his home in Florida that he had done nothing wrong and that an indictment was therefore pointless and unnecessary. But then he added that he didn't think the American people would accept him being indicted and there would be "problems" if he was. Understandably the interviewer asked him if people might think from that remark that he was inciting the public to violence. Trump denied it. "That's not inciting, I'm just saying what my opinion is," he said. All very clever but he is probably right. Certainly none of his loyal band of supporters would back their beloved former president being indicted. But what steps they might take to make their views clear was not touched on by Trump. He was just expressing an opinion. No lawyer, whatever his political views, could make a case for incitement to violence based on that casual Trump remark. Nevertheless, Trump is no fool and he knows that people on his side will take his words to heart. If the Justice Department decides that there is sufficient evidence to charge Trump under the Espionage Act for hoarding classified documents, it is very likely that there will be a huge backlash from loyalists. Trump knows that and the Justice Department and Attorney General know that. So do they risk an indictment and face the potential consequences up and down the country, or do they play safe and drop the idea of indicting him? It should be a purely legal decision but it is far more likely that it will be tinged, if not, swallowed up by politics.

EU spy chief's planned visit to Taiwan cancelled over Beijing sensitivities

A secret plan by the European Union’s spy chief to visit Taiwan was scrapped after Beijing learned of the trip and put pressure on the EU to cancel it. Jose Casimiro Morgado, the Portuguese head of the EU’s intelligence services, had been due to fly to Taiwan in October, two months after Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the US House of Representatives, made her controversial visit. The Pelosi trip on August 2 provoked an aggressive military retaliation by China in and around the Taiwan Strait including the launching of short-range ballistic missiles. Two European diplomats who knew of the planned trip by Morgado said the details appeared to have been leaked to Beijing in advance, according to the Washington-based Politico newspaper. The cancellation underlines the intense sensitivities surrounding any trips to Taiwan by western officials. It has not been confirmed whether the latest trip was leaked or whether Beijing discovered the plan by other means. When news broke of the proposed October Taiwan visit, EU officials attempted to downplay the Taipei government’s understanding that Morgado was planning to fly to the island to consult his Taiwanese intelligence counterparts. One EU official told Politico that Morgado was only intending to hold meetings with Taiwanese officials on the phone. But this less controversial form of contact was also cancelled after Beijing’s reaction to Pelosi’s arrival in Taipei in August. “As a general rule we never comment in public on anything related to the daily business of the European Extzernal Action Service (EEAS),” Peter Stano, spokesman for EU foreign affairs and security policy, said. Beijing opposes any form of official exchanges between Taiwan and countries with diplomatic ties to China. The EU is China’s largest trading partner and maintains bilateral relations at the highest level. Morgado is director of the intelligence and situation centre which is part of the EEAS. He took over the spy chief role in 2019 and answers directly to Josep Borrell, high representative for foreign affairs and security policy. Morgado was formerly director-general of Portugal’s strategic defence intelligence service. Meanwhile, as Taipei’s defence ministry announced it had detected 24 Chinese aircraft and five warships around Taiwan, it emerged that the White House is coming under pressure to enhance defence relations with the Taiwanese government.The Senate foreign relations committee is voting on a bill, The Taiwan Policy Act, that would significantly expand arms supplies to Taiwan and impose sanctions on top Chinese officials, including President Xi Zinping, and financial institutions “should China be engaged in a significant escalation in hostile action in or against Taiwan”. In Beijing, Zhu Fenglian, a spokesman for the foreign ministry’s Taiwan affairs office, said the Chinese government strongly opposed the proposed new act and condemned Taipei for “colluding with US Congress people”.

Trump stays mum about why he took classified documents

Was it carelessness, curiosity, a hoarding tendency, a belief he had the right, or something more sinister? The 11,000 classified documents, some of them so secret their distribution was minimal, which are now at the heart of a legal tussle between the US Justice Department and Donald Trump's lawyers, have a huge story to tell. I like the comments made by a lawyer specialising in national security law that appear in The Hill. He said the documents either contain information which can hurt Trump and he doesn't want anyone else to see it, or they contain information that can hurt other people and he wants to have it or they contain information that other people would want and would need to come to him to get it. The last possibility is the sinister one. Did Trump have a devious motivation for removing all these secret documents from the White House and storing them at his residence in Mar-a-Lago? Was he prepared to use the secret documents to gain him some advantage? This is all speculation because Trump and his lawyers have not given any explanation why the former president kept the documents at his residence in Florida. All they have said is that he had declassified them as was his right. But while it is possible for a president to declassify documents it has to be part of a government-wide process to ensure that nothing damaging to national security is released. A president on his own doesn't know whether a document contains hidden secrets, such as sources for information. That's why the whole intelligence community would be involved in a proposal to declassify secret documents. So until Trump or his lawyers come up with a proper explanation for why the 45th president removed them and stored them at his home, I think it is justified to speculate that he may have had some nefarious motivation in mind. If that is true and can be proved then the former president is in deep trouble.

Russian troops in Ukraine: fight, flee or surrender

In the face of the Ukrainian military Blitzkrieg in the north east around Kharkiv, Russian troops now have three options: fight, flee or surrender. So far the majority have taken the middle option and run away, leaving behind huge stockpiles of ammunition, weapons and armoured vehicles. Even where Russian troops have dug in to try and defend territory seized shortly after the invasion in February, the severe disruption to arms supply lines and the abandonment of so many weapons depots have forced them to retreat. The only military option left for the Russian commanders is to maintain artillery strikes against advancing Ukrainian troops and continue to target civilians with long-range attacks. However, the US high mobility artillery rocket systems (Himars) and long-range munitions provided by Germany and other Nato nations have successfully suppressed Russia’s ability to sustain the attacks. Ukraine’s counter-offensive in the south around Kherson is having the same impact on Russian troops. Many are dropping their weapons and retreating. CIA director William Burns summed up the dilemma confronting President Putin. Speaking at a conference in Washington, he said Putin had seriously underestimated Ukraine’s courage and capacity for combat. It was “hard to see Putin’s record in the war as anything but a failure,” Burns said. Putin, he added, was surrounded by advisers who were too afraid to challenge him. The Russian leader had also miscalculated that the US and Europe would lose their resolve to back Ukraine the longer the war continued.

London will be awash with heads of state for the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II

Every head of state and national leader, with the exception of Vladimir Putin who is persona non grata (for ever) and Kim Jong-un who is too dangerous to go anywhere, will want to be in London on Monday September 19 for the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II. Will President Xi Zinping turn up I wonder? The logistical challenge to fit them all in and cope with their heavy limousines and bodyguards and hangers-on will be astronomical. The Brits are terribly good at this sort of thing and have the experience to make sure that all the seating in Westminster Abbey where the service will take place goes to the right people in the right place and order so as not to undercut protocol sensitivities but if President Xi comes where do you put him in the pecking order? And where will Harry and Meghan sit this time? At the side as they were for the Duke of Edinburghs's funeral at St George's Chapel, Windsor, or embedded among the top royals in the front rows? With only a week to go before the state funeral, every head of state and political leader invited will have to be careful not to overshadow the funeral by engaging in obvious diplomatic toings and froings, although historically it is true that state funerals attended by world leaders do provide a unique opportunity for whispered chats and secret deals. But for the Queen's funeral nothing will be allowed to get in the way of the main focus of the event, the celebration and commemoration of the longest-reigning monarch in British history. Among the leaders known to be attending will be President Biden, President Macron and President Erdogan of Turkey. Plenty of room for behind-the-scenes chats there but the cameras will be watching.

The Russians are on the run

Ukraine's military counter-offensive against Russian troops, in the north and south, is having extraordinary success. The Russian troops are on the run, retreating from their long-occcupied towns and villages around Kharkiv in the north and Kherson in the south. Even Vladimir Putin must realise that his "special military operation" is going horribly wrong. The Russian troops are not only retreating, they are losing territory which they need for their logistical supply routes. What this will mean in the longer term is difficut to judge. If the retreat continues and Ukraine liberates Kharkiv and Kherson, it would be a staggering blow to Putin. But how will he react? The danger is that he will blame the West for helping Ukraine to ruin his dreams of controlling his neighbour and will lash out in some way. We could be approaching a dangerous time. Putin regards nuclear weapons as usable systems when he perceives the Russian nation to be under threat. We don't know what is in his mind but if he is facing a humiliating defeat in Kharkiv and Kherson, absolutely vital cities for his occupation strategy, he could strike out in a way that will have an impact on all of us.

Thank God Putin won't be coming to the Queen's state funeral

It's about the only good bit of news since the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Vladimir Putin has made it clear through his spokesman that he will not be attending the Queen's funeral at Westminster Abbey. I doubt he was personally invited anyway but it's a relief he won't be arriving in London although I guess if he did he could be arrested and charged with war crimes and sent to The Hague international criminal court. Putin must have taken this into account. Anyway his presence in Westminster Abbey would have been a disgrace. He will instead send some flunky to represent Russia, I assume the Russian ambassador in London. The only good thing Putin has done is to make nice comments about the Queen and to praise her for her long reign. He was happy to enjoy her hospitality, including riding in a carriage down The Mall, when he came on a state visit to London in 2009. He will never be granted another state visit, that's for sure.

Such a sad and tragic announcement from Buckingham Palace

Queen Eizabeth II has died. A very very sad moment for the whole country.The Royal Family had gathered at Balmoral to be with the Queen as her health deteriorated. I had previously written that I hoped she would recover and would live for many more years. In such a turbulent political and social time, we probably needed the Queen more than ever. I met her only once in my journalistic career. That was in 1986 during the Commonwealth Conference in the Bahamas in the summer of 1986. I was then Diplomatic Correspondent of the Daily Express. I and my fellow diplomatic correspondents from the other major newspapers had been invited to attend a cocktail party on board HMY Britannia in the port of Nassau. Those were the glory days when the Queen had her own royal yacht. We all shook her white-gloved hand as we arrived on the deck and waited for all the Commonwealth leaders to turn up and join us. Most of them did, on time, but there were some errant prime ministers and presidents who had decided to journey to Britannia up river by boat instead of by chauffered limousine like everyone else. They got hit by a strong wind and had to take cover which delayed their arrival by about half an hour. As I recall, one of them was Rajiv Ghandi,the Indian prime minister. I think Kenneth Kaunda, the Zambian president, was also in the river boat. The Queen was, as they say, not amused. Cocktail parties on board Brittania, like everything else to do with the Royal Family, were planned with impeccable detail. They did not allow for the late arrival of guests who just fancied taking a trip up the river before meeting Her Majesty. The Queen chatted with us amicably for ten minutes or so but then she moved to the guardrail and started drumming her fingers on the immaculately polished wood and peered over the side as if looking for the lost leaders. She clearly thought it was bad form to keep her waiting. But when they eventually arrived, looking like sheepish schoolboys all humble and apologetic, the Queen produced her dazzling smile and welcomed them on board her yacht. There was no hint of a scolding. But we reporters knew better. She had definitely not looked pleased as the minutes ticked by. What laughs! Today her brilliant smile will live on as we come to terms with her death.

A winter of Putin revenge

I get the feeling Vladimir Putin is looking forward to winter so that he can read all abut the sufferng he will be causing to people in Europe sitting in their homes without any heating! What a monster he is. As the Nato secretary-general wrote in an oped in the Financial Times today, we in Europe are facing energy crises because of Putin's war in Ukraine and his exploitation of his most powerful blackmail card - restricting or cutting off gas supplies. But the Ukrainian people are fighting for their very existence and we need to carry on supporting them. But the winter could be bleak for millions of people in Europe. Putin is hoping that keeping European families cold and miserable throughout the winter, the US and Nato allies will be forced to back down and give up on Ukraine. It is going to be tough, there is no doubt about that. But if Putin is allowed to get away with destroying Ukraine and killing thousands of people, then the future for all of us will truly be very bleak indeed.

The new incumbent at Number 10 Downing Street

Boris is gone, Liz is in. From today it's the Liz Truss show at Number 10. The remarkable thing about these two Conservative leaders is that neither of them was ever thought to be prime ministerial material when they were younger. People who knew them in their younger years are now saying it never entered their head that either of them would end up in Number 10. Well Boris made it by sheer exhibitionism and charisma and dogged in-your-face politics. Liz, on the other hand, doesn't have Boris's joie de vivre but she certainly looks a determined lady. In my view she wasn't a great Foreign Secretary, as Rishi Sunak, the failed would-be prime minister, claimed, but then neither was Boris Johnson. Both lacked the Peter Carrington/Douglas Hurd natural dignity and presence. Carringon and Hurd were the ultimate conservative party spokesmen for their country. They had what it takes to be foreign secretary of the United Kingdom. Class sums it up in one word. Neither Boris nor Liz did. Now we have to wait and see whether Boris's sucessor at Number 10 is going to have the necessary hutzpah to take control of this country's mass of problems, economic and social, and get us out of the mess we have been sinking into for the last three years. If Liz wants to be another Maggie Thatcher, she has her work cut out. I can't see Putin thinking of her as the Iron Lady. But let's see.

Does Putin have nightmares about Himars?

Vladimir Putin keeps his thoughts and worries about his war in Ukraine to himself, except when he lashes out and sacks a general or an admiral for failing to get the battle wrapped up. But one thing is for certain, the Russian leader must be having nightmares about the American Himars rocket system which more than any other weapon provided by the US is hitting the Russian operation very hard, every day. Weeks back, or was it months, Russian officials such as Sergey Lavrov, the foreign minister, warned that if the US continued to provide weapons to Ukraine Moscow would regard this as American intervention and America would have to face the conseqences. But I can't recall Lavrov or anyone else bleating on about this for ages, even though the use by the Ukrainians of the Himars system has had a devastating effect on Russian armour and troop positions and ammunition dumps. The US has spent $10 billion so far on weapons to Ukraine which is a staggering amount in six months and it's one of the main reasons why the war in Ukraine has not gone Russia's way. Putin must be furious but he has realised that there is nothing he can do about it except play around with gas supplies to Europe because if he tries to disrupt the arms flow to Ukraine by attacking convoy routes from Nato east European countries he will face a war with the alliance. So he has to take the punishment. And it seems the Biden administration no longer cares about Moscow retaliation for the arms supplies. When the war began Joe Biden was all cautious about not being inflammatory but now he seems to have no concerns at all. Putin should be worried about that and the continued success of the Himars rocket system.

Biden and Trump are now bitter enemies

Looks like the 2024 presidential election has already begun. Biden denounced the extremism inspired by Trump and now Trump has called Biden an enemy of the state for allowing his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida to be raided by the FBI. And it's only September 2022. So the two presumed leading candidates for the White House in 2024 are aleady at loggerheads and and setting up their stalls on either side of the divided barriers that epitomise the United States today. So we have the prospect of two years of haranguing and vitriol which will be guaranteed if Trump says what everyone now is expecting him to say which is that he intends to stand for the Republican nomination. There are still so many Republicans who still adore Trump that it's very difficult to see any other potential candidate making any ground at all. People like Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state, will, I am sure, bide his time and wait for 2028 if Trump throws his hat into the ring. It would be political suicide to do anything else. Biden claims he will relish takng on Trump again but if the two men are aleady at daggers drawn with two years to go I wonder if he will have the stamina to fight the former president.

Joe Biden hits out at Trump, sort of.

Good for Joe Biden. In his big speech last night he aimed pretty strong words, for him, at Republicans who warn of violence and bloodshed in the streets if Donald Trump is charged over keeping classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence. He appeared to be referring particularly to Senator Lindsay Graham, close ally of Trump. It's about time Biden took on the Republicans who are dividng the country and giving their support to a man who was probably the most dangerous president in US history. The trouble is, Graham is probably right. If Trump is charged under the 1917 Espionage Act there may well be violent protests throughout America but for the longstanding senator to issue such a warning will stir up those same Trump loyalists who launched the devastating assault on the Capitol on January 6 last year. So Biden is right to criticise the Republicans such as Graham who are warning of violence if the Justice Department dares to charge Trump. What a state the US is in right now. Biden is too cautious to rant against Trump himself. It would also be politically dangerous to do so. But his plea for sanity was timely, with the midterm elections just two months away.

Taiwan's battle with Chinese drones

The US is expected to supply Taiwan with new advanced weapons and technology to combat the surge in Chinese drone invasions of Taiwanese air space. The US state department is currently drawing up a $1.1 billion arms package for Taiwan under its foreign military sales programme. With the recent appearance of Chinese drones close to Taiwanese islands, US defence sources said it was reasonable to expect that counter-measure systems would be included. The Vampire counter-unmanned aerial system, designed to shoot down low-flying aircraft, including drones, is the most likely weapon to be sent to Taiwan. The same system is now being delivered to Ukraine to confront Russian and Iran-supplied armed and reconnaissance drones. For the first time, the Taiwanese military has been firing live rounds in warning shots to disperse the drones but has confirmed the next step would be to shoot them down. Beijing has been accused of resorting to “grey zone” warfare, using commercial drones to fly over Taiwanese military sites and then claiming no hostile intent. Shooting down or jamming a Chinese drone causing it to crash would not be as “escalatory” as targeting a fighter aircraft, Paul Scharre, a US drone warfare expert and former Pentagon official, said. Iran shot down an American Global Hawk long-range drone over the Strait of Hormuz in the Gulf in June, 2019, Scharre said But Donald Trump, then president, decided against taking any retaliatory action against Iran because no Americans were killed or injured. However, tensions between Taiwan and China are currently so tense following the invasion rehearsal carried out by Beijing last month when Nancy Pelosi, US Speaker of the House, visited Taipei, that any targeting of a Chinese drone, commercial or military, could lead to an aggressive response. Scharre suggested it might be prudent for Taiwan to use a “non-kinetic” system against approaching Chinese drones, jamming its electronics to bring it down. “Taiwan could then claim it was just a crash and deny any involvement,” he said. Taiwan says it will deploy drone defence systems around the island and indicated it has its own domestically-produced weapons. However, the US has greater experience of combating the increasing drone threat and a system such as the Vampire which fires missiles from the back of a truck could meet Taipei’s needs. The US developed effective counter-drone weapons when Islamic state militants in Iraq and Syria started attacking American troops using commercial drones converted to carry grenades and other munitions.