At first, this is not obvious.

Spoiler alert: The August 1924 uprising in Georgia did not succeed in overthrowing Soviet rule.  It took another more than six decades for that to happen.

In fact, the 1924 uprising barely got off the ground and was completely over within just a few days.

It was a footnote to history, nothing more.  In Georgia, it was largely forgotten.  As one Soviet historian pointed out, strangely no one thought to write a book about it.

BUT …

And here’s where serendipity comes in — according to a long-forgotten biography of the Georgian Social Democratic politician Irakli Tsereteli, translated from the Dutch and published fifty years ago, which I happen to own for some reason, the 1924 uprising played a critical role in splitting the international Left into Socialist and Communist factions.

Just to be clear: in 1917, there were no Socialist and Communist parties; they were all part of the same broad movement.

Lenin’s party called itself Social Democratic right up until the time it seized power in a coup d’etat (which has been mis-labelled as a ‘revolution’).

They were all members of an international organisation known as the Second International.

From 1917 until 1924, the pro- and anti-Bolshevik wings of the international Left were drifting apart.  In many countries, including Britain and the USA, separate Communist parties were formed and competed with existing Labour and Social Democratic parties.

In my book, I devoted an entire chapter to the historic 1922 meeting in the Reichstag in Berlin when leaders of Socialist and Communist parties — including some quite famous individuals such as the British Labour Party’s Ramsay MacDonald and the German Communist firebrand Clara Zetkin — met to try to bridge the divide.  They did not succeed.

Even then, as I discovered to my surprise, little Georgia played an outsized role in the debates.

There was a reason for this: a number of the key Socialist leaders at that meeting in Berlin, including MacDonald, had visited Georgia in 1920 as guests of the Social Democratic government.

They came away enamored — and were shocked when the Russian Soviet Army, acting on Stalin’s instructions — invaded Georgia the following year

For them, Georgian had become a personal matter.

At that 1922 event, attended by the Bolshevik firebrand Karl Radek, we also saw what may have been the first recorded example of “what-aboutism” which became a staple of the Communist party line.  It went something like this: if a Socialist made reference to Soviet Russia’s illegal aggression in Georgia, Radek would answer — “What about the Congo?”

Things came to a head in early September 1924 when news came out not only that the Georgian uprising had failed, but that a massacre had followed.

On the orders of an ambitious young officer of the Soviet secret police, the Cheka, Lavrenty Beria, who later became head of the secret police across the entire Soviet Union, hundreds and possibly thousands of unarmed, defenceless Georgians were shot.

Georgians who had been in prison before the uprising and had nothing to do with it were shot.

Writers and artists who had expressed criticism of the new regime were shot.

Family members, including children were shot.

Leading Social Democrats who had returned covertly to Georgia to assist in the uprising, including the former Minister of Agriculture — architect of the successful agrarian reform, the popular Mayor of Tbilisi, and the commander of the People’s Guard, all of them were arrested before the uprising, and they too were shot.

The entire leadership of the insurrection was found by the Bolsheviks holed up in a monastery.  They were all shot.

In contrast, the Communist prisoners taken by the rebellions had their lives spared.  To Chekists like Beria, that was a sign of weakness.  The tough, manly Bolsheviks happily machine-gunned their unarmed opponents in the district of Vake, today one of the loveliest parts of Tbilisi.  Mass graves were uncovered there years later.

Why was there such a cruel and murderous over-reaction by the Soviet authorities?

Part of the reason for the bloodbath was that the Soviet leaders — including Stalin and his crony Ordzhonikidze — panicked at the time of the uprising, and months afterwards as well.

The encrypted telegrams sent from the local Soviet leadership in Georgia to their bosses in Moscow showed just how worried they were.  Ordzhnokidze, claimed that the entire country was in the grip of armed rebellion — when in fact nothing of the sort had taken place.

They were convinced, as Stalin said months later, that the tiny, poorly organised rebellion in Georgia posed an existential threat to the Soviet regime.

Stalin and others compared the tiny Georgian uprising to the famous Kronstadt revolt of 1921 which really did shake the Soviet regime to its core.  They compared it as well to the little-remembered Tambov revolt which was a large scale peasant insurgency that mobilised thousands of fighters and captured vast territories from the Soviets before being bloodily suppressed.

Why Stalin and his comrades felt that is something we can speculate on and discuss.

It may have to do with the enduring power in Georgia — and not only in Georgia — of  the ideas and ideals of democratic socialism.

The Communist regime, even after three years in power, was not popular.

The Social Democrats and their government in exile were seen by many as the country’s legitimate leaders.

As we know from the subsequent history of Communist regimes, democratic socialist ideas and values remained deeply popular and occassionally resulted in mass outbreaks and revolutions — think only of Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968 and the rise of Solidarnosc in Poland in 1980.

Why does any of this matter today?

Because even now, a century after these events, there is much confusion on the Left about what ‘democratic socialism’ means — and where it differs from Communism.

In the US today, we are about to get a new mayor in New York City, my hometown, who is a self-described ‘democratic socialist’ and an ally of Bernie Sanders.

But the organisation he belongs to, Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) — which is the largest socialist organisation in American history — is quite confused on these essential questions.

As one activist explained it, DSA’s membership includes supporters of “Trotskyism, anarchism, reformism, orthodox Marxism, libertarian Marxism, the democratic road to socialism, Marxism–Leninism, and more”.  The one group explicitly excluded is, apparently, “socialist Zionism”.

We see similar developments in the new party launched by Jeremy Corbyn last weekend. Side by side with democratic socialists, “Your Party” will include many who identify more with the Communist tradition.

I think these differences matter, and that open discussion about what we mean when we say “socialism” is important

The Georgian republic of 1918-1921 was, as I have written before, an experiment.  It tested whether socialist values of greater equality and social justice were compatible with political democracy and human rights.

I think that it proved in its short history that socialism does not mean dictatorship, concentration camps, secret police, and crushing of the human soul.  Another revolution was possible.

And that’s why I’m proud to identify with that tradition and to call myself, as the Georgian leaders like Noe Zhordania did, a Social Democrat.

Georgia, they announced, was suspending its process of accession to the European Union. This was extraordinary because the one thing everyone in Georgia seemed to agree on was that the country was on a European path.  EU flags flew over the national parliament.  Georgians were beginning to benefit from such things as visa-free travel to Europe. There was hardly any anti-European sentiment to be heard.

But there already cause for concern long before Georgian Dream took that fateful decision.  The billionaire behind the party, Bidzina Ivanishvili, and his allies had long spoken of Georgia’s need to resist an imaginary “global war party” — and stoked fears of another war with Russia.  They also allied with the most reactionary elements in the Orthodox Church to promote homophobic violence, eventually making it impossible for the local LGBQTI community to hold Pride events.  Georgia had already embarked on an illiberal path long ago, meaning that the decision to turn away from Europe and the West could have been foreseen.

The result of that government decision was to energize the opposition and trigger nightly protests in front of the parliament building every single day through the last year.  As Georgia began to drift away from Europe — and draw closer to Putin’s Russia — the protests grew.  The main street in the capital Tbilisi was basically shut down every evening.  The government’s reaction was repression.

Protesters were jailed and beaten, and as the BBC revealed in an investigation this week, Georgian riot police deployed a chemical weapon dating back to the First World War in its water cannon, disabling demonstrators and causing long term health problems.

Leaders of opposition parties were arrested.  The government announced that it would be banning some of those parties.

Journalists representing independent media were beaten and jailed.  One of them, Mzia Amaglobeli, a prominent opponent of the increasingly undemocratic regime, was accused of slapping a police officer and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment.  In response the European Parliament awarded her the annual Sakharov Prize.

A year ago, there were no political prisoners in Georgia.  Today, there are scores of them, many quite young.  I recently attended an event, part of the London Georgian Film Festival, showcasing very short films about some of the prisoners. It felt as if an entirely new political movement was emerging, as young activists with very limited political experience were learning how to fight, trained in the regime’s jails.

What is happening today in Georgia is a product of a long and complicated history.  Everyone in the country remembers the bloody fighting of the 1990s and no one wants a return to civil war.  But everyone also remembers the many decades of Soviet rule, decades of repression and lies, and no one wants a return to that either.  An increasing number of younger Georgians seem to be inspired by the  independent republic of 1918-21, led by social democrats.  The flag of that republic has been held aloft by the some of the protestors in Tbilisi’s streets.

Just a few years ago, Georgia was seen as a beacon of democracy in the post-Soviet world.  That is sadly no longer the case.  Whether the Georgian people succeed in rekindling that democratic spirit and put the country back on a European path depends in part on what the rest of the world does.  The American response under Trump has not been particularly helpful. But it also depends on the Georgians themselves.  In the last few decades, they have seen off the Soviets, the authoritarian Shevardnadze regime, even the neoliberal Saakashvili.

Though they have managed to carry out non-violent revolutions in the past — most notably the Rose Revolution that brought Saakashvili to power — there is no guarantee that they can do so again.  Countries with similar authoritarian governments have managed to thwart popular protests and resist change, including in Hungary, Turkey and Russia.  But with their history as an inspiration, young Georgians may once again surprise the world.

This article appears in this week’s issue of Solidarity.

On the same day, I was contacted by the Inter-America regional organisation of Public Services International (PSI), based in São Paulo, to tell me about the case of the leader of an affiliated union in Guatemala who had been fired for her trade union activity.

The cases of Pawel Rudzki in the Netherlands and Lesbia Xiomara Conde Pacheco in Guatemala are strikingly similar. Both are union leaders under attack for doing what union leaders are supposed to do: representing and defending their members.  And it was not a coincidence that I learned about their cases through the regional organisations of global union federations.

Here is how one global union federation (UNI) summed up what happened to Pawel: “Rudzki worked at one of the supermarket’s distribution centres for eight years. He played a vital role in organizing dozens of colleagues and leading successful actions to push for compliance with the collective agreement and improved working conditions. Despite being on track to secure a permanent contract, he was suddenly issued four warnings in two weeks during his application process — and then removed from the premises without just cause.”

As part of the campaign demanding justice for Pawel, workers gathered outside the company headquarters in Zaandam to protest the attack on trade union rights.  As Dick Koerselman, the interim president of FNV put it, “Albert Heijn says it values its workers – but fires them when they stand up for their rights.”

As UNI reported, “FNV notes that this case reflects a broader structural issue in the Netherlands: agency workers can be removed without explanation at any moment, leaving them vulnerable to retaliation when they assert their rights. This loophole allows companies to undermine fundamental labour protections by relying heavily on agency workers.”

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, in Guatemala, Lesbia Xiomara Conde Pacheco, General Secretary of the National Union of Legislative Workers (STOL), is also paying a price for being an effective union leader. Through a court ruling, the Board of Directors of the Congress of the Republic of Guatemala was authorised to proceed with her dismissal, despite her having been legitimately elected.

PSI, which represents 30 million members in 700 affiliated unions, was furious.  As they described it, the sacking of Lesbia “constitutes a severe attack on trade union freedom and direct retaliation for her work in defence of workers.”  They consider the attack on STOL and its leaders to be “a historical reproduction of the Guatemalan State’s systematic persecution and harassment of the trade union movement and, specifically, of the STOL.”

The differences between Guatemala and the Netherlands are enormous.  The FNV is one of the largest and most powerful trade unions in Europe, with over one million members.  The Netherlands is a wealthy country where workers’ rights are not usually violated so blatantly.  Guatemala, on the other hand, is a poor country with severe inequality and a weak trade union movement following decades of repressions and attacks.

Despite those differences, trade union activists who stand up for workers’ rights are frequently attacked regardless of where they live.  It is good to see the global union federations (such as PSI, UNI and ITF) taking the lead to organise campaigns in solidarity, often through their regional organisations.  LabourStart continues to play a vital role by providing a platform and a large online community that can rally widespread support around the globe.

To learn more about the cases of Pawel and Lesbia, see the campaigns on the front page of LabourStart.

This article appears in the current issue of Solidarity.

Ranko Radovanovic (president) and Igor Hajderpašić (secretary), leaders of the Sindikat kontrole letenja (SKL), were dismissed from their jobs and had their access to airport control towers revoked.  They were told that this was based on a vague “negative opinion from the security services.”  The SKL is convinced that this sacking, which followed upon a successful 40-day strike, is part of a deliberate attempt to bust the union.

Both men played key roles in this year’s lawful and successful strike which was aimed at improving working conditions and strengthening the safety and efficiency of Serbia’s air traffic control system — objectives aligned with both union and national interests.

This attempt to decapitate the union appears to have been initiated by Serbia’s ruling party.  As the union described it, this raises “serious concerns of political interference and retaliation against trade union representatives, threatening fundamental rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining.”

Ranko and Igor, who I interviewed this week, emphasised that the strike was entirely legal and they seemed quite surprised at the government’s actions.

Meanwhile, the European Transport Workers Federation (ETF) and the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) recently sent a joint letter to Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vučić and Prime Minister Đuro Macut, urging them to urgently intervene.  In their letter, the European trade union leaders wrote:

“Unfortunately, this recent development in Serbia is no isolated case – it comes after other concrete attacks to the fundamental right to organise of Serbian aviation workers in recent years. In this regard, we recall the pending ILO complaint against the Government of Serbia concerning Serbia’s failure to adequately respect, protect, and uphold trade union rights and the principles of freedom of association enshrined in ILO Conventions No. 87 and No. 98, which Serbia ratified in November 2000.”

The ETF and ETUC letter reminded “Serbian authorities that, as a candidate for EU membership, Serbia has committed to progressively align its laws and practices with the EU … including Article 28 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union — which enshrines the right to collective bargaining and action and carries the same legal value as the EU Treaties.”

This is not the first time that a right-wing government has chosen to attack air traffic controllers as part of a campaign to destroy independent, democratic trade unions.

Back in 1981, shortly after Ronald Reagan was elected U.S. president, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) began contract negotiations with the federal government.  When these failed to produce an agreement, they went on strike in early August.  Reagan cracked down on the striking workers without hesitation.  He sacked 11,345 air traffic controllers and massive fines were imposed by courts on the union for every day it continued industrial action.  Reagan used the full power of the notorious 1947 Taft-Hartley Act — which is still in force today — to destroy PATCO.  Two months later, the union was decertified.

If the Serbian air traffic controllers are not to face the same fate as their American counterparts did in 1981, they need the full support of the European and global trade union movements.

At the request of SKL and the ETF, a campaign was recently launched on LabourStart.  Please support it and share it here: https://www.labourstartcampaigns.net/show_campaign.cgi?c=5738

You can listen to the interview with Ranko and Igor here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2313632/episodes/18109960

This article appears in this week’s issue of Solidarity.

All that completely changed in the decades following the murder of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the rise of an increasingly right-wing and authoritarian Benjamin Netanyahu.

One cannot visit European capitals without noticing anti-Israel graffiti everywhere. And by “anti-Israel” I don’t mean slogans denouncing the policies of the current Israeli government. I saw the slogans like “Fuck Israel” and “Fuck Zionism” spray painted all over Brussels on a recent visit.

Israel seems more friendless now than at any time in its nearly 80 year history.

That’s why it makes sense for Israelis to welcome foreign politicians who don’t hate them, such as the current U.S. administration.  Israel is utterly dependent on Donald Trump for its security and the current “Trump-mania,” which not all Israelis share, is understandable.

But there are other political leaders who show up at Ben Gurion Airport and who are greeted as honoured guests, despite not having much to offer.  Sometimes these leaders, who come from the far Right, pose as great friends of the Jewish state.  But just under the surface, it’s clear that these are no friends of the Jewish people.

Last week, Tommy Robinson was one such guest.  In a column in Ha’aretz, a journalist wrote how on Saturday night he was attacked by Robinson’s thugs, “punched in the head, spat on, knocked to the ground and kicked, doused with beer and called a kapo– all for daring to stand up and shout that racists are not welcome in Israel.”

Robinson’s violently anti-immigrant demonstrations have sometimes included displays of Israeli flags.  But this conceals an undercurrent of antisemitism among his supporters.  While Robinson was in Israel, some of his own far-right comrades were being sentenced to years in prison for planning attacks both mosques and synagogues.

At the same time as Robinson was in Israel another guest was welcomed on a grander scale.  This was Geka Geladze, a man most of you will never have come across.  Geladze is the Georgian Minister of the Interior, part of the authoritarian “Georgian Dream” government.  Geladze was in Israel as the guest of Itamar Ben-Gvir, one of the most extreme members of Netanyahu’s governing coalition. As the Georgian government described it, “the Georgian delegation will further visit various police units and learn on the ground about the specifics of their work.”

Lest anyone think that “Georgian Dream” is a party made up of friends of the Jewish people, one needs to be reminded of three words: “Global War Party”.  In Georgian politics, the phrase has become notorious, used by the country’s current leadership to describe a secretive, all-powerful conspiracy that rules the world.  That’s almost a textbook definition of modern antisemitism.

There are other examples.  But the thought of Tommy Robinson’s thugs beating up Israeli journalists, or Georgian ministers learning from Ben-Gvir about dealing with civil unrest, it’s clear what’s going on.

The Netanyahu government has isolated Israel as never before.  It’s not in a position to turn away new friends, even if those friends have racist and neo-Nazi supporters, or are spreading claims of a global conspiracy that reeks of Nazi propaganda.

There are rumours in Israel of new elections.  They cannot come a moment too soon.  And while any new government headed by the centre and left parties will have a very long to-do list, surely one item should be to tell Robinson and Geladze that they, and what they represent, are not welcome guests in a democratic Jewish state.

This article appears in this week’s issue of Solidarity.

Rachel Reeves has just announced that the government intends to spend £10 million to ensure that there’s a library in every primary school in England before the next Parliament.

To me that doesn’t sound particularly ambitious.  With a budget of under £6,000 per school, that means libraries without librarians.  And if it’s just a question of buying a bunch of books and getting some IKEA Billy bookcases, why does that require waiting until 2029?

I’m not privy to any insider information here, but my guess is that not all that much thought has gone into the Chancellor’s announcement.

I remember school libraries when I was growing up in New York City.  They were not small, they had librarians, and they were a place where kids could meet and talk and learn together.  When I became a socialist, I went looking for books about Marxism in my high school’s library. There was nothing by Karl Marx.  But there was FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s “Masters of Deceit”.  School libraries weren’t perfect.  But they are necessary.

Here in Britain, libraries — both school libraries and public libraries — have suffered from decades of neglect.  And the decline of children’s reading reflects that.

Lucy Taylor and Paula Clarke from the University of Leeds write: “According to a 2025 survey by the National Literacy Trust, only a third of children aged eight to 18 enjoy reading in their free time. Government data shows that 25% of pupils leave primary school unable to read at the level expected.”

Obviously, children from working class and poor families suffer the most from this neglect.  That’s why it’s an issue the labour movement should campaign on.

The first critical reaction to the proposal came from a trade union.  According to the BBC, “Paul Whiteman, who is in charge of the school leaders’ union NAHT, is concerned about a lack of ‘space and staffing’ when it comes to running the libraries. He hopes that some of the money will be used to tackle those challenges.”

We can do more than hope.  We can make proposals to the government, and suggest changes, so that the 500,000 children affected will actually benefit.  For example:

Spend more money on this.  The NAHT is right — if these school libraries are to be useful to anyone, they need staff and they need proper spaces.

Speed this up.  It doesn’t take four years to implement such a modest plan.  Hundreds of thousands of children can benefit from the rapid creation of small libraries.

Have a public conversation about which books we want in these libraries.  In the United States, books are routinely banned from public and school libraries because they are seen as too sympathetic to LGBTQ people, or too critical of the country’s racist past.  According to PEN America, authors banned from at least 50 school districts in the US include Margaret Atwood, Anthony Burgess, Toni Morrison, and George R.R. Martin. School libraries here in Britain should encourage students to think critically.

Don’t limit the libraries to books in print.  (And I love books in print.). Libraries can share e-books and audio books that children can read or listen to on their phones.  The current budget of £10 million breaks down to about £20 per child — that’s not enough to buy very many books.  But it can give access to electronic versions of books.

Rachel Reeves’ proposal points in the right direction.  But it’s not ambitious enough.  Parents, teachers and the children themselves need to have a say.

As for J. Edgar Hoover’s book on Communism, I’d give it a pass.  Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” on the other hand — well, that should be in every school library.

This article appears in the current issue of Solidarity.

Many people in the UK are still stung by how gigantic demonstrations two decades ago could not stop Tony Blair from joining the US-led invasion of Iraq.

And today in Israel, people are surely feeling something similar, as weekly mass protests led by families of the hostages held by Hamas, seem to be going nowhere.  The far right government is stubbornly proceeding with its plans to destroy Gaza, building by building and brick by brick, as Palestinians die in their thousands.

Something similar is happening in Georgia, where a government controlled by the billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili is facing unprecedented and ongoing mass protests in the capital city of Tbilisi and across the country.  But those protests seem to be having little effect.

So why do it?  Aren’t street protests a waste of time and energy?

Protests are not just about getting a government to bow to pressure, though that sometimes happens.  The main reason to organise street demonstrations and marches is to raise awareness — and to build the movements and political parties that can take the struggle to the next stage, which is the fight for political power.

In Israel, Netanyahu’s proposed judicial reforms were stopped in their tracks by massive street protests and the Histadrut labour federation played a key role by shutting down the country with targetted strikes.  By the time Hamas launched its attack on 7 October 2023, the Netanyahu government was tottering and may not have survived.  The war has given it new life.

In Georgia, early attempts by the government to pass legislation modelled on Putin’s “foreign agents” laws were initially defeated by very large demonstrations in the streets.  By the end, even Georgia’s main trade union federation had taken the side of the demonstrators. The government was caught unawares and withdrew the proposed law, but sooned learned lessons from their defeat.

Meanwhile, public opinion polls in Israel continue to show widespread anger at the government over its failure to get the hostages released and its failure to protect the country’s borders on 7 October.  Many Israelis believe that Netanyahu and his cronies are corrupt and are motivated solely by the desire to remain in power and out of jail.  In recent years, both an Israeli prime minister and a president served jail time, so Netanyahu knows that the only way he remains a free man is if he remains in power.

The ongoing street protests in Israel, sometimes with hundreds of thousands of supporters, are laying the basis for a broad coalition government following the next elections — a government which will be committed to ending the war, among other things.

The street protests in Georgia began in response to what were widely seen as rigged elections a year ago.  They grew massively once the ruling Georgian Dream party announced the effective end of efforts to join the European Union.  Since then, Rustaveli Avenue, the main thoroughfare in Tbilisi has seen almost daily protests.  The government response has been to jail opposition leaders and shut down independent media, copying from Vladimir Putin’s playbook while also growing closer to the Russian dictator.

While opposition parties in Georgia are divided about whether or not to participate in upcoming municipal elections, they are united in their opposition to the undemocratic and anti-Western politics of the government.  If they can use the ongoing protests in the streets to build unity and focus on political change, they may be able to re-create something like the Rose Revolution of 2003. That event brought down the autocratic post-Soviet government of Eduard Shevardnadze and ushered in an era of greater openness and democracy.

In the end, it comes down to a struggle for political power.  That’s the only way to bring about real change in a country.  Street protests are important because they raise awareness and serve as recruiting grounds for organised opposition parties.

On their own, the street demonstrations in Israel and Georgia are unlikely to persuade the right-wing governments in those countries to change course.  But when Netanyahu is finally ousted from power, and when Ivanishvili and his Georgian Dream lose their grip, we will be able to look back and say: here, in the streets, the revolution began.

This article appears in this week’s issue of Solidarity.

But while most of these Labour politicians may not be household names, there is one very well known Starmer appointee who for reasons I cannot fathom remains in office.

I’m thinking about the British ambassador to Washington, Peter Mandelson.

With Donald Trump’s state visit to the U.K. coming up later this month, Mandelson’s remarks in a recent speech have received considerable media attention.

“The president may not follow the traditional rulebook or conventional practice, but he is a risk-taker in a world where a ‘business as usual’ approach no longer works,” he said

Trump, Mandelson declared, “seems to have an ironclad stomach for political risk, both at home and abroad – convening other nations and intervening in conflicts that other presidents would have thought endlessly about before descending into an analysis paralysis and gradual incrementalism.”

I am not making this up.  No “analysis paralysis” from this president, whatever that means.

The reference to “other presidents” is really quite astonishing, considering that all the steps toward peace in the Middle East from the Camp David Accord through the Oslo Accords were achieved by Democratic presidents.  Or that NATO, the bedrock of European security that has prevented a third world war for three quarters of a century, was created when Democrats controlled the White House.  One wonders which “other presidents” Mandelson had in mind, the ones who  “thought endlessly” unlike Trump, who seems hardly to think at all.

To give a concrete example of Trump’s vision, Mandelson said of Ukraine that this was  “where the president has brought fresh energy to efforts to end Putin’s brutal invasion and bring peace to that region.”  By “fresh energy” the Ambassador was probably thinking of Trump’s recent failed summit with Putin in Alaska — an event now widely understood to have been a clear win for the Russian President as he unleashes an unprecedented series of drone and missile attacks against civilian targets in Kyiv.  Meanwhile, European countries, including the UK, are scrambling to repair the damage and shore up Ukraine’s defences.

Mandelson adores Trump and fawns over him.  “He will not always get everything right,” he admits,  “but with his Sharpie pen and freewheeling Oval Office media sprays he has sounded a deafening wake-up call to the international old guard.”

Are these the views of the British government?  One hopes that they are not.

The job of a British ambassador in Washington is to represent the views of our elected government here on issues like Ukraine and Gaza to the Trump administration.  It is not to act as a spokesman for the administration, defending its record.

Of course diplomats are supposed to act, well, diplomatic.  But Mandelson has gone far beyond his remit here.  His remarks are foolish, ignorant, deeply offensive and designed, one imagines, to drawn attention to himself — as he has very successfully done.

So what is Keir Starmer waiting for?  Our ambassador to Washington has gone completely rogue and it is time to add him to growing list of senior Labour figures the Prime Minister has had to sack.  And the sooner, the better.

This column appears in this week’s issue of Solidarity.