The Collapse of International Law and the Failure of the United Nations
International law, as a functioning system of constraint on state power, is no longer operative.
The United Nations, once envisioned as a guardian of collective security and legal order, has been structurally undermined by the veto power of its permanent Security Council members.
Russia, China, and the United States have repeatedly used their veto to shield themselves from accountability for actions that constitute clear violations of international law.
This has rendered the UN incapable of enforcing its own principles, transforming it into an institution of moral statements without enforcement capacity.
The recent use of military force by the United States to kidnap the Venezuelan president from his country represents a serious breach of sovereignty under international law.
Regardless of political justification, the forcible abduction of a head of state through armed intervention—accompanied by civilian casualties—meets the legal definition of kidnapping and unlawful use of force.
The subsequent transfer of the detainee to the United States raises further concerns regarding jurisdiction, due process, and judicial independence.
The failure of the United Kingdom Government to immediately and explicitly condemn these actions undermines its stated commitment to the rule of international law.
Under international norms, silence in the face of illegality contributes to its normalisation.
This pattern is not isolated: Israel’s conduct in Gaza, widely documented by international legal scholars and human rights organisations, continues largely unchecked due to systematic veto protection.
These realities call into question the legitimacy of the Security Council’s permanent membership structure.
A system in which the most powerful states can violate international law while enforcing it against others cannot credibly claim to uphold justice or peace.
The creation of an alternative multilateral body—composed of states committed to enforceable international law without veto immunity—may now be necessary.
Without such reform, international law risks becoming a purely rhetorical framework, applied selectively and abandoned when inconvenient.
International law is no longer a constraint on power.
It has become a tool applied selectively enforced against weaker states and ignored by the strongest.
The United Nations Security Council lies at the centre of this failure.
Under the UN Charter, its five permanent members—China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States—possess veto power that allows them to block enforcement action, even when accused of violating international law themselves¹.
This structural immunity has hollowed out the UN’s credibility.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the United States’ repeated uses of force without Security Council authorisation, and China’s record of vetoing accountability measures all demonstrate the same reality: power supersedes law.
Meanwhile, Israel continues military operations in Gaza despite provisional measures issued by the International Court of Justice warning of a plausible risk of genocide².
These actions are not merely political disputes; they strike at the foundations of international law.
The prohibition on the use of force, enshrined in Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, is meant to be absolute³.
Yet enforcement depends entirely on a Security Council dominated by the very states most willing to violate it.
The result is a system of global inequality before the law.
Sanctions are imposed on some states with ease, while others veto consequences for themselves and their allies.
This is not a rules-based order—it is a hierarchy of power.
There are millions of citizens within these powerful states who oppose such behaviour.
There are also millions who positively condone such behaviour
International law is not failing because people reject it; it is failing because governments refuse to be bound by it.
If reform of the Security Council—particularly the veto—remains politically impossible, then the international community must confront an uncomfortable question: whether a new multilateral framework, without veto immunity, is now necessary to preserve the very idea of international law.
Without accountability, law becomes rhetoric.
And without law, global order collapses into force.
Footnotes (International)
1. United Nations Charter, Article 27 (1945).
2. International Court of Justice, South Africa v. Israel, Provisional Measures Orders, 2024.
3. United Nations Charter, Article 2(4) (Prohibition of the Use of Force).
International Law in an Age of Impunity
International law is no longer a constraint on power.
It has become a tool applied selectively enforced against weaker states and ignored by the strongest.
The United Nations Security Council lies at the centre of this failure.
Under the UN Charter, its five permanent members—China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States—possess veto power that allows them to block enforcement action, even when accused of violating international law themselves¹.
This structural immunity has hollowed out the UN’s credibility.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the United States’ repeated uses of force without Security Council authorisation, and China’s record of vetoing accountability measures all demonstrate the same reality: power supersedes law.
Meanwhile, Israel continues military operations in Gaza despite provisional measures issued by the International Court of Justice warning of a plausible risk of genocide².
These actions are not merely political disputes; they strike at the foundations of international law.
The prohibition on the use of force, enshrined in Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, is meant to be absolute³.
Yet enforcement depends entirely on a Security Council dominated by the very states most willing to violate it.
The result is a system of global inequality before the law.
Sanctions are imposed on some states with ease, while others veto consequences for themselves and their allies.
This is not a rules-based order—it is a hierarchy of power.
There are millions of citizens within these powerful states who oppose such behaviour.
International law is not failing because people reject it; it is failing because governments refuse to be bound by it.
If reform of the Security Council—particularly the veto—remains politically impossible, then the international community must confront an uncomfortable question: whether a new multilateral framework, without veto immunity, is now necessary to preserve the very idea of international law.
Without accountability, law becomes rhetoric.
And without law, global order collapses into force.
Footnotes (International)
1. United Nations Charter, Article 27 (1945).
2. International Court of Justice, South Africa v. Israel, Provisional Measures Orders, 2024.
3. United Nations Charter, Article 2(4) (Prohibition of the Use of Force).
International law is no longer a constraint on power.
It has become a tool applied selectively enforced against weaker states and ignored by the strongest.
The United Nations Security Council lies at the centre of this failure.
Under the UN Charter, its five permanent members—China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States—possess veto power that allows them to block enforcement action, even when accused of violating international law themselves¹.
This structural immunity has hollowed out the UN’s credibility.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the United States’ repeated uses of force without Security Council authorisation, and China’s record of vetoing accountability measures all demonstrate the same reality: power supersedes law.
Meanwhile, Israel continues military operations in Gaza despite provisional measures issued by the International Court of Justice warning of a plausible risk of genocide².
These actions are not merely political disputes; they strike at the foundations of international law.
The prohibition on the use of force, enshrined in Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, is meant to be absolute³.
Yet enforcement depends entirely on a Security Council dominated by the very states most willing to violate it.
The result is a system of global inequality before the law.
Sanctions are imposed on some states with ease, while others veto consequences for themselves and their allies.
This is not a rules-based order—it is a hierarchy of power.
There are millions of citizens within these powerful states who oppose such behaviour.
International law is not failing because people reject it; it is failing because governments refuse to be bound by it.
If reform of the Security Council—particularly the veto—remains politically impossible, then the international community must confront an uncomfortable question: whether a new multilateral framework, without veto immunity, is now necessary to preserve the very idea of international law.
Without accountability, law becomes rhetoric.
And without law, global order collapses into force.
Footnotes (International)
1. United Nations Charter, Article 27 (1945).
2. International Court of Justice, South Africa v. Israel, Provisional Measures Orders, 2024.
3. United Nations Charter, Article 2(4) (Prohibition of the Use of Force).
The United Kingdom and the Collapse of International Law
International law is no longer applied equally, and the United Kingdom is now complicit in that failure.
The United Nations was designed to restrain power through law.
Yet the structure of the Security Council—particularly the veto granted to its five permanent members—has ensured that the most powerful states are effectively immune from legal consequence.
Under Article 27 of the UN Charter, any permanent member can block enforcement action, even when accused of breaching international law themselves¹.
The United Kingdom, as a permanent member, bears particular responsibility.
While successive UK governments regularly invoke the “rules-based international order,” that order collapses the moment allies are involved.
The UK’s failure to condemn unlawful uses of force by the United States, or to meaningfully challenge Israel’s conduct in Gaza, demonstrates that legal principle has been subordinated to political alignment.
This is not without precedent.
The 2003 invasion of Iraq—explicitly found to lack a lawful basis by the UK’s own Chilcot Inquiry—marked a decisive moment in the erosion of international law².
No senior political figure was held accountable.
The lesson was clear: powerful states do not face consequences.
More recently, the International Court of Justice has found that there is a plausible risk of genocide arising from Israel’s actions in Gaza and has ordered provisional measures to prevent irreparable harm³.
The UK, however, has continued arms exports and political support, despite its obligations under the Genocide Convention and domestic export control law⁴.
Silence in the face of illegality is not neutrality.
It is acquiescence.
I recognise the historical irony of making this argument as a British citizen.
The United Kingdom’s imperial past is inseparable from violence and exploitation.
But history should teach restraint, not repetition.
If international law applies only to the weak, then it is not law at all.
And if the UK continues to shield its allies from accountability, it forfeits any moral authority to speak of a rules-based order.
Footnotes (UK)
1. United Nations Charter, Article 27 (1945).
2. The Report of the Iraq Inquiry (Chilcot Report), Executive Summary, 2016.
3. International Court of Justice, Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (South Africa v. Israel), Provisional Measures Orders, January & March 2024.
4. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948); UK Consolidated Criteria on Arms Exports.
Populism Blame and the Responsibility We Refuse to Carry
If You’re Looking for the Guilty, Look in a Mirror:
Across social media feeds, local forums, and national commentary, a familiar script is being recited: the blame for Britain’s current divisions lies with Nigel Farage, Reform UK Ltd, foreign interference, billionaires like Elon Musk along with Donald Trump and his sycophants or hostile powers such as Russia.
These influences are real, loud, and often damaging.
But focusing on them first allows us to avoid a more uncomfortable truth — populists don’t rise because they are persuasive; they rise because we are permissive.
To borrow the words spoken by V in the brilliant film V for Vendetta:
“If you’re looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror.”
That line resonates today not because it is poetic, but because it is diagnostic.
We have built the conditions that sustain populism, then recoil when it thrives.
Populism is in reality a Symptom, Not the Disease
Reform UK Limited, fronted by Farage and amplified by figures like Richard Tice, has drawn heavily from the modern Republican playbook — culture wars, identity scapegoating, contempt for institutions, suspicion of international cooperation, and the branding of opponents as enemies of “the people.”
The rhetoric is divisive by design.
But the assumption that the architects of this strategy are solely responsible misses a key dynamic:
They wrote the script.
We built the stage.
And the electorate provided the spotlight.
Populism flourishes when people lose faith in mainstream politics, when political literacy collapses, when complex problems are reduced to villains, and when public frustration goes unanswered by serious leadership.
In the created vacuum, the loudest simplifiers win.
Farage did not invent disillusionment.
He harvested it.
External Influence and noise are loud,
But it isn’t and doesn’t need to be all-powerful
There is legitimate concern around:
Russian disinformation operations,
The disruptive power of unregulated social media,
The political influence of global tech oligarchs,
A US administration under Donald Trump that has openly signalled hostility toward the UK, Europe and NATO norms,
A Republican establishment increasingly “anti-world” rather than “pro-America.”
None of this is fantasy.
But the truth is Britain has a long tradition and history of blaming the outsider before examining the insider dynamics that make influence effective.
Foreign interference succeeds only where critical thinking has weakened and trust has already fractured.
Those like Russia and the USA that sought to didn’t divide Britain.
They exploited a divide that people and politicians failed to both acknowledge and repair.
Elon Musk didn’t dismantle political discourse.
We allowed political discourse to migrate into platforms optimised for outrage, not truth.
Trump didn’t end the US-UK alliance.
He revealed how fragile it becomes when loyalty is expected but not reciprocated.
The True Power Behind Reform UK Ltd?
-Are-
The People Who Ticked the Box
Britain’s political class are not immune from blame but are not the root cause.
The deeper responsibility lies with:
Those who actively voted for Reform UK Ltd candidates — MPs and councillors alike — legitimised the platform, whether they intended to or not.
Those who abstained from voting ceded political agency to a motivated minority.
Those who now claim “I voted Reform but I’m not like them” misunderstand the nature of accountability.
A vote is not a mood ring.
It is a mandate.
Voting in protest does not suspend consequence.
It confirms it.
And those who chose not to vote in large numbers — roughly 3 out of 5 eligible voters across the country — are not neutral observers.
They are participants by absence.
When turnout collapses, outcomes radicalise.
Populism is fuelled not only by those who vote for it, but by those who refuse to vote against it.
In spite of the claims Immigrants Aren’t the Cause
They’re the Decoy
The most corrosive myth circulating today is that Britain’s problems originate with immigrants, refugees, or multiculturalism.
This is politically convenient fiction. Immigration did not:
Hollow out public services,
Fail to invest in economic resilience,
Neglect vocational training,
Privatise public assets without strategy,
Undermine trust in politics,
Or normalise the language of grievance.
Those decisions were domestic, administrative, and political.
Xenophobia doesn’t solve Britain’s problems.
It disguises their origin.
The real drivers of anger — stagnant and reduced wages, housing scarcity, NHS strain, economic insecurity, loss of community identity, mistrust in Westminster — are failures of governance, not migration.
Blaming immigrants is the smoke bomb that lets policymakers escape through the back door.
Similarly, the USA Is Not the Villain,
But It Is No Longer the Ally We Mythologised as part of the so called ‘Special Relationship’.
For decades, Britain has reflexively aligned itself with US foreign policy, often without sufficient scepticism.
Under Trump, the US has openly embraced:
Sycophantic governance,
Anti-Europe sentiment,
Dismissal of multilateral cooperation,
And rhetorical military posturing, even toward allies.
A total disregard for International Law
This behaviour will not weaken Europe — it will galvanise it.
The EU is and should more likely respond with stronger internal unity, expanded global trade partnerships, and new security architectures that do not rely on US predictability.
This process will take years, possibly decades, but the direction is clear:
The more the USA disengages from cooperative leadership, the more Europe will decouple from USA dependency.
This should not delight us — a stable USA ally used to be good for global security.
But neither should we pretend that loyalty is owed when trust has eroded.
Britain and Europe must now ask themselves a serious question:
Are we prepared to sacrifice our sons and daughters for a dream that is no longer shared, or even respectful of us?
History demands caution, not nostalgia.
The greatest threat to British society today is not a single politician or foreign actor.
It is the abdication of civic responsibility by ordinary people who believe politics is something that happens to them, not because of them.
Too many people:
Shrug their shoulders,
Scroll past disinformation without challenge,
Treat voting as optional entertainment,
And express outrage at outcomes they never attempted to influence.
This is the coward’s path of disengagement.
Not malicious, but ruinous.
We are witnessing the consequences of a society that has forgotten a basic democratic principle:
If you do not exercise power, someone else will — and they will not exercise it for you.
The UK History Is Not Destiny — But It Is a Warning
The UK and especially England has always had a visible far-right thread — from anti-Catholic riots to imperial nationalism, from xenophobic press cycles to suspicion of Europe, from UKIP to today’s Reform UK Ltd rise.
But it has also produced the counterforce: abolitionism, parliamentary reform, the welfare state, labour rights, civil liberties, social progress, and pluralism.
The question is not whether populism reflects the UK.
The question is:
Which UK are we choosing to empower?
A nation is not defined by its loudest minority.
It is defined by the majority that refuses to correct it.
So, the real question is who is responsible?
Not the immigrants,
Not the foreign provocateurs,
Not the demagogues who play the game,
But the people who failed to understand the rules or refused to play at all.
Responsibility is not retroactive.
It is proactive.
If we want fewer Farage’s, Trumps, Musk’s or political influencers steering discourse, we must produce more people willing to steer it back.
The Mirror Is Waiting
The greatest act of political maturity Britain can now undertake is the simplest:
Stop asking who is to blame and start asking what we failed to do.
The answer will often be found in the reflection staring back at us.
Because if we want a different politics, a different society, and different leaders — we will have to become a different electorate first.
Mrs Middle England: Keeping Hope Afloat by David Palethorpe
While Mr Middle England spends winter muttering darkly about the so-called “festive season,” his long-suffering wife takes an entirely different approach.
Mrs Middle England has learned — over several decades of conjugal endurance — that the only way to survive November is to simply get on with it.
Christmas, after all, will not organise itself, no matter how loudly her husband insists it ought to be “streamlined,” “rationalised,” or ideally “cancelled altogether.”
So, as the Old Gimmer sits in the Welly lamenting the state of the world, muttering about commercialism, and inventing new reasons to loathe tinsel, Mrs Middle England is quietly performing seasonal triage.
Cards? Sorted.
Presents?
Bought early and hidden even earlier.
Turkey?
Ordered from Fermoy’s — certainly not from the cut-price supplier her husband once suggested as “a perfectly viable option.”
Tree?
Chosen for her, not for him — because if he had his way they’d make do with the dusty 1970s artificial horror lurking in the loft.
Food?
Copious amounts stored away with the annual warning,
“Don’t touch that it’s for Christmas”
None of this requires discussion with Mr Middle England.
She has long discovered that trying to involve him only results in one of three outcomes:
A lecture about unnecessary expenditure,
A monologue on how Christmas “was better when rationing kept things sensible,” or
A closed-mouth yawn of such theatrical misery it could depress a snowman.
She ignores all three with the ease of a seasoned professional.
Occasionally, she’ll ask his opinion on something minor — a safe, harmless, zero-risk question such as “Red or gold ribbon?” — just to maintain the illusion of domestic democracy.
He’ll grumble something non-committal, she’ll do what she intended anyway, and peace will be restored.
And yet, despite his Eeyore-ish gloom, Mrs Middle England knows his seasonal misery is, in its own way, part of the tradition.
She suspects — though she’d never say it aloud — that if he ever embraced Christmas wholeheartedly, the shock might actually kill him.
So she lets him grumble, she lets him sigh, she lets him hold court at the Con Club about the decline of civilisation.
Meanwhile, at home, she keeps Christmas afloat with the calm efficiency of a woman who knows that cheerfulness, like fairy lights, works best when someone sensible plugs it in.
She will, of course, allow him one ceremonial task on Christmas Eve: the lighting of the outdoor reindeer.
He will complain.
He will yawn.
He will mutter about the electricity bill.
And she will smile — because deep down she knows the truth:
That with only six weeks to go,
Without Mrs Middle England, Christmas would collapse.
Without Mr Middle England, it wouldn’t be half as funny.
Mr Middle England: Old Gimmer Winter by David Palethorpe
Winter. Bloody winter.
The days shrink, the evenings stretch, and with them comes the inevitable gloom — or at least that’s how Mr Middle England, Ipplepen’s very own Old Gimmer, sees it.
For him, the forthcoming so-called “festive season” isn’t joyful at all.
It’s futile, depressing, and every year he begins muttering about the whole business long before the first mince pie appears on the shelves.
At one low point, in a fit of desperation, he even considered volunteering for a helpline — reasoning that listening to other people’s misery might, at the very least, cheer him up.
The flaw in this plan, of course, is obvious: Mr Middle England wouldn’t last a day.
Being the curmudgeon he is, he’d soon be demanding to know why the helpline wasn’t turning a profit.
In fact, he’d probably propose automating the entire system:
• If you’re feeling suicidal, press 1. • If you thought you’d phoned a chat line, press 2. • If you’re just wasting time, press 3.
Add a John Cleese voiceover and a few bars of the Funeral March while on hold, and callers would be over the edge in minutes.
Still, if there were a helpline that required nothing more than talking bollocks and balderdash, Mr Middle England would be the ideal recruit.
Anyone who’s shared a pint with him in the Welly, or leaned on the Con Club bar, knows he’s a master at filling the air with grumbles, laments, and long-winded theories about why the world is going to hell.
Counselling, however, requires listening — and that’s a skill our Old Gimmer has never acquired.
At home, his audience of one has long given up trying.
Mrs Middle England simply lets him drone on while she gets on with the real work of: ordering the turkey, sorting cards, hiding presents, and quietly rewriting the shopping list he’s already “improved.”
She’s perfected the art of nodding at exactly the right moments without taking in a single word he says, a domestic survival technique honed over decades.
And so, as November moves on, she cracks on with the festive preparations, Mr Middle England sits through breakfast at the Welly, nodding solemnly at other people’s misery before deploying the one talent that sets him apart:
Mr & Mrs Middle England live in constant fear of the knock at the door or the unexpected phone call.
Not burglars, not trick-or-treaters — but something far worse: utility salespeople.
It starts innocently enough.
The phone rings, and a bright, synthetic voice cheerfully announces an offer to cut their electricity bill.
Mr Middle England listens for a moment before asking the obvious question:
“How do they know what I’m paying in the first place?”
Silence, of course, because even the robots don’t have an answer.
Within days, another call arrives, this time from the gas company.
Not to sell gas, mind you, but electricity.
Then the electricity company phones back offering gas.
Confusion reigns.
“Surely gas comes through pipes and electricity through cables?”
Mrs Middle England mutters.
“Are they going to dig up Ipplepen and lay their own?”
For the older generation especially, it’s a minefield.
They’ve been warned for years not to trust cold callers, but the sheer persistence of these utility crusaders chips away at their nerves.
A polite “no thank you” never seems enough.
British reserve prevents a sharp “bugger off” followed by a slammed door.
And just when you think it can’t get worse, along comes the robotic voice message.
“For savings on your bill, Press 1.
For even more savings, Press 2.
” It’s less a sales pitch, more a hostage negotiation.
Mr Middle England has a radical idea: report them not as nuisance calls, but as obscene phone calls.
Because frankly, there’s nothing filthier than being interrupted halfway through your shepherd’s pie to be told you’ve been “specially selected” for a tariff that looks suspiciously worse than the one you’re already on.
He even jokes about forming a hunting party to track down the advertising executives behind it all.
In his view, even estate agents and solicitors rank higher on the trust scale — which says everything.
Advertising, after all, has only one purpose: to make you dissatisfied with what you’ve already got.
And while some adverts are clever, even funny, the utilities racket is neither.
It’s just relentless.
So, Mr & Mrs Middle England have made their New Year’s resolution early: unplug the phone, bolt the door, and head down to the Welly and Con Club where the only thing anyone tries to sell you is another round.
Sometimes village life offers the perfect escape — even from the smooth talkers of the energy world.
Reflections of a Boomer
Reflections on life of an insignificant atom in the universe
