IF WORLD WAR THREE does break out over Ukraine, it will surely come as a surprise to most of the House of Commons.

An eminent historian has blamed the onset of the first world war on “sleepwalkers” in the chancelleries of the great powers, dozing as Europe drifted into carnage.

But even sleepwalking does not adequately describe today’s parliamentarians in the face of the ever-escalating conflict in eastern Europe, since it at least implies some form of movement, however somnambulant.

In 1914, foreign secretary Edward Grey famously warned “the lights are going off across Europe.” 

One hundred and ten years later and they have already been switched off, in the Commons at least.

There, barely a muscle twitches, and hardly a voice is raised, even to inquire as to what may be going on and whether Britain may find itself formally at war with a nuclear-armed power before 2025 breaks.

This silence of the sheep is extraordinary. Long-standing policy — that British-supplied missiles could not be used by Ukraine for attacks on Russian territory — has obviously been reversed and no-one sees any requirement to as much as announce the fact, still less subject this volte-face to a debate in the Commons.

Yet the self-same politicians continually advise us that President Vladimir Putin is a deranged aggressor, capable of any atrocity or depraved response. Still Nato placidly assumes that this monster will respond to their provocations with purely rhetorical fireworks and no further consideration is required.

There is only one sense in which this can be excused. In 1914, whether or not Britain went to war was in its own gift to decide. Today, the only relevant vote will be cast in Washington not Westminster. Downing Street must hope for the courtesy of a phone call.

Only Jeremy Corbyn initially spoke out against this policy change. He was seconded by Diane Abbott, alone among Labour MPs, and then by the other members of the group of pro-Palestinian independents.

The silence on the Labour benches is by no means accidental. It is a direct and deliberate consequence of the authoritarian regime Keir Starmer has imposed from the earliest days of his leadership, and by no means the least baneful.

Recall that a dozen Labour backbenchers signed a statement drafted by the Stop the War Coalition ahead of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. This statement mildly but correctly observed that the impasse owed something to Nato’s expansionist policy over the preceding years.

For this, the MPs were threatened with loss of the Labour whip and thus, in all likelihood, their jobs unless they withdrew their names. They all did, with the sole exception of Corbyn who was already whipless by then in any case.

Starmer’s threat to his backbenchers, which had no precedent over the last 70 years or so, was ostensibly designed to make Labour “electable.”

Of course, we now know that the net effect of this and other sanctions was a loss of public support from even the diminished position of 2019. 

But the real objective was secured — proving that Starmer would be the reliable guardian of the interests of the British state and its global alliances which his predecessor clearly hadn’t been. 

The price — an intellectually and morally destitute Parliamentary Labour Party and a muted and supine Commons — was apparently worth paying.

As democracy dies in darkness, wars now start in silence. 

So, we are where we are, as my old mate Tony Woodley was fond of saying — and whenever he did, you could be sure that wherever we were it wasn’t where we should have been.

In this case, where we are is a peculiar and alarming combination of war psychosis stoked in the mass media — the Russians are coming, probably via TikTok — allied to a bipartisan political indolence as soporific as Beatrix Potter’s Flopsy Bunnies after a lettuce feast.

Defence Secretary John Healey stands at this improbable juncture, uttering dire warnings to the public while telling MPs that there is nothing to see here.

Having known Mr Healey since his days as an amiable trade union press officer, it is incongruous to see him kitted out in warrior garb.

Still, cometh the hour etc. Tory leadership runner-up, and foaming rightwinger, Robert Jenrick described Healey as his favourite Labour politician and there must be a reason for that.

Most likely it is that Jenrick, an extreme and fanatical supporter of Israeli aggression, recognises a continuity in imperialist policy between the Middle East and Europe and sees in the Defence Secretary its adequate expression.

The mass movement should wise up too. The illusion that the enablers of the Palestinian genocide are the champions of the rights of small nations and international law in Ukraine dies hard.

News: There is not a good Starmer, Lammy or Healey and a bad one. They are of a piece.

Likewise misjudged is the argument abroad in the trade unions — and even occasionally expressed in this paper’s letters column — that wars elsewhere are no concern of ours, at least compared to putting food on workers’ tables and a roof over their heads.

Alas, the sums set aside to secure these common decencies are now likely to be diverted for bellicose purposes. 2.5 per cent of GDP for war? Not enough say the social-imperialists, some of whom are now talking about earmarking a staggering 7 per cent of GDP for arms expenditure, a near-trebling of a military budget which is already three-quarters the size of Russia’s on its own.

Trotsky observed in the course of the first great imperialist slaughter that “the working class may not be interested in the war, but the war is interested in the working class.” His record of historical prescience was uneven, but he is still on the money here.

But let’s imagine that Starmer or Healey do present themselves at the dispatch box to give an honest accounting. What could they say?

First, that Nato’s maximum war aims in Ukraine are unattainable. There must be a compromise settlement.

Second, that settlement, whatever may be agreed between Ukraine and Russia on borders and minorities, will require an abatement of Nato’s eastward expansion.

Third, there is no realistic Russian threat to Britain based on the military performance of the last three years — not to mention strategic logic — regardless of what assessment you may make of Putin’s character and judgement.

Fourth, the escalations in recent weeks have been designed to thwart any move president-elect Donald Trump may make to end the war, risking the “special relationship” beloved of Labour politicians for the sake of bleeding Russia some more and saving Nato’s face.

None of these things can be publicly conceded by the bipartisan war party, although everyone knows them to be true.

Churchill once claimed that the truth needed to be protected by a bodyguard of lies. In this case the falsehoods are supplemented by a fusillade of missiles, which is worse.

Therefore, a modest proposal. Let everyone proposing to come on the solidarity demonstration with Palestine in London this weekend first contact their local MP to ask him or her what they are doing to prevent world war three breaking out in the next couple of months.

And let the world know what their representative says.  It is surely past time we heard from them.

Judgement on Blair

TONY BLAIR is still not safe on the streets — of Cambridge, at least. The Cambridge Union invited me earlier this month to debate whether the authors of the Iraq invasion of 2003 should be prosecuted.

It was sobering to realise that few indeed in the audience had been born at the time of that criminal aggression. That war, and the attendant mass movement against it, is part of their parents’ history. 

Yet its shadow does not dissipate. Even those opposing the prosecution proposition did not try to defend the war. Here was the consequence of that vast democratic betrayal by Blair, undiluted by his energetic efforts at self-rehabilitation.

The result? 233 votes for hauling the villains before a court, 23 against. Even if Blair never puts in an appearance at The Hague, he is still firmly nailed to that eternal pillory from which all the artifices of his spin-doctors have not availed to redeem him.