It was built in the heyday of European imperialism, and unlike Britain, the Suez Canal still matters in the 21st century.
It was recently blocked by the worst three-point turn I’ve seen since my driving test.
In the six days that it was impassable, the hit to the world economy was eye-watering.
The Suez Canal blockage roughly cost 12 per cent of global trade.
According to data from Lloyd’s list, this cost over $9 billion per day, i.e. $400 million worth of trade per hour or $6.7 million per minute.
No wonder the lads in the diggers were on overtime!
The Suez Canal also played a key role in Britain’s decline on the world stage.
Regular readers will be aware that I recently referenced Philp Stephen’s excellent book.
Britain Alone: The Path from Suez to Brexit ( 2021 Faber) is definitely worth your time.
Here is the author speaking about it to the Institute of International and European Affairs (IIEA).
It is easier to realise that you have lived through a historically important period when you look back at it with the passage of time.
Twenty years after the Suez Crisis of 1956, Britain went cap in hand to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to ask them for the biggest loan that they had ever lent.
Britain, in 1976, 30 years after their…ahem…victory in World War Two, was on skid row.
By then, the UK had decided to join, as it was then, the “Common Market.”
Actually, it had joined the European Economic Community (EEC), which was the collective term for the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC).
There was a confirmatory referendum in 1975, which was passed by a substantial majority.
In his book, Stephens lays out how the Brits arrived at the self-harm of Brexit in 2016 and, in his view, it starts with the Suez Crisis.
Quite simply, the British political elite could not accept their diminished role in the world after World War Two.
Britain was certainly on the winning side of that global conflict, but the Americans and the Soviets were decisive in defeating the Axis powers.
The Brits lost their empire in the decades after VE Day. The Suez Crisis merely hammered home the point that, in a world divided between two superpowers (USA & USSR), London was subordinate to Washington.
Stephens points out that Harold Mac Millan, who replaced Anthony Eden after Suez, was keen to put out the line about Britain being “Greece to America’s Rome”.
It was pish then, and it is certainly untreated urine now.
The truth was just too painful for the Brits to acknowledge.
They had been THE dominant power in the world for over two centuries, and then they were bit-part players in the Cold War.
The desire to wish it away also made it onto the silver screen.
Indeed, the self-serving belief in Britain’s continued global relevance does, in part, explain the success of the early Bond movies.
Look at how the Yanks are depicted.
They are always a sidekick to the courageous, daring, athletic, urbane, quick-witted Bond.
It is 007, the handsome chap from Britain who saves the world and never the Americans.
Now Britain has difficulty with another international sea route, this time from Britain to Narne Arne.
As in 1956, the Americans are looking in on the ex-imperial power to make sure they’re behaving.
It probably doesn’t help that the current occupant of the Oval Office is a proud Irishman.
For the avoidance of doubt, the Protocol, unlike Ever Given, will not be dislodged.
The sea border is now in place, and the pyrotechnic floor show from the Queens’s Underclass will have zero impact on the situation.
This is what history feels like.
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This from today’s Morning Star:
The party (DUP) has also called on PSNI Chief Constable Simon Byrne to step down, saying that his refusal to prosecute leading Sinn Fein politicians for attending the funeral of IRA commander Bobby Storey, which drew around 2,000 mourners in a breach of Covid safety measures, has lost him the confidence of unionist communities.
DUP MP Gregory Campbell accused Sinn Fein of “arrogance” and said that “the manner in which Sinn Fein has played fast and loose with the Covid rules” had contributed to the rioting.
But Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald said in an Easter address that “we see the broken politics of partition every day.”
Phil, can you use your contacts to find out how many of the “Outraged” DUP followers thought the celebrating of a foreign football team winning a foreign football title while breaking Covid Laws was also caused them “Outrage.”
I love your faith in the current US president. A president who has senile dementia and is being worked with a hand up his jacksie by Camilla Harris. Trump had his faults but the current incumbents will destroy the US with their woke agenda.
I like your line with “untreated urine” but you’re no stranger to discharging pish yourself.
While I enjoy some of your posts I tend to despair at the lack of genuine research when it comes to your opinions on domestic and world affairs. The fascade that is British politics and for that matter Irish, European and World politics can best be described as cover for the industrial scale theft of wealth from the ordinary people on this planet. The city of London is ruled by families that own the IMF, ECB and all other global financial institutions, suggesting otherwise is a gross misunderstanding of the world around us. They’ve been responsible for funding both sides of every major conflict since the Napoleonic war, in your own words “follow, follow the money”
As for your proud Irishman in the oval affice, have you looked into his affairs? Ask some probing questions of Ukrainian government officials and I’m pretty sure they’ll get back to you quicker and with more detail than the SFA do.
We’re in the middle of a play at the moment that was written years ago,directed by unseen hands and acted out by unwitting actors who won’t read the script.
To suggest that what you observe around you daily isn’t part of an act in that play, is folly on your part.
https://www.rte.ie/news/us/2021/0405/1208060-joe-biden-us/
Phil may not be perfect but your stuff lacks references. Nonsense unless you can back it up. Sure Joe Biden is an imperfect man but grand conspiracy are complete nonsense I’m sure
I’m sure Phil isn’t perfect, he probably never said he was, none of us are, least of all me.
I take it the “stuff” you refer to is in relation to Biden, well he is corrupt but he is only a puppet of the hidden masters pulling his strings.
I won’t give you references because I’ll be accused of bias if you don’t agree with the evidence but I’ve given pointers in the previous post so you can do your own research.
Here, Phil, did you know that Anthony Eden ordered that Nasser be murdered? And those un-Bondlike chaps at MI6 tried to pump poison gas into Nasser’s office, but fucked it up? It’s true! It’s well documented! You could not make it up.
As a reader of your blog who, as a merchant seaman, went through the canal on numerous occasions, I was taught to treat the ‘wogs’ as my inferiors. And I’m afraid to say that at seventeen, and during my first transit, that’s exactly how I behaved. Example: in the crew’s mess room on a BP tanker, all the chairs were exactly alike. But one day one of the boatmen who stayed aboard throughout the transit was sitting on one of the chairs out on the poop-deck. I knew the chair wasn’t mine, but to show my ‘authority’ I insisted that it was—and that guy, despite his protestations–was forced to give me the chair. How great it felt to be a son of the Empire!!!
On that same trip (1965) on New Years day, I turned in after doing a 4-8 watch. My mate woke me at five in the afternoon to give me the result of the then ‘Old Firm’ derby: Celtic 5 Rangers1. Unfortunately, being on a tanker, one was limited to three bottles of beer a day, so no celebrations. But to make up for it, the ship’s carpenter, who was from Stornaway (enough said) was so pig sick, every time I looked at him it was as good a celebration as I needed.
Eden’s plans for Nasser were laid out in Peter Wright’s banned book “Spycatcher”.
Interesting perspective Phil,
The point I picked up, among others, is that the “world beating” imperial mindset seems to still be still central to this British Govt mindset and central to their internal communications. May i ask how long you think it may take them to realise their new realationship with the world and also, I know this is a mad idea, how long it may take them to communicate that reality to their citizens?
Your comment reminds me of a certain football clubs myths about being the same football club thingy/mingey, when the trouth out’s let me be here.co
Keep at them Phil
TAL
Well, they can never communicate anything to ‘citizens’. The british constitution makes no allowance for citizenship. You are all ‘subjects of the crown’. The only time citizen was used in relation to British subjects was on their EU passport because the maroon passport was a generic design for all countries. You were subjects of the crown but citizens of Europe. Unfortunately, Britain gave up citizenship to return to subjugation to the crown
my folks were seperately posted to Egypt due to this in 1956 and thats where they met and hooked up, and had the five of us when they returned home and married,