STORM SHADOW
Dispatches
Storm Shadow
25 August 2026
I
It is right and proper that the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland gives every support possible to the people of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
The British Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, visiting Kyiv today Monday, 24 August 2026 along with other European leaders, will, along with France’s President Macron, jointly hand over the blueprints for Storm Shadow missiles (known in France as Scalp-EG) to President Vladimir Zelenskyy.
This extremely important joint decision will both aid very positively the Ukrainian Armed Forces in their defensive and offensive operations against Russia, and may also encourage other western nations to take similar action.
This has to be thought through very carefully, as it is a very serious business because it brings Britain and France into that difficult diplomatic arena of maintaining relations with Russia, even though Russia is a very aggressive Nation-state that has waged total war upon the entire nation of Ukraine since it’s illegal invasion – which it downplays as a “special military operation” – on 24 February 2022.
It is interesting to note aside, that with the US war with Iran, the 47th president has recently been referring to that war as a military operation. I have every sympathy with members of the US Armed Forces who most certainly will not agree. We know that their losses are far greater than has been admitted by the Pentagon, and that their so-called commander in chief is highly critical of them.
Europe does not wish to rely upon the USA.
The USA is currently ‘all at sea’ and it is possible that the hapless American president may be forced from office after the midterms. We can only hope for this.
That does not mean that the world is out of the woods when it comes to American foreign policy. If Trump whether by resignation or being formally removed from office by the mechanism of the 25th amendment, this would place Vice President Vance into that grubby little oval room that once upon a time had the respect of almost the entire world.
The British Prime Minister will also share a meeting of the Coalition of The Willing today. These are the European nations that are prepared to stand, in all respects, including militarily, alongside Ukraine.
All of us, the majority, will see Ukraine eventually a member of both the European Union and of NATO.
What America says and does, thinks and even criticises, is neither here nor there.
They are no longer that self-appointed leader of the free world. Those days have gone. They will never return.
II
We hold America in respect. And with a brand-new presidency after 2028, there is every chance that the world will once again do business with the United States of America.
The unprecedented action taken by Canada this weekend in calling off the negotiations, and Prime Minister Mark Carney in the late evening recalling his negotiating team to embark immediately for Ottawa, represents in plain language a ‘fist in the face’ to the octogenarian American president. Why? Because at the 11th hour American negotiators dared to introduce clauses that would threaten the very sovereignty of Canada.
Americans have a very long way to travel on this earth, in all matters of politics and geopolitics, before they can ever be trusted again by any nation.
That is the level of damage that they have brought upon themselves so stupidly and deliberately and naïvely by actually believing that a mere TV reality host – the Apprentice Trump – was actually the real thing.
They then compound the fact when the 47th appoints another TV reality host as secretary of defense. Accept that and so doing, the man’s wife had to be with him 24/7. It is only now becoming evident of the influence that his wife is having on everything that the man has been doing since his appointment and she does not even have basic security clearance.
In other words, Mrs Hegseth is as dangerous to the American people and to world affairs as that idiotic personal assistant to the 47th president – Natalie Harp.
III
A strong American presidency with the world view would never have accepted Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But now all the evidence is laid bare.
To the world’s horror, we discover that even when the 47th president was the 45th president, he was already the puppet of Putin the puppeteer. He was doing Putin’s bidding. The man is a fascist. The man has openly declared that he enjoys reading Mein Kampf. The mind boggles.
My American friends both in the United Kingdom and in America, I keep at arms length for the moment. Too much damage has been done. Such is the arrogance of a nation state that act the 11th hour in a trade deal negotiation with its closest ally, Canada, can then introduce clauses specifically designed to undermine Canada’s sovereignty and independence.
When a nation state operates in that manner, then they need to go out into the cold.
Their people need to sort their problems out internally both via the midterms, by regaining control of Congress and Senate, bringing to account by subpoena every person in this present administration who has done such damage to them collectively and individually; and if it means prosecution and imprisonment, then so be it.
There can be no quarter for what the 47th administration has done to the United States of America. The present predicament underscores the fact that the 47th is a convicted felon. What is unforgivable is that the American Electorate then saw no reason not to vote a convicted felon – nothing less than a mafia family – to the presidency.
IV
Meanwhile, the European Union and the United Kingdom and Canada and Australia and New Zealand and the Commonwealth of Nations and NATO move on. We have the confidence and the ability to have collective leadership of the free world.
Never again will the United States of America be leader of the free world. That is a title it gave itself at a time when continental Europe and the United Kingdom were rebuilding themselves out of the horror and ashes of the end of the Second World War.
Thousands of American service personnel gave their lives in that War. They came to the free world’s aid belatedly and only because they were directly attacked at Pearl Harbor. The world understands this. The world also recalls with great pride – certainly the English-Speaking-Peoples – President FD Roosevelt’s Address to Congress on 8 December 1941 when he reported to Congress the horror of what had just happened the day before at Pearl Harbor and then requested the permission of Congress to agree that a state of war existed between the USA and Imperial Japan.
That is how the mechanism of international government operates.
In 2026, the spectacle of 17 stone octogenarian with limited mental capacity, bedecked in his red Maga cap, announcing to the world from his Mara Lago – Mafia style – residence that America had now entered massive offensive operations against Iran; to use the same phrase used by President Roosevelt on 8 December 1941 ‘a day of infamy.’
It is very difficult to obtain an accurate view of the United States of America by reliance only upon the recognised television news broadcasters in America. Those that attempt to report accurately are branded by the 47th presidency en bloc as fake news. What we regard, internationally, as fake news – Fox News – even that outlet is rebelling and refusing to do the bidding of the White House.
The rot has set in.
YouTube is where the truly independent journalists are reporting the true reality, not the TV reality of the mindset of men whose background is only reality TV. Do we laugh? Do we think this is an exageration, or that it is over the top? No. Why?
Because those two men and their henchmen have caused the deaths of thousands of innocent people. Their twisted logic is like a cancer. A cancer cannot be allowed to remain in one’s body. It has to be rooted out.
VI
A judge very lightly halter all work on this ridiculous ballroom. The very concept has caused the international community to regard the American electorate with contempt.
Yet, three days ago, the US Supreme Court overturned that ruling. That beggars belief. It underlines the immensity of the work that must be done by the American electorate. The whole of the American Justice System needs to be cleaned out. Root and branch. This idiotic notion of appointment of justices for their entire lives, likewise senators, flies in the face of everything that the Founding Fathers were very aware must not happen in their New Constitution in 1776.
If the Democrats regain control of Congress and the Senate, will they actually have the courage to introduce and implement such sweeping reforms that will change entirely the current image of the United States of America, a nation that is at the moment completely hollowed out from within, vacuous, empty, destitute?
I do not hold my breath. But I am heartened that there are many Americans in public life, both politicians and in the media, who are fine upstanding citizens and do have that courage if only the electorate will take the same view.
It is truly frightening to observe a large section of that electorate on social media. It is akin to staring Nazism in the face.
As I end this paper on Tuesday, 25 August 2026, I have just read a headline by the UK’s Daily Telegraph that the father awaiting the arrival of the USS Abraham Lincoln because his son is on board, has been arrested. I do not know the facts of that arrest, but it tells me all I need to know about the dire straits that America finds itself now in.
VII
It is no longer a ship of state. It wallows idly in the water. The rest of the world sails on. Too much damage has been done by the people on the bridge of that ship of state. Every American citizen should understand the contempt by which they are regarded by everyone throughout the world and especially within the United Kingdom, the European Union, Canada, Australia and New Zealand and the Commonwealth of Nations and the United Nations.
What? You have friends?
You stupid, benighted people.
And for those who believe in a deity, whatever religion, I imagine this one question being asked of the American electorate…
“What is this you have done?”
25 August 2026
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Liverpool and Gloucestershire
© Kenneth Thomas Webb
