A fighter jet factory in England providing essential parts for the Saudi air force has not been checked for over three years, missing the government’s own deadlines. Without supplies from this factory, it is likely Saudi Arabia would be unable to continue bombing Yemen during the coronavirus pandemic.
The UK Ministry of Defence is using the Covid-19 pandemic to reverse a long-term recruitment crisis, which has seen it miss its enlistment targets for the past six years, and to repair damage to its reputation from the military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
There is money and power in identifying Russia and cyber attacks as the key security threats facing Britain — but not in addressing the more important issues of pandemics and climate change. Former UK intelligence chiefs are personally profiting from the ‘revolving door’ between government and business, and the public is paying the price.
The UK government’s failure to provide protective equipment to all health staff treating coronavirus victims prompts questions over whether ministers are legally culpable for failing to prevent deaths. But ministers routinely act with impunity and every prime minister since 1945 has been complicit in deaths abroad.
On the 50th anniversary of the end of the Biafran war, the world’s worst humanitarian crisis in the late 1960s, declassified British files show that Harold Wilson’s government secretly armed and backed Nigeria’s aggression against the secessionist region.
Despite claiming to help tackle the coronavirus pandemic, Britain’s military and arms industry continue to facilitate bombing one of the world’s poorest countries, which is most at risk from Covid-19.
The British government under Margaret Thatcher misled the public and MPs about its dealings with the Pinochet regime in Chile while it tortured and killed thousands of people, declassified British documents show.
British aid sponsors private hospitals for better-off patients from India to Zimbabwe, risking diverting doctors and money away from treating poorer patients who will be hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic.
A leaked report appears to show evidence that some of the most highly-paid Labour Party staffers wanted their party to lose the UK general election in 2017, and that they actively campaigned against anti-war activists within the party.
With some Western governments failing to follow the World Health Organisation’s advice on tackling coronavirus, right-wing figures in the US and UK are seeking to discredit the UN body as pro-China. But Britain and the US themselves are the WHO’s largest funders and among its major influencers.