So Zelensky did a Davos podium speech, but where he should have stayed in his lane over Iran, he didn't, and got exposed for the clown he is. Right, so Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky went to Davos, criticised Iran over the protests there, and Iran’s foreign minister replied by calling him a confused clown. Not diplomatically. Publicly. By name. And this matters, not just because diplomacy went straight out of the window, but because it ends a long-running convenience a lot of people have been relying on, which is the idea that Zelensky can speak as some kind of universal moral authority and everyone else has to take it seriously. Iran didn’t argue with him, didn’t rebut the claim, didn’t justify itself. It simply told him where he can stick it. And another reason this matters so much is that a whole set of assumptions just stopped working at once. The Davos platform stopped protecting the speaker. The values language stopped forcing compliance. And the habit of treating wartime legitimacy as a licence to lecture other countries doesn’t stand up, especially given Ukraine’s own history on such things. Because when a system loses persuasion, it doesn’t get debate in return. It gets ridicule. And deservedly. Right, so Volodymyr Zelensky stands on the Davos stage and does what he has learned to do very well. He speaks in the moral register. He talks about repression. He talks about values. He talks about what the world should not tolerate. And this time he directs that language outward, toward Iran, toward protests there, toward what he frames as a failure of the international community to act. That speech landed to great adulation, easy to do when Iran was banned from attending, making you wonder if Zelensky would have been so bold if they had been in attendance. But Iran is not known to let such things slide and within hours the response comes back not as a diplomatic note, not as a formal rebuttal, not as a procedural complaint. Iran skipped the typical diplomatic niceties and went with open ridicule. Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghci publicly called him a confused clown. Iran publicly insulted Zelensky because it does not accept him as someone who gets to lecture it. And why should they?

Trump talks up taking Greenland — and suddenly impeachment language is being used before anything has even happened. Right, so Donald Trump has started talking again about the United States taking Greenland, and he’s doing it without threatening war. No troops, no orders, no plan — just the idea, put back on the table. The immediate cost is this: the thing people normally rely on to stop presidents doesn’t activate. There’s no war powers vote. No court case. No switch Congress can flip to make it stop. And that’s the problem. Because once force is ruled out, the system everyone assumes will step in doesn’t actually have a way to intervene. So instead of law, you’re left with hope. Hope that he drops it. Hope that it blows over. Hope that nothing follows from saying it out loud. And once you’re relying on hope instead of rules, the confidence people keep selling you about how American power is restrained doesn’t hold up anymore. Right, so Donald Trump is still on about the United States acquiring Greenland. He has done it in that way that he usually does when he wants leverage without committing himself. He presents it as strategically necessary, treats objections as noise, and yet since he started banging on about this, is now insisting that he does not intend to use military force. That is where we are at this point. There are no troops moving. There are no orders. There is no plan on paper. What has happened is that Greenland has been reintroduced into serious public discussion as something the United States might pursue, paired with a verbal assurance that nothing violent is intended. Inside the United States, the response has been immediate and unusually severe compared to what has actually occurred. Constitutional lawyers, former officials, and political actors who normally avoid emergency language have gone straight to talking about impeachment and constitutional crisis territory, even though there is no action yet for the system to respond to. Donald Trump's renewed interest in the United States acquiring Greenland, without threats of war or concrete plans, presents a unique challenge to established political norms. This discussion highlights how the lack of overt force means traditional checks and balances on the executive branch, like war powers votes or court cases, are not activated. This situation raises important questions about geopolitics and the limits of political intervention when proposals are made outside conventional frameworks.

This by-election isn’t about the seat — it’s about whether Labour’s control model still works when voters stop playing along. Right, so Andrew Gwynne has resigned as a Labour MP, which means a parliamentary by-election is now locked in, whether anyone likes it or not and that certainly applies to Keir Starmer, this being his first parliamentary test since conning his way into power 18 months ago. Coming as this likely is to coincide with May’s local elections, all the more attention will be on it, and the speculation is rife as to whether or not Andy Burnham might run, or whether another Manchester local boy in Zack Polanksi might have a run at it too, especially off the back of a dynamite party election broadcast last night. But above anything else, from this point on, Starmer’s Labour in name only party has to actively defend its authority in a place once regarded as so safe it was never in question and now not only is it in question, but by how much Labour might lose it by. But the fact is briefings are happening before candidates get named. Hypothetical scenarios are already being handled like threats. And control mechanisms within Labour are being discussed out loud, which only happens when people stop trusting the system to deliver the desired outcome This doesn’t stop at one seat. It doesn’t stay local. And it doesn’t end on polling day, because once a party has to manage its own voters as a risk in what was a very safe seat, all the pieces are in play for this to become absolute Hell for Keir Starmer. Right, so Andrew Gwynne has resigned as a sitting Labour MP for Gorton and Denton in Manchester and a parliamentary by-election has been triggered in a seat Labour has treated for years as safe. Gwynne won in 2024 with 50% of the vote, actually down on 2019 when he got 65% of the vote, so this is a safe as houses Labour seat, the kind of seat that if Labour can’t hold it, they are in existential crisis territory, second place in 2024 being Reform Uk who only got 15% by comparison. But all of their problems here have a common theme – Keir Starmer himself. Labour’s first problem is that this by-election lands at a moment when Labour has already tightened every internal bolt it can reach, centralised selection, cracked down on dissent dissent, and collapsed the difference between leadership and the party machine itself.

Trump is escalating his threats against Iran again, but he’s doing it after already showing exactly how far he was willing to go last time. Right, so Donald Trump is escalating the threats against Iran again. The language has hardened, the plans are back in circulation, the warnings are bigger, louder, more absolute and the machinery is being spun up as if this is the first time he’s done it all over again. But it isn’t. All of this is happening after an alleged strike was already prepared, talked up, and then either not authorised or called off at the last minute, depending on source, so is this more of the same now? Whether it is or not, it blows a hole straight through the idea that you can say the same thing again, louder, and pretend nothing happened in between, it’s like an inverse boy who cried wolf moment. Escalation was taken right to the point where it’s supposed to turn into action, and then it didn’t. So can we take Trump seriously this time? Should we? Probably safer to than not, but if it all gets watered down again, we shouldn’t be that surprised either. But with more assets en route to the Middle East all at the same time, is there a genuine difference this time? Right, so Donald Trump has ordered the military to draw up new strike plans against Iran. Carrier groups and air assets are moving to the region already, but now the language has hardened again, and talk of “wiping Iran from the face of the Earth” has been Trump’s latest refrain. The USS Abraham Lincoln has been redeployed, refuelling tankers and fighter squadrons have been repositioned as well now, and the White House is allowing the impression of imminence to hang in the air. This is not the same moment as the strike that was prepared and then pulled back earlier. It’s a new escalation returning after that decision. Trump flip-flopping over striking Iran, like that’s a calm and rational position. Everything unfolding now is happening in the shadow of the last time the line was reached and not crossed, begging the question as to whether this time it will. Iran has responded accordingly. Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi did not issue a screaming denunciation or an emotional threat as perhaps western media might prefer. He didn’t shout. He didn’t posture. He set the terms and moved on. Maximum pressure had run its course, restraint wasn’t on offer anymore, and if Iran was hit, it would respond. That’s not how you talk if you think bombs are about to fall. That’s how you talk when you think the test already happened and you held. His language doesn’t dare Washington to act, it assumes Washington already showed its hand, and it shuts the door on the idea that saying it louder will fix that. The same logic runs through the assassination threats aimed at Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

As the war on Gaza drags on, BDS pressure is turning ordinary commercial links with Israel into reputational liabilities businesses no longer want. Right, so Boker Tov is an Israeli-owned food chain that’s been operating in Belgium, selling Israeli street food under a softened “Levantine” label, working on the quiet assumption that food sits above politics if you soften the language enough. Well it didn’t work. The chain has gone bankrupt, four restaurants have shut, and the owners have said the customers stopped coming once Gaza couldn’t be ignored. BDS strikes again. No ban from trading. No court ruling. No dramatic showdown. Just tables staying empty and the business no longer adding up. For a long time there’s been a lot of confidence that whatever Israel does, the consequences stay safely boxed in, something we commentators argue about while everyday commerce carries on unaffected. BDS has always sought to change that and businesses don’t survive the moment enough people decide they don’t want the association anymore. Consumer choice – you can’t fight it. But this is a bigger story than just one restaurant chain in Belgium. It’s about increasing numbers of people making similar choices outside Israel, not necessarily even as part of global BDS movements either, but also without that coordination and without permission, and so the story stops being about protest per se and starts being about Israeli reputation itself and no amount of Hasbara that can fix this when mindsets are simply shifting against you. Right, so Boker Tov has shut its doors in Belgium, filed for bankruptcy, and exited the market, and the owners have said plainly that organised boycott campaigns after Gaza cut the customer base out from under them. Four restaurants, gone, in a country Israel doesn’t govern, by decisions Israel didn’t authorise, through pressure Israel can’t regulate, which leaves consequences operating outside any diplomatic channel that used to cushion this kind of fallout.

When pension funds start questioning US debt because of political behaviour, something deeper than Greenland is breaking. Right, so a Danish pension fund has just moved to exit US Treasuries. Offload US debt in other words. Not stocks, not defence firms, not some symbolic gesture, but US government debt, because US political behaviour itself has been judged a risk and this is the kind of response that, as I mentioned in a video just the other day, can hurt the US via its spending power. In part at least, this is in aid of applying coercive pressure over Greenland of course, territory tied to Denmark itself. And amid talk of military action and counter-tariffs, this move quietly removes an assumption people rely on without realising it, that US debt is something that just sits there, being neutral, boring, above politics, something you don’t have to think about while Washington tests limits elsewhere. Well its not true and this is a more effective counterstrike than acts being far more loudly discussed. This doesn’t stop with Greenland, and it doesn’t stay confined to one fund either, because the moment capital treats conduct as relevant, a whole set of confident claims quietly stop working and the moment one private fund shifts others can follow – some much bigger. Right, so the Greenland crisis hasn’t produced a military move, a treaty breach, or a dramatic showdown, but it has already done something far more consequential and far harder to reverse and I don’t want to say I told you so, but I did cover this option the other day, so someone seemingly taking it is significant, not just for that, but because it takes some balls to do as well. What this does is force United States sovereign debt held by other states and other organisations, other funds, out of the background and into the open, where it now has to be spoken about, defended, and managed as a political asset and an acknowledged weak spot to be leveraged. Where I spoke about sovereign state holdings previously though, in this instance it is the holdings of a not insignificant pension fund instead that is taking the lead here.

Israel’s fruit exports are being hit as European retailers respond to consumer-led BDS boycotts without public announcements. Right, so Israeli fruit exporters are losing routine access to European supermarkets, with orders cancelled, buyers pulling back, and harvests being left unsold. Mangoes and citrus that used to move as a matter of course are now only being bought when there’s no alternative, and in some cases they’re not being bought at all. That removes a very basic assumption Israel has relied on for years, which is that civilian trade just carries on regardless. Because once food stops moving, you’re not talking about messaging or reputation management anymore, you’re talking about a system cracking at the seams. And that’s where a lot of confident claims quietly fall apart, most notably in the face of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaigns. The idea that markets are neutral. The idea that outrage stays online. The idea that this can all be compartmentalised until the headlines move on. You don’t lose fruit exports because of a bad tweet. You lose them when buyers decide the origin itself is the risk, and when that decision has already been implemented in contracts and sourcing rules. That’s the bit that doesn’t get walked back. Right, so the Co-op has changed its sourcing policy and has begun removing products that are clearly and solely sourced from Israel, after a member-backed push and a board-level decision to treat “community-wide human rights abuses” and breaches of international law as a reason to end sourcing relationships. That is just one for instance. That is not a protest on the street, it is a retailer deciding that Israel is now a reputational risk inside the everyday mechanics of food supply, and it does something that political statements never do, because it shifts a moral argument into procurement rules. An argument into something meaningful. When a supermarket does that, it does not need to persuade the whole country, it only needs to instruct buyers, rewrite contracts, and let the rest of the industry infer the direction of travel. A boycott campaign can launch a protest one day and the next day things return to normal, but it can also lead to a sourcing policy examination and a subsequent shift, the real power of BDS is more than the protest, it is the knock-on effects such demand can lead to.

The hunger strike ended, but the most dangerous medical phase began after they were sent back inside. Right, so Sodexo is a multinational outsourcing company that runs prisons for the British state, including HMP Bronzefield, and it’s now been accused of abusing Palestine Action prisoners for one very simple reason: a hunger strike ended and the system rushed to move on while the danger was still sitting there. Seventy days without food stopped, prisoners were taken to hospital, and then some were sent straight back into custody while the most dangerous medical phase was still ongoing. And that quietly kicks away a prop a lot of people rely on — the idea that once a protest ends, responsibility tapers off and everything settles back into “normal” because it stops being talked about. It doesn’t. What fails here is the confidence that privatisation, clinical paperwork, and silence after the cameras leave and the media put their pens down still protects the people in charge. Because if the riskiest moment is treated like an administrative clear-up instead of taken seriously under the state’s duty of care, then a lot of soothing claims about prison care and accountability don’t hold up anymore and thats problem that won’t stay contained. Right, so Sodexo Prison Services has been accused of abusing Palestine Action prisoners at HMP Bronzefield, and that accusation exists because a chain of decisions has already been taken, recorded, escalated, and then defended as routine. This is not about tone or interpretation. It starts with custody being outsourced, proceeds through a seventy-day hunger strike, runs straight into the most dangerous medical phase of that strike ending, and lands on prisoners being discharged back into custody while known risk remains active.