Behind The Lines with Arthur Snell

With all the pressure of the Christmas season I held off from putting out a 'geopolitical review of the year' or something like that: there's a lot going on and people need some space. Instead, I wanted to finish the year with an episode that is in some ways completely different, but also relevant to the issues we have covered in the podcast earlier. Shane O'Mara is a professor of experimental brain psychology at Trinity College, Dublin and the author of numerous books and studies. He also has a brilliant Substack called Brain Pizza which I can highly recommend.Recently, Shane published a book called Talking Heads which explains the unexpected link between human conversation, which of course depends on human memory, and nations. At a time when nationalism in its most pernicious and dangerous form is an increasing phenomenon, understanding that it is a function of human memory, not some inherent feature of Englishness, Germanness, Russianess or whatever, feels like an important insight and worth talking about.Thank you all for listening to this and other episodes of the podcast. I hope you have enjoyed it and hope that you will continue to listen into 2024.You can follow me https://twitter.com/SnellArthur also more often on BlueSky https://bsky.app/profile/snellarthur.bsky.social. I write at https://arthursnell.substack.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As the Israeli assault on Gaza, immediately preceded by the Hamas-led massacre in Southern Israel, continues, we return to the history of this conflict. This is the second part of my extended interview with the historian James Barr, author of several books on the history of the Middle East including A Line in the Sand and Lords of the Desert, some of the best regarded guides to the region, particularly in the early years of the twentieth century. If you have not yet heard the preceding episode 18, where James starts this story, I recommend that you listen to that first.In this episode we start at the aftermath of World War II and the horrific events of the Holocaust, as Jews are trying to emigrate to what will become the State of Israel and the British colonial authorities are trying to stop them.You can follow James via his website https://www.historythatmatters.org/ as well as on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/jamesbarr.bsky.socialI am on Twitter @snellarthur, Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/snellarthur.bsky.social and arthursnell.substack.com If you’ve enjoyed this podcast why not subscribe, and give us a positive review.Also, don't forget to check out the Disorder Podcast https://www.goalhangerpodcasts.com/disorder Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The crisis in Israel - Palestine continues, currently unfolding with the Israeli attack on Gaza, immediately preceded by the Hamas-led massacre in Southern Israel. Unpicking the history and origins of these events remains a particularly difficult task, with history used and abused by people with points to prove on all sides. For that reason I was particularly happy to be able to conduct an extended interview with the historian James Barr, whose books on the history of the Middle East, including A Line in the Sand and Lords of the Desert are some of the best regarded guides to the region, particularly in the early years of the twentieth century.With James, in this first episode, we got to the bottom of famous moments in the Levant region in the early twentieth century, including the Sykes-Picot agreement and the Balfour Declaration, as well as the underlying colonial tensions, notably between Britain and France that drove much of these events. In a subsequent episode we will talk about Jewish militancy in the mid-twentieth century, the events of 1948 including the Nakba and the establishment of the State of Israel. You can follow James via his website https://www.historythatmatters.org/ as well as on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/jamesbarr.bsky.socialI am on Twitter @snellarthur, Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/snellarthur.bsky.social and arthursnell.substack.com If you’ve enjoyed this podcast why not subscribe, and give us a positive review.Also, please check out the podcast Disorder, featuring Jason Pack and Alex Hall Hall Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The sense that our politics isn’t working might be familiar to listeners of this podcast. If you heard last week’s episode you’ll know that I had James O’Brien discussing his book “How they Broke Britain”, which gets to the heart of these questions. But one area that James and I didn’t touch on is our parliament. Britain’s parliament, sometimes self-importantly calling itself the Mother of Parliaments, isn’t working properly. Its members aren’t scrutinising legislation properly, its regulations and procedures are largely broken and it contributes to a wider sense of cynicism around our politics. Two seasoned parliamentarians, Nick Harvey and Paul Tyler, have focused in on the way parliament currently works and how it should work and have produced a short, easily readable book which contains a set of clear proposals, around elections, parliamentary procedure, reform of the upper house and standards in public life. Although it’s just about parliament, this book could be titled How to Fix Britain, because if its recommendations where followed, our national life would be improved immeasurably. It’s actually called Can Parliament Take Back Control ? And comes with strong endorsements from the Institute for Government, the Constitution Unit at University College London and the Former Clerk of the House of Commons, Lord Lisvane.I was lucky to be able to speak to Paul and Nick and draw on their combined several decades of political experience to hear their recommendations for how to fix our politics. Here they areYou can find Paul and Nick on Twitter and in the usual places. I am @snellarthur on most social media and my Substack is https://arthursnell.substack.com/  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

James O'Brien is often described as the voice of liberal England. With this regular radio slot on LBC and his huge online following, he is a reminder that popular doesn’t have to be populism. His patient, forensic but totally accessible unpicking of cynical political dishonsesty, particularly of the Brexist variety, has been a beacon of sanity for literally millions of people - at a time when so many other media outlets, including the BBC, no longer seem prepared to call out deliberately misleading public messaging. O’Brien sometimes feels like a lone voice of reason and that points to a profound change in our society. Politicians have always tried to avoid answering difficult questions and portray their own actions as virtuous and ingenious, but the kind of profound dishonesty characterised by Boris Johnson coupled with the refusal to take responsibility for your own failings, perhaps best epitomised by Liz Truss, feels like a newer phenomenon. This plays into a wider prospect, of a country that now feels broken, its media, its politics and perhaps most importantly its public services, all deeply dysfunctional. The roots and causes of that malaise are the subject of James OBrien’s new book, How they Broke Britain. In the excellent introduction, O’Brien talks of the boiling frog metaphor and succinctly explains the premise of his book: it is “the story of slowly boiled water from which an entire country failed to escape”.Like anyone who has been profoundly distressed by that boiling water, I have been a big admirer of O’Brien’s work, both on LBC and on Twitter. This was particularly the case as his book has a similar title to my own, How Britain Broke the World. I wouldn’t go so far as to suggest they are companion volumes, but I was to some extent attempting in my work to look at some of the similar effects of Britain’s internal politics on the wider world. So it was a huge pleasure and privilege to have James on the podcast. He is, as you’d expect for a consummate radio presenter, an excellent guest and I really hope you get as much from listening to him as I did from interviewing him.Thanks for listening and please subscribe to this show if you haven’t already. You can follow my work at https://arthursnell.substack.com/ as well as on Twitter and Bluesky. Finally, a link to the Disorder Podcast which I mentioned at the top of the show: https://www.goalhangerpodcasts.com/disorder Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

After months of fierce fighting, mostly in the Donbas region, Ukraine's attempt to push through Russia occupation zone to reach the Sea of Azov appears to have failed. Russia's incredibly dense minefields, its increasingly sophisticated use of drones, and its willingness to weather extraordinary casualties have all contributed to a lack of Ukrainian progress. But the West's failure to supply Ukraine with the weapons it needs, whether artillery, tanks or fighter jets, have all contributed to these setbacks. Now, as winter sets in, Ukrainians are braced for intense Russian aerial bombardment. Alongside this grim prospect, western attention is now more focused on events in Israel and Palestine. According to President Zelensky, this has resulted in fewer artillery shells reaching Ukraine. Underlying all of this is the fact that the US is no longer continuing supplying Ukraine - as a result of congressional gridlock and a Republican Party that appears closer to Moscow than to Kyiv.Who better to discuss these difficulties with than the man in the lucky orange hat, John Sweeney - joining me from Kyiv. John can be found on Twitter @johnsweeneyroar and also has a very worthwhile Patreon https://www.patreon.com/JohnSweeneyRoar/postsAs ever, you can find me on https://arthursnell.substack.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When I worked at the Provincial Reconstruction Team in Helmand Province, I was largely based at the Forward Operating Base in Lashkar Gah - the main city of Helmand. There, amid the dust and noise of an active military campaign, there was a small, beautifully tended garden inside the base. I’m going to be honest and say that I was too preoccupied with my own job ever to ask myself who was responsible for its upkeep- even as I enjoyed that little slice of tranquility and beauty almost every day. Had I stopped to find out, I would have learned that the gardener was Shaista Gul, a local Afghan citizen whose hard work created a beautiful garden in the most unlikely place. By talking on this job, Shaista, and the thousands of Afghans, many of them interpreters, that served Britain during its involvement in the NATO mission, became enemies of the Taliban, facing constant threats, and worse, including murder. After the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021, some lucky Afghans were able to escape on evacuation flights from Kabul. But most were left behind and thousands made their way to Pakistan, including many that had been assured of resettlement in the UK. This month, the government of Pakistan has decided to expel all undocumented Afghans in the country believed to be around 1.5 million people. Of these, around 2,000 have been accepted as eligible to come to Britain in recognition of their past service with our forces. But thanks to a cost-saving policy made by Rishi Sunak last year, these people were kept in Pakistan in preference to bringing them to the UK where the migration system is under acute strain. Now these people, who risked their lives serving our country, find themselves threatened with being returned to Afghanistan by the Pakistani government. The story of Britain’s treatment of those Afghans that worked with us during our involvement in that country is the subject of Larisa Brown’s book, the Gardener of Lashkar Gah. Larisa is a defence correspondent, currently with The Times and previously working for the Daily Mail. She joined me, just as Pakistan was preparing to start its campaign of expulsions, to talk about Shaista Gul and the wider history of Britain’s betrayal of its Afghan friends.You can find Larisa’s book here: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/gardener-of-lashkar-gah-9781399411028/ I am on https://arthursnell.substack.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week we’re covering arguably the most important question in British foreign policy: our relationship with Europe and, specifically - what the circumstances and process might be for Britain to rejoin the EU.Nobody thinks this is an easy issue, or something that can be achieved quickly. But it’s something that everyone with any sense of a European identity must see as a fundamental priority that Britain needs to get started with. And it’s something that almost no mainstream national politician wants to talk about. How would the Long March back into the EU be achieved? What would be the steps, the obstacles, the challenges? These are all questions that I want to examine in a series of episodes of Behind the Lines - RejoiniacsFor The first of these, who better to speak to than the leader of the European Movement itself, Dr Mike Galsworthy - a scientist, campaigner and passionate European. We cover a lot of ground and we started with the impact of Brexit on science - Mike’s professional calling, before moving on to discuss the future and how Britain might think about reversing Brexit and rejoining the EU.You can follow Mike on Twitter https://twitter.com/mikegalsworthy and BlueSky https://bsky.app/profile/mikegalsworthy.bsky.socialThe European Movement can be found here: https://www.europeanmovement.co.uk/I'm on https://twitter.com/SnellArthur and https://bsky.app/profile/snellarthur.bsky.social as well as https://arthursnell.substack.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Military expert Dr Mike Martin discusses Israel and Hamas's warfare. They explore the risk of conflicts merging and escalating into global ones. Topics include Russia's involvement, challenges in fighting Hamas in Gaza, the political crisis in Israel, and the psychological aspects of managing geopolitical conflicts.

Understanding the risks of a regional war between Israel and its antagonists feels like the most important issue at the present time. I was able to speak to Michael Stephens, former head of the Middle East programme at RUSI, the Royal United Services Institute, about the complex diplomatic and strategic relations that exist across the region. We covered Iran and its proxies, the Arab Gulf states and Egypt, as well as discussing Israel's own policy choices.Michael is on Twitter here MikeRStephens You can find me @snellarthur on Twitter and Bluesky. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.