Jon Bright (London, OK): Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt are touring the UK at the moment to promote their new book: "The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy". They played the House of Commons on Wednesday to a hall of MPs and Lords (including Norman Lamont, apparently) - I managed to catch them yesterday at SOAS.
Their thesis, that a powerful pro-Israel lobby exists in the US, and that it is using the influence to negatively affect US foreign policy (they think it was pretty much directly responsible for the Iraq war, and that they are pushing for war with Iran as well) isn't directly relevant to OurKingdom - though US foreign policy does of course make its presence felt here from time to time. But what I found interesting, and more than slightly reminiscent of the UK, was their feeling of powerlessness. Their diagnosis of the problem seems accurate enough, but they admitted there were only two solutions: making the Israel Lobby 'see sense' (unlikely) and seriously reforming campaign finance law (impossible). That the financing of a political party can be so important for the outcome of a democratic government is perhaps unsurprising, but not a little depressing, and it did make me think what a huge opportunity seems to have been missed with the collapse of the Hayden Phillips talks.
