Is Iran Becoming America's Next Vietnam?

If there's one historical comparison refusing to go away, it's if the United States becomes involved in a Middle Eastern conflict with Iran could it become another Vietnam.

It started as a few people chatting, then it moved to social media, but now the debate has gone beyond pundits and politicians and even Iran has joined in.

Apparently, the Iranian embassy in Hanoi recently posted an AI-generated image on X showing a weary American GI being lectured by a smiling Vietnamese soldier in Saigon after the fall of the city in 1975. The message was blunt: suggesting America learned nothing from its time in Vietnam and now they are about to do it all over again.

It's a clever piece of propaganda and with the first of the brave US warriors returning home in body bags the question demands attention, but it also leaves out the most interesting part of the Vietnam story.

Vietnam's Forgotten Second Act

The image freezes history at the moment of American defeat, as if nothing happened afterwards.

But today's Vietnam tells a very different story.

Walk through Ho Chi Minh City—formerly Saigon—and you'll find Starbucks, international brands, booming trade, foreign investment and a young population eager to participate in the global economy.

In 2023, Vietnam elevated its relationship with the United States to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, the highest level of diplomatic cooperation between the two countries.

The irony is striking. The nation that once fought America more fiercely than almost any other is now one of Washington's closest partners in Asia.

Vietnam remains an authoritarian state, but economically it embraced markets, international trade and global integration. In many ways, its post-war transformation became the real story—not the war itself.

If Iran Is "The Next Vietnam"... That raises an uncomfortable question. (You can watch a very interesting video on this here )

What if Iran really does become America's next Vietnam? Not because America wins, but because history follows the same broad pattern: The United States attacks after its adversary refuses to surrender which will then make the conflict drag on longer than expected. Whatever happens, America will eventually disengage from the conflict and once again, congressmen and women will sit in meetings at Congress or argue in the corridors whether the US achieved its objectives.

One thing is almost certain - the attacked nation will celebrate surviving the world's strongest military power, but then reality will set in, because victory doesn't rebuild cities, revive an economy or improve everyday life. In Vietnam's case, military triumph eventually gave way to economic pragmatism.

What remains unclear is whether Iran could ever follow the same path.

Let's not forget the Houthis

On 23rd July, Yemen's Houthi fighters (more about the Houthis here ) claimed to have attacked shipping in the Red Sea - a move that threatens to further escalate the already volatile situation in the Middle East. 

By forcing ships to turn back from the narrow Bab El Mandeb strait, they have threatened to choke off the main maritime route from Europe to Asia.

In doing so, the Houthis put themselves in a similar position to Cambodia and Laos when they supported the Vietcong - effectively escalating the conflict into a regional war.

The Difference That Matters

Here's where the comparison begins to break down.

Vietnam's communist leadership ultimately treated ideology as a means to preserving the country. Economic reform became acceptable because national recovery mattered more than revolutionary purity.

Unfortunately, Iran's ruling establishment do not appear to have anything close to those priorities. In their case, religious zeal far supersedes economic pragmatism. For decades, the Islamic Republic has elevated "resistance" into a defining political identity, sometimes even when that resistance comes at enormous economic and human cost. Already the war has taken the lives of anything up to 10,000 Iranians and with the war showing no sign of abating, we can only assume the numbers killed in action will dramatically increase. If preserving revolutionary religious ideology remains more important than rebuilding the country, then Vietnam's post-war success offers little guidance.

Trump's Vietnam Remark

Even Donald Trump invoked Vietnam recently, perhaps more revealingly than he intended. 

Asked whether bombing Iran risked becoming America's new normal, Trump responded: "We were in Vietnam for 19 years—we're here for four months."

The comparison was intended to reassure.

Instead, it reminded many observers that Vietnam was never supposed to last 19 years.

Every stage of that conflict came with promises that success was just around the corner—just one more deployment, one more offensive, one more year. Yet the United States continually underestimated the willingness of its opponent to absorb extraordinary losses. That's one of history's most enduring lessons: military superiority doesn't automatically translate into political victory.

The Danger of Believing Your Own Story

The historical parallel that best illuminates Iran’s position is not found in medieval crusades, but in the Vietnam war. More than fifty years ago, Vietnam faced the full brunt of American military might who, in turn justified their intervention on the basis they were trying to communism.

Yet, for the Vietnamese, the war was more about keeping their independence. The Vietcong fought to eject what they saw was a foreign power seeking to dictate their political system. Ho Chi Minh’s forces were outgunned and bombed with ferocity, yet somehow, they endured, and relied on a belief that sovereignty outweighed the military superiority of their invader.

Today, Iran occupies the same geopolitical space (more on Iranian geopolitical issues here ) 

 Vietnam did in the 1960s. As they see it, they are the primary obstacle preventing American dominance in a resource-rich region. On the other side, Trump views the Middle East not as a collection of sovereign nations, but as a strategic asset class. Oil reserves, critical trade routes like the Strait of Hormuz, and geopolitical leverage are viewed by the White House as essential to maintaining American dominance in the region, while Iran’s insistence on managing their own resources threatens this arrangement.

Just as the Viet Cong utilized guerilla warfare with support from Cambodia and Laos to bleed the American empire, Iran and its network of allies utilise regional proxies like the Houthis to raise the cost of aggression. The logic is identical: make domination too costly to sustain. Already The US has lost $5bn of military assets after just 4 months and this includes short periods of supposed peace. The Vietnamese resistance proved a determined nation could break the will of a superpower; Iran is demonstrating this lesson remains valid in the 21st century.

This isn't a new observation.

David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest remains one of the definitive accounts of how brilliant policymakers, armed with statistics, confidence and faith in American power, slowly led the country into one of its greatest strategic failures.

George Packer's biography of diplomat Richard Holbrooke tells a similar story from inside the system—a young idealist who arrived believing in America's mission and left shaken by the gulf between official optimism and reality on the ground.

Both books describe something more dangerous than battlefield losses: the tendency for governments to become trapped inside their own narratives, suppressing inconvenient truths while doubling down on failing strategies.

History Doesn't Repeat—But It Rhymes

Whether Iran ultimately becomes "America's next Vietnam" remains impossible to know. The conflicts are different. The geopolitical landscape is different. The objectives are different. But the comparison persists because it speaks to something larger than military campaigns. Vietnam reminds us, wars rarely end where leaders expect them to. Victory can look very different decades later than it does on the battlefield. Sometimes the true measure of success isn't who wins the war—but who proves capable of building a better peace afterward.

If Iran wants to invoke Vietnam as a warning to America, it may also want to remember how the rest of Vietnam's story turned out.

 

Political Comment

Trump has chosen to take America down an extremely dangerous path that internationally could take it to disaster. Already, observers are seeing US actions as being unplanned and ill-conceived; journalists are arguing he has no exit strategy.

But what we do know is the United States has had no significant independent military success since World War 2. Even now, many Americans still carry the scar of Korea and Vietnam and still remember with horror the tragic sight of bodies returning to US soil from Afghanistan and Iraq. America cannot afford to lose another war, but unless things change this is becoming increasingly likely. There is no question of US superiority on air and see, but is what happens if there is a land war. It is believed Iran can call upon 350,000 troops to defend the country and while the US can call on 450,000 active personnel plus 170,000 Marine Corps it is improbable they would deploy such large numbers.

Historically, the US deployed a maximum of 550,000 ground forces to Vietnam in 1969, while only 148,000 were sent to Iraq and less than 110,000 went to Afghanistan. Ever since the beginning of the war, the Ayatollahs have been craving a ground war, because they know in that situation they are playing on a level battlefield.

Most US military strategists are opposed to a ground war because it would undoubtedly lead to a significant death toll and with support for the Iran war already at its lowest only a fool would push this idea forward.

Trump needs to develop a formal strategy for how he deals with Iran, but one thing is for sure, creating another Iran isn’t the answer.

The Left's crisis: Socialism and Antisemitism

As most readers may be aware, the last few weeks have seen most of the mainstream media centre on Andy Burnham’s campaign to become leader of the Labour party. His ‘manifesto’ was particularly interesting, as it focused on massive regional devolution, public control of utilities and a substantial increase in social housing. More particularly, his broad platform emphasised ‘business-friendly’ socialism while maintaining fiscal discipline.

Now this made me smile because it sounds like old-fashioned Labour, but if you dig deeper, you’ll realise it’s simply a ‘word salad’ that means nothing. For example, ‘business-friendly’ and ‘socialism are essentially contradictory, because the essence of socialism is it advocates for a democratically run society where the means of production – businesses, industries and resources are socially, or collectively managed and ultimately replace capitalism through democratic and electoral processes.

Similarly, ‘fiscal discipline’ isn’t a socialist concept, as it’s more associated with ‘fiscal conservativism’ and ‘economic liberalism’.

All very interesting, but I want to concentrate on something more disturbing; something visible on both sides of the pond, and it’s what has happened to the progressive Left? Radicalism once meant fighting against poverty and for action on worker’s rights and climate change. But over the years this has been replaced by an obsessive hatred of Israel, and “Zionism”; their rhetoric sounding indistinguishable from the fascists they once fought. Today, these ‘socialists’, use virulent antisemitic tropes that would have once stood perfectly alongside hate-ridden articles in Der Sturmer in the 1930s.Take for example the July 1934 edition warning of a Jewish program for world domination. The article—titled “Who is the Enemy?”—blamed Jews for destroying social order and claimed Jews wanted war, while the rest of the world wanted peace. Compare this to a New Left Review headline comparing Zionism to imperialism and arguing Zionists are colonialists seeking war and domination of the Middle East.

So, what’s changed? Or has it always been this way? Has practical socialism always had an antisemitic side that’s finally come out of the woodwork? To understand this, it’s essential to first understand the mind of an antizionist.

Anti-Zionism and antisemitism

It’s not Jews, we keep being told, it’s Israel. If only they didn’t “overact”, there would be no antisemitism; if only American or British Jews repudiated Israel, they would be left alone, because those we call antisemites are responding to unbearable provocations. 

But let me be perfectly clear - everything about this is a lie, and it’ll destroy the West - see how the Left reacted when Israel responded to the appalling tragedy on October 7^th and how they reacted when the Gaza War followed, not forgetting how before the first shots were fired, Israel made it clear there would be no war if the 256 hostages were returned immediately.

But the lies continued unabated on social media, rotting the minds of ill-informed people, warping their critical faculties and chasing away the Jewish diaspora.

With a social media campaign heavily funded by Iran and Qatar, it was inevitable ‘socialist’ activists would embrace antizionism, particularly as many were already hostile to Israel once the declaration was announced Jerusalem was, is and always will be the eternal capital of the Jewish people.

In a feeble attempt to disguise left antisemitism, they started to spelt ‘antizionism’ without a hyphen, or capital ‘Z’ to distinguish it from the traditional pre-1948 variety. But let’s be clear, it’s simply a specific, modernised hate ideology targeting Jews and Israel and comes with an entire, warped analytical framework. In effect, it’s the new antisemitism for our times.

Notably, these same “antizionists” are indifferent to the plight of Muslims; they only care about conflicts involving Jews. None of the 23 countries with Islam as state religion or the 53 majority-Muslim countries, or Christians or other nations or “ethno-states” are targeted: just the only Jewish state, seen as the purest embodiment of Western evil.

“From the river to the sea” is no more than ethnic cleansing, at best, and genocidal extermination at worst. The antizionists tell Jews to “go home”, but deny anywhere is their home, and do their best to ensure they never have one. So, Jews are redefined, not as refugees (often from Arab lands) but, in an act of gross inversion, as “white settler colonisers”. Jews, in their eyes, are genocidal oppressors and can never be victims. One doesn’t need to prove this; asserting it is sufficient.

The “genocide of Palestinians” banalises the genocidal behaviour of Islamist countries. It redefines normal military practices as illegitimate, making self-defence impossible and rewards Hamas’s monstrous human shield strategy; it rationalises terrorism as freedom-fighting.

 

The Democratic Party

The party was founded on January 8^th, 1828, emerging from the supporters of Andrew Jackson but didn’t show signs of Left leanings until the 1930s with the arrival of Roosevelt’s New Deal. Further left leanings were cemented in with Lyndon B. Johnson’s support for the Civil Rights Movement but, even then the party fought against adopting a socialist agenda and remained true to a liberal/ religious tradition first started in the early days of the twentieth century.

By the 1960s, progressives had fused parts of cultural liberalism with economic left-leaning traditions, as well as drawing robustly on Keynesian economics, left-wing populism, and democratic socialism, particularly through Franklin D. Roosevelt's Four Freedoms. While there are differences between the historical progressivism of Johnson’s era and today’s progressive movement, both share a belief that free markets lead to economic inequalities and must be aggressively regulated with broad economic and social rights legislation to protect the working class.

Antisemitism/ Anti-Zionism in the Democratic Party

The emergence of antisemitism in the Democratic party goes back to the late 1960s, largely driven by ideological shifts within the New Left. During this period, segments of the movement began to adopt an increasingly anti-Zionist platform, which at times bled into overt antisemitism. Following the 1967 war, a segment of the Left in the Democratic party shifted away from their historical support for the relatively new state of Israel and instead framed the country as a colonialist power. This rhetoric frequently crossed the line from criticism of Israeli government policy into antisemitic tropes, such as accusing Jewish supporters of dual loyalty

By the early 1970’s deep fractures were visible, forcing many to navigate a worrying wedge between anti-Zionism and antisemitism so, by the 1980s, the division lines were so heavily blurred that in 1984, Senator Jesse Jackson, while standing as a Democratic presidential candidate caused significant controversy by referring to Jews as "Hymies" and New York City as "Hymietown."

More recently, there have been a number of cases of Holocaust inversion within the party  and, in particular, we have seen how, during the 2014 Gaza War, the party leadership often accused Israel of carrying out “genocidal attacks” on Arabs it confined in, what they termed:  “its Gaza concentration camp” (you can read more on how progressives, aided by Bernie Sanders and others fought for recognition of Palestine here - Left-Wing Antisemitism in the United States: Past and Present | INSS )

The extent of racism against Jews became fully visible during House votes on resolutions condemning antisemitism. In December 2023, over 100 Democrat representatives voted "present" or "no" on a GOP-led resolution formally equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism.

All this led many, including blogger John Podhoretz to argue “If I’d told you in 2015 that the focal point of antisemitic sentiment in the U.S. in 2026 would be inside the Democratic Party, you would have thought I was insane. Hell, I would have thought I was insane, and I’d spent decades warning about creeping anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiment on the left.” (You can read the full article here - Why Antisemitism Is a Bigger Problem on the Left )

The Labour party

The sad truth of both the Labour party and the trade union movement is their history of hatred against Jews goes back to before the party was even founded. In 1900, the Trade Union Congress, which played an instrumental part in founding the Labour party, passed a resolution arguing the Boer War was being fought “to secure the gold fields of South Africa for cosmopolitan Jews, most of whom had no patriotism and no country”. A claim later shown to be completely preposterous.

Nonetheless, the British Labour Party was created in 1900 under its original name of the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) and officially adopted the name "Labour Party" in 1906. Its key founding members included Keir Hardie (elected Chairman) and Ramsay MacDonald (elected Secretary). Other early members included antisemites, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, who joined the fledgling party in 1914.

Right from its birth the Labour party and trade union movement relied on antisemitic tropes associating new immigrant Jewish worker with undesirable living conditions and parasitical finance legitimising calls for controls to reduce Jewish immigration. In 1889, the TUC was arguing “it was the duty of the trades to keep the matter of Jewish migration under close consideration”.

But it was founder, Keir Hardy who was the most outspoken Labour antisemite, even as early as the Boer war when he argued Jewish financial houses were part of a secretive imperialist cabal promoting the war. Later, when referring to one of London’s wealthiest areas, he attacked “men living in Park Lane, some of whom are unable to speak the English tongue” who were enriching themselves – he was, of course referring to Jews.

The Labour Leader newspaper, of which Hardie was both editor and publisher, exhibited even more rabidly antisemitic language. “Wherever there is trouble in Europe,” he wrote, “wherever rumours of war circulate and men’s minds are distraught with fear of change and calamity, you may be sure that a hook-nosed Rothschild is at his games somewhere near the region of the disturbances.”

Henry Hyndman, blamed "Jewish capitalists" for starting the Boer War

Ian Hermon, once argued the roots of Labour antisemitism stem from a “populist pursuit of power, bigotry, ignorance or a twisted understanding of history and socialist ideals.”

Despite a deeply rooted history of anti-Jewish feeling many early socialists fought vociferously to achieve the Zionist ideal of a Jewish state. But antisemitism has never been far from the surface and with the likes of Beatrice Webb describing Zionism as hypocritical nonsense, it established roots that many years later, Corbyn was able to reach out and use.

 Of course, those on the left argued their comments were not antisemitic, but legitimate opposition to Israeli government policy and actions. The evidence demonstrated a very different view:

1. Ken Livingstone, the former London mayor was suspended from the Labour party after saying Hitler had supported Zionism in the 1930s – The EHRC found “Ken Livingstone’s comments were unwanted conduct related to Jewish ethnicity, which, whether viewed individually or together with other relevant acts of Labour Party agents, had the effect of harassing Labour Party members”;
2.  Naz Shah, the ex-Labour MP, urged her supporters to vote in an online poll about Israeli military action and claimed "the Jews are rallying" to skew the results;
3. Again Naz Shah, in a 2014 Facebook graphic showed the outline of Israel superimposed over the United States with the headline "Solution for Israel-Palestine Conflict – Relocate Israel into United States" and the comment "Problem solved";
4. Chris Williamson signed and shared an online petition supporting jazz musician Gilad Atzmon, who was accused of antisemitism and Holocaust denial. Later, he booked a room in Parliament for a screening of a film about Jackie Walker, a party activist suspended over alleged antisemitic comments.
5. Councillor Pat Bromley was reported to the Labour Party over allegedly antisemitic Facebook posts, suspended but then reinstated into the party.

While the exact number of upheld complaints in the Labour Party remains unknown, disciplinary reports indicate hundreds of accusations were upheld, resulting in sanctions ranging from formal warnings to expulsions.

 

Political Comment

I find it interesting the way people argue both the Democratic party and the UK Labour Party are socialist, when all evidence demonstrates they are nothing of the sort. The Democratic party may be left leaning but firstly, they have no formal ties to the trade union movement, and secondly, they maintain an adherence to market driven economic solutions over nationalisation. There are many other distinctions, but in short, they bear none of the markers associated with a socialist political party.

The UK Labour party is an interesting case and if you look at the original Clause lV of its constitution as written by Sidney Webb, it would be reasonable to argue its socialist origins:

"To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.”

However, all this changed in April 1995 when the party rejected nationalisation and rewrote the clause to argue how Labour now:

“… believes that by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone, so as to create for each of us the means to realise our true potential and for all of us a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many, not the few, where the rights we enjoy reflect the duties we owe, and where we live together, freely, in a spirit of solidarity, tolerance and respect.”

In effect, the Labour Party walked away from its socialist roots.

Furthermore, the essence of socialism rejects all forms of racism and encourages an internationalist perspective – and with a history of antisemitism in both parties it is difficult to argue the Labour party or the Democratic party are socialist.

It seems the political right are simply using the term as an unsubstantiated term of abuse with little basis in reality. In this respect it is a very unhealthy way to deal with political differences and implies ta lack of political education suggesting the political right lack a credible understanding of political ideology.

It makes me fear for our political future.

J.D. Vance: Trump's Heir Apparent or the Republican Party's Biggest Gamble?

On Dec. 2, 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump said, "I think [Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz] is a grossly incompetent man. I thought that from the day I watched JD destroy him in the debate. I was saying, who is more incompetent, that man or my man? I had a man and he had a man; they were both incompetent."

Although he backtracked later, Trump may have had a point. In fairness, most politicians make mistakes at some point, career but Vance has made a career out of being outspoken and at the centre of several political controversies, a firebrand, and there appears to be only two possible explanations for his gaffs and offensive comments. Option one is he absolutely believes what he is saying and doesn’t care who he offends. This is a quite possible option as he built his earlier career as a political commentator on hot-button social issues for CNN and as an opinion writer for the New York Post.

Later, as a new Senator for the State of Ohio, he refused to quieten down and became an ardent campaigner for Trump’s brand of conservative, nationalist populism. He was outspoken against rising immigration, and opposed American military aid to Ukraine, but this didn’t fire the flames of discontent enough for him, so he declared his opposition to same-sex marriages and abortion rights, just to turn the flames into a wildfire. By 2023, he had inspired sufficient division that you either loved or hated him – but there was no way you could be indifferent.

The second option, of course, is he could be politically stupid, but with a sound education from two of America’s top universities and sufficient time debating on the Senate floor, I feel it wise to dismiss this alternative.

Whichever way people choose, there is no doubt in the minds of most pundits – this is a politician who is going places – and as we all know, Trump was to announce him as his running mate in July 2024 at the Republican National Convention.

Five months later, J.D. Vance was installed into the second most important job in the United States and, as you would expect with any firebrand, he courted controversy. So, most political commentators were not greatly surprised when an article published by the Jerusalem Post drew widespread attention after alleging the Vice President of the United States disclosed sensitive Israeli military plans to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

According to the report, Israel had finalized a covert military operation—supported by Mossad and the Israeli Air Force—that envisioned leveraging Kurdish forces to destabilize Iran’s regime. The plan was reportedly halted at the last moment after former President Donald Trump intervened and vetoed the operation.

In the aftermath of the article’s publication, Israeli security sources have accused officials within the White House of leaking details of the plan. Several of those sources have singled out Vice-President Vance, alleging the information was passed on in time for Erdogan to contact Trump and urge him to block the operation before it could proceed. Most readers will not be surprised to learn Vance's press secretary, Luke Schroeder, immediately denied the allegation, and suggested the accusations were "categorically false", though notably Israel has not withdrawn their accusations.

This is far from the first time Vance has been in trouble with Israel, or the Jewish community. In October 2025, Vance criticized a vote by the Israeli parliament to advance a bill on the proposed annexation of the occupied West Bank, calling it "a very stupid political stunt."

While waiting at Ben Gurion airport to return home after an official visit to Israel, he added: "The West Bank is not going to be annexed by Israel. The policy of the Trump administration is that the West Bank will not be annexed by Israel. That will continue to be our policy. And if people want to take symbolic votes, they can do that, but we certainly weren't happy about it."

From this comment, we can only assume Vance shares the same level of arrogance as his boss and feels he has the right tell Israel what it can and cannot do, despite not being either an Israeli citizen, or an elected member of the Knesset.

More recently, Vance’s position is taking flak in both the Senate and House of Representatives as conservatives openly criticize his defence of President Trump’s deal with Iran. With mid-terms just a few months away, he finds himself in the unenviable position of being at loggerheads with many senators and congressmen and women, leaving him politically isolated.

When Vance was asked at a news conference recently about reports many senior Israeli were angry over the deal, he said: “My message to them would be twofold. ​No. 1: Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world ‌who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this ‌moment in time,” Vance said. “If I was in the Cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left ‌in the entire world.”

Vance added that two-thirds of the weapons Israel has “have been built by American hands and paid for by American tax dollars …. The problem for Israel is not Donald J Trump, and anybody in Israel who thinks their biggest problem is the president of the United States needs to wake up and smell the reality of the situation that country is in.”

Now there are a couple of points here needing political dissection. Firstly, it is fundamentally untrue to suggest Trump is the only head of state sympathetic to Israel. While Israel remains grateful to US support, there are several international leaders who support the Jewish state including Friedrich Merz (Germany), Emmanuel Macron (France), Keir Starmer (UK), and Narendra Modi (India).

Secondly, pointing out Israel’s reliance on the US for supply of conventional weapons alongside a suggestion Israel should never condemn Trump, even when US actions may be detrimental to the country strikes me of bullying – and if Israel and the world have learned anything in the last 78 years it is how Israel doesn’t welcome bullies.

Vance's blind spot on antisemitism

While it would be wrong to accuse Vance of being antisemitic, his comments over the last few years have, at least, demonstrated a gross insensitivity towards the Jewish community. In particular,  in his efforts to promote his Right-wing views, he has ignored accusations of antisemitism “exploding” within the Republican party despite an October, 2025 “Politico” report regarding a selection of vile antisemitic and pro-Nazi messages from leaked group chats written by leaders of Young Republican chapters and various state GOP politicians and staffers; or a May, 2024 report in the New York Times exposing  a July 2023 email to Republican supporters where the Trump campaign employed an image bearing a striking resemblance to a Nazi-era cartoon of a hook-nosed puppet master manipulating world figures.

He said when asked about these points: “Do I think that the Republican Party is substantially more antisemitic than it was 10 or 15 years ago? Absolutely not … I think it’s kind of slanderous to say that the Republican Party, the conservative movement, is extremely antisemitic.”

Despite his weak rebuttal, a substantial portfolio is building up against him and leading many to question his attitude towards the Jewish people.

Other insensitivities towards the Jewish community

·       Vance defended the inclusion of antisemites in the Republican Party at the Turning Point USA conference in December 2025.

·       On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Vance’s 2026 statement commemorating the Holocaust did not mention Jews, Nazis, antisemitism, or the 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust.

·       In December 2025, Vance absurdly claimed that stopping immigration is the best way to curb antisemitism in the U.S.

·       October 2025, Vance attempted to minimize the seriousness of a racist and antisemitic Young Republican (18–40-year-olds) group chat.

·       Vance defended Trump’s 2024 statement that Jewish Americans who did not vote for Trump were disloyal, calling Trump’ accusation “reasonable.”

·       Vance refused to denounce Tucker Carlson in 2024 for praising and airing the views of a Holocaust revisionist who falsely claimed that the Nazis’ destruction of European Jewry was not an intentional act of premeditated genocide.

·        In 2022 Vance said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene did “nothing wrong” in appearing at a white nationalist conference organized by Nick Fuentes (a well-that even some Republican leaders objected to.

Vance's Israel problem

·       Vance has opposed aid to Israel and promotes policies that are harmful to Israel.

·       Vance voted against the post-October 7, $14 billion emergency aid package to Israel twice, on February 13, 2024.

·       After Republicans defeated it on February 23, he voted against the package again on April 23, 2024, when it did pass, with most Republicans voting for it.

Other gaffs and political mess-ups

·       Vance admitted he falsely claimed Haitians were eating pets in Ohio after his rhetoric inspired violence against that community.

·       In 2024, senior Labour figures in the UK rejected comments by Vance, that the UK could become the first “truly Islamist country that will get a nuclear weapon” under the party. This is despite, at that time, Muslim immigration being less than 5% of the overall population

·       In March 2025, in an interview, Vance appeared to downplay his earlier comment about the potential of “20,000 troops from some random country that has not fought a war in 30 or 40 years” in monitoring any ceasefire. His comments were widely perceived to be directed towards the UK and France, who have been leading European efforts to secure a peace deal between Russia and Kyiv.

Liberal Democrat defence spokeswoman Helen Maguire MP, a former Captain in the Royal Military Police who served in Iraq argued: “JD Vance is erasing from history the hundreds of British troops who gave their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan I saw first-hand how American and British soldiers fought bravely together shoulder to shoulder. Six of my own regiment, the Royal Military Police, didn’t return home from Iraq. This is a sinister attempt to deny that reality.” A Conservative Opposition MP, Mr Obese-Jesty, who also served in Iraq and Afghanistan cited Vance’s account in his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, of his own time as a Marine Corps journalist in Iraq, where he said he “was lucky to escape any real fighting”.

The MP for Huntingdon went on: “I was part of British forces fighting in highly kinetic operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the latter in response to Article 5 following 9/11 … The disrespect shown by the new US vice-president to the sacrifices of our service personnel is unacceptable.”

·       This follows a highly controversial diplomatic row in June 2026, when Vance and other US officials spoke out regarding the handling of the tragic murder of Henry Novak. Vance suggested the death happened "the same way a civilisation dies," which drew a sharp rebuke from Downing Street over alleged attempts to stir up racial division in the UK.

·       On 15^th May 2026, Vance was met with a humiliating silence when he tried to transform a memorial event into a political stump speech. Speaking at a memorial service for the Fraternal Order of Police’s National Peace Officers, Vance got a quiet reaction to his raving about the Trump administration’s efforts to end cashless bail. “How about we have a federal government that puts violent criminals in prison, as opposed to letting them out of jail?” Vance said. There was a long, awkward pause, before the quiet members of the audience slowly started clapping.

It’s possible the crowd of law enforcement officers and their families are aware there is no significant documented increase in violent crimes among arrestees out on cashless bail, which allows people suspected of a crime who can’t meet bail to avoid spending time in a cage before they’ve been convicted. Or perhaps the audience weren’t impressed by how Vance used his pulpit to deliver a political speech

Political Comment

With a little over two years to the next presidential election, we can all look forward to a great deal of political jostling for both Republican and Democratic nominations for the presidency. You will forgive me if I ignore the candidates for the Democratic nomination, but now, there are no significant candidates coming to the fore, but for the sake of democracy, we can but hope someone will emerge to offer the electorate a decent alternative.

To critics, J.D. Vance has tunnel vision; his focus is on immigration and to reduce aid to Ukraine and Israel; issues that at one time would have been a recipe for political ruin. But Vance doesn’t seem to buy any hyper-partisan strategy. Quite simply, he speaks a style of firebrand right-wing Trumpism fluently and there are many Americans who love it. In his mind there can be no compromise - you can try to do Republicans politics and work with Democrats, or you can choose to say, ‘I’m not going to try to be Mr Nice Guy, I’m just going to get the job done with or without your support.’ Arguably the main reason why we will eventually see him seek the Republican nomination for the presidency.

Make no mistake, Vance is a MAGA firebrand who will be a huge asset to the United States political system because he has the capacity to mobilise disengaged voters, force neglected issues onto the national agenda and act as a crucial check on institutional stagnation. Now, I confess, I despise everything he stands for politically. In my mind, he is Trump 2.0 but with a brain that, it appears has little care for Israel and its place in the Middle East. Against this, sometimes a political firebrand can revolutionise a country. Take the examples of Margaret Thatcher, or Clement Atlee in the United Kingdom – in Thatcher’s case alone, over a period of ten years, she changed the face of Britain and a generation later the country changed completely. Was it for the better? Well, here you come to personal opinion and that is not for this argument.

But there are dangers in giving Vance more power. The US is visibly a nation divided and Trump has encouraged this political ‘civil war’ to further his own agenda, and, despite his promise, America isn’t seen internationally as being great. If Vance has the intellectual and political acumen to reunite the country and bring the warring factions back to the table, he will effectively restore trust in the United States. Would a Vance presidency be good for Israel or Ukraine? Absolutely not and, based on his current performance demonstrates a naïve lack of Middle East history and politics. Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East and many Arab countries, even post-Gaza war and starting to normalise relationships with the Jewish state and, under normal circumstances, we would expect a US president to play a major part in those negotiations. Add to this an ongoing war with Iran that has no interest whatsoever in adhering to Trump’s “Agreement”, so if Vance wants the Republican nomination, he will need to tread carefully because there are many in the GOP opposed to him and he will need to do a lot of smooth talking to gain the keys to the White House.

For Israel’s sake, it is my hope that he never becomes the Republican nomination and instead Mick Huckabee or Marco Rubio stood against him. Both have sound credentials and either would make excellent presidential candidates.

But if Vance were to secure the nomination and perhaps the presidency, political commentators like myself will have much to write about for the next few years.

Welfare to Work Doesn’t Work—and the Evidence Is Clear

Wherever we are in the world, we are being forced to live a myth; a lie that for some can destroy us physically, profoundly harm our mental health, corrupt us socially, or leave us emotionally desolate. I am, of course, talking about work, the social and economic need to ‘earn a living’ and pay our way in the world. This isn’t to suggest some don’t thrive in the work environment, clearly there are examples of retirees who shrivel away without a job to go to each day; or those dedicated few who genuinely believe they get their identity from the job they do and savour the experience every day. But I would argue most people work for the salary they are paid each month.

By now many readers will be thinking, ‘Oh here goes, another lefty wanting to ‘smash the system’, but that is very far from my intention. I have nothing against earning a living, but what I hope to show is how our hard-earned taxes are being misspent to perpetuate a grossly unhealthy myth about the idea of work and it’s not even working.

But let me first talk about how having a job may be harmful.

How work messes with your mind

For years, psychology has been used to tell us work is good. In 2006, Waddell and Burton did some research commissioned by the UK Department of Work and Pensions and it unsurprisingly argued:

·       Work meets important psychosocial needs in societies where employment is the norm;

·       Work is central to individual identity, social roles and social status;

·        Employment and socio-economic status are the main drivers of social gradients in physical and mental health and mortality;

It sounds plausible, but there is also strong psychological evidence showing how our working conditions and a lousy workplace environment can affect our mental health, so it isn’t black and white. I mean, we know high job demands, low job control, high effort–reward imbalances, injustice in the workplace, role stress, bullying and a lack of support can create mental health problems – in other words, the kind of difficulties most of us face nearly every day.

Social effects of work may not be as good as we think

The negative social impact of work may seem obvious but let me spell it out. At its most basic level, research has shown work can degrade interpersonal relationships and create spillover impacts on families. Even worse, workplace dynamics such as exclusion or not being allowed into social or work groups can affect us badly, as can being deliberately ignored by our work colleagues

A more recent social effect has been the post-Covid trend towards remote, or lone working - while offering a lot of flexibility, it brings with it distinct isolation risks, which can significantly damage natural social functioning.

Negative spiritual effects of work

We often tend to ignore the spiritual effects, but they can have a profound effect on our well-being. Take for example times when we work in a toxic environment that lead us to feel a lack of purpose or identity. We see this when people are employed in, what they feel are pointless or unfulfilling jobs and this can undermine your sense of autonomy that can lead us to feeling hopeless, depressed, or maybe simply as though our careers have stagnated. Add a toxic management, or disrespectful colleagues and all this can disrupt your inner peace, making it difficult to maintain a contented or relaxed mindset.

So why do we work?

Well, here we come to the crux of the matter, because governments and employers want us to believe work is wholesome, character-building and gives us a sense of identity (and, of course, for some this is true), but the reality is far simpler – we work because we have to. It’s as simple as that. We work because if we don’t, we can’t pay our rent or mortgage, we can’t eat, drink, or stay warm, and all this ignores the wonderful toys our consumer society churns out every day that we convince ourselves we ‘need’ – after all, where would life be if we couldn’t buy the latest smart watch, a new electric car, the latest Apple phone, or a crazy foreign holidays,

So, we work primarily to survive and secure financial independence, it fulfils core human needs by providing routine, community and, for some, it gives a sense of purpose. For those lucky enough it can challenge us to grow, foster personal development, and give us a feeling we are contributing our unique skills to society – but here I would urge caution as this is unlikely to be the common view of work.

A few years ago, an ex-colleague of mine told me he had been working so hard on a project that he’d literally made himself unwell. He didn’t offer this as a health update, or to warn me about overexertion. It was, oddly enough, a boast. But why is work treated, strangely enough, as if it were next to godliness

In 1905, Max Weber gave us some answers when he suggested work is driven by a "Protestant work ethic," where labour is viewed as a divine "calling" and wealth accumulation a sign of spiritual salvation. What Weber could never anticipate was how society would move away from this “Protestant Ethic” and turn to abstract deities that would command our deep devotion; deities like the “free market” - the ultimate, supreme deity in a consumerist world, demanding constant economic growth and competition; or the” Brand” where entities like MacDonalds, Starbucks or Walmart/ Asda act like patron saints, offering worshippers a sense of belonging, status, and identity in exchange for their loyalty. Then there is the role of “the media”, the priesthood and messengers of the modern era. Where social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook broadcast what society should desire, setting the trends and making us feel our lives are inadequate without the latest products.

But what about the unemployed

For a society to work there must be conformity to maintain order, co-operation and social cohesion so, it follows, if the norm is for people to work and participate in a consumerist society, then those unable to do so must be encouraged or forced to do so. To achieve this many governments internationally run “Workfare”, or to use a more British term, “Welfare-to-Work programmes to help, or one could argue force unemployed people back into work. There is nothing new about this approach, policies compelling unemployed people back into work trace back to inter-war Britain, or even as far back as the 1880 Famine Codes in British India.

 More modern “Workfare” programmes are government-administered social policies requiring able-bodied welfare recipients to engage in community work, public-service jobs, or job training in exchange for receiving state income benefits. Its declared aim being to reduce poverty, prevent long-term dependency on government aid and help individuals build recent work experience. The covert goal is to reintegrate the unemployed back into a thriving consumerist society.

Unfortunately, the World Bank, amongst others argue workfare programmes have no lasting effects on total national employment or the full-time long-term employment of those who have been out of work for over 12-months. It simply doesn’t work.

Despite this, these programmes remain popular and involve billions of pounds/ dollars of government investment.

I was thinking recently about Viktor Frankl who developed an argument suggesting the purpose of life is to secure well-being. The corollary is, of course the creation of meaningless work is contrary to the creation of well-being, and forcing people into such work may even be harmful.

We know workfare or public works programmes (PWPs) work effectively as social safety nets to provide temporary income and food security, but as long-term tools for returning people to employment their success is mixed; research shows they often fail to create lasting infrastructure benefits and, more importantly their effectiveness depends heavily on their context (whether they are targeting long-term unemployed, young people, elderly etc ) as they are not a one-size-fits-all solution to poverty or unemployment.

The effectiveness of UK workfare/ welfare-to-work programmes – the Restart Scheme

The Restart Scheme was established to help long-term unemployed people return to work, offering training in employability skills, skills development and job placements. Since 2021, 1.2 million unemployed were referred to the scheme and the government set a target of achieving 310,000 successful outcomes during a five-year period (an outcome assumes an individual secures 16-hours of work per week for a period of 6-months), costing the taxpayer an estimated £2,429 per person. The scheme achieved only 280,000 successful outcomes (88|%). In their analysis of Restart, the Institute of Fiscal argued had absolutely nothing been done to help these people, 246,400 would have naturally returned to employment without any form of assistance.

One of the reasons UK workfare programmes are destined to fail is because they are contracted out to independent employability companies eager to maximise profitability and secure the full funding for each referral (they only receive 30% of funding when the person is referred and the remainder when they secure employment). As a result, most providers ‘cream’ (only accept referrals from those who can be found work quickly) or ‘park’ (spend as little time as possible on those with complex needs and difficult to find work) to distort statistics and suggest high success rates.

The effectiveness of US workfare/ welfare-to-work programmes

The main workfare/ employability programme running in the US is known as TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families), a federally funded, state-administered programme providing short-term cash assistance and support services to low-income families with children. Often referred to as "welfare”, it aims to help parents achieve self-sufficiency through work-focused programmes helping them back into work. In order to achieve this, the government funds states a total of $16.6 billion each year (the overall federal budget for means-tested budget for welfare programmes is about $1.1 trillion), but unlike workfare programmes in the UK, recipients are usually required to find employment or participate in job-training programmes within two-years of receiving assistance.

What we do know when we look at workfare programmes critically, is that since 1997 the UK, much of Europe and parts of Asia have been eager to adopt welfare-to-work approaches based on extremely limited evidence of their ability to boost welfare recipients' earnings on a long-term basis

So too has the belief programmes prioritising moving people into work quickly are more effective than ones seeking to enhance human capital (skills training, assistance overcoming complex needs etc). Additionally, what is particularly disturbing is how both the US and UK governments have ignored the lack of evidence on how long the beneficial effects of programmes last after people leave them and their almost inevitable future return to unemployment and poverty within five or six years.

 

Political comment

Transparently, we need to rethink the whole concept of work, ranging the current work leisure balance where one-third of our day is spent in work, one-third asleep and up to one-sixth travelling to or preparing for work, leaving only four hours a day for leisure or personal study. But we also need to re-examine our entire ‘back-to-work’ approach because it quite simply isn’t working. In the UK we have 10 million people who are economically inactive and close to 6 million on out of work benefits and 49% of sick and disabled people without a job, In its response, the government is intending to invest £3.8 billion during this parliament alone on programmes supposedly geared to get them back into work; programmes that consistently fail to deliver.

Additionally, we know in the UK, 2.7m people are in work and claiming benefit largely because they have forced into part-time work and have not been able to obtain full-time employment.

Action must be taken if this is to change. In particular, we need to

·       Reappraise the nature of work and re-examine our work-leisure ratio

·       Help young people into training or education programmes by offering them proper skills

·       If unemployment levels vary regionally, offer financial incentives to move to ne areas

·       Offer employers significant incentives to take long-term unemployed

·       Provide greater support to families eg. provide greater financial support for childcare

·       Dramatically increase public works spending eg attack the homelessness crisis by funding a substantial programme to build far more social housing so workers can move to where jobs are at any given time

·       Substantially improve training programmes to respond to cyclical unemployment especially in high-growth industries

·       Lowering interest rates and use tax incentives to allow new and young businesses to expand rapidly.

There’s nothing new here – it’s what we’ve always known, but what we’ve always lacked is the real desire to bring about real and effective change. Handing out hundreds of billions of pounds or dollars to employability providers so they can mage huge profits from governmental ambivalence is not the answer. It is time to develop a cohesive and strategic plan – but the key question is whether we have the willingness.