A new year is a good time for nations, like families, to review the institutions they support. For 2024 I have a suggestion for the UK: it could do worse than standing back and considering hard how it should deal in future with the United Nations and its offshoots.
We’re not talking here about leaving the UN as a whole. Except for the lunatic Republican fringe in the United States, there is no serious call for any country to do this. Indeed, there are legal doubts about whether this is even possible, the charter being silent on the matter. (Indonesia purported to quit in the 1960s, but it soon changed its mind and the episode is now universally forgotten.)
Whatever its limitations, the UN on balance still does its core job of helping promote peace, at least where the big boys don’t have skin in the game. While its posturing over Ukraine and ill-disguised desire to wrong-foot Israel
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