Right, so Netanyahu’s Lebanon front has just done the one thing it absolutely was not supposed to do.

It left some proof.

Actual footage. Actual losses. Actual pressure. All being applied to Israel and not the other way around, The sort of thing that stops being a line in an IDF military update about being all moral and specific when they’ve just levelled an entire block – the sort of thing that ends up becoming evidence in somebody else’s argument.

And that was the risk Netanyahu was trying to dodge. Keep Lebanon active, keep the troops in, keep the pressure on, keep the genocidally loopy ministers holding the reins of power over him howling for more, but still let the tangerine toddler passing himself off as President of the US sell an Iran deal as if the region had been neatly folded, ironed and put away in a drawer. The front was supposed to stay useful to Netanyahu without becoming inconvenient for him. Loud enough to serve Israel’s purposes, quiet enough not to wreck Trump’s sales pitch.

As if he was ever going to pull such a stunt off.

Hezbollah had the cameras rolling courtesy of their drone warfare, the casualty ledger has shifted alarmingly against Israel, Iran as a consequence has brought ships into the picture, and after it was apparently cancelled, JD Vance is on his way to Switzerland looking like the man sent to explain why the “stable deal” is now arriving with smoke damage and too much charring around the edges to have been just a little accident.

Right, so Benjamin Netanyahu has apparently won again.

Amazing, isn’t it?

Every few days, Israel wins so hard that another town in Lebanon starts smoking, another ceasefire needs hosing down, another American official has to pretend this is all part of the plan, and another poll appears showing that even Israelis are looking at Netanyahu’s victory parade and asking why the wheels have come off his float.

This time though, the win Israel is claiming to have is over Iran.

Israel won. Netanyahu stood tall. Trump got his deal. The region was being stabilised, allegedly.

And then Lebanon walked into the room covered in dust, smoke and bits of somebody’s roof. The poll isn’t much of a win actually.

Eleven percent. Just 11% of Israelis believe Netanyahu beat Iran, along with 71% of them believing Trump is going to sell them out to Iran.

That is how they want to spin this, that is how it has been packaged. It takes airstrikes, rubble, shattered homes and a ceasefire Netanyahu and Co are desperate to wriggle out of - the latest example lasting for a grand total of – and I’m not joking – 5 minutes, and squeezes the whole thing into a narrative so soft you could use it to wrap crockery. This is the latest Israel victory claim getting dragged back to the scene of the crime and being found wanting, because it is spinning a win out of getting their arses handed to them and all for Netanyahu’s benefit.

Right, so Benjamin Netanyahu thought he had found himself a loophole.

A nice little Lebanon-shaped loophole.

Trump’s deal, his Memorandum of Understanding with the Iranians could say what it liked. Trump could puff himself up at the podium like big orange balloon until he exploded. The diplomats could put on their grave and serious faces, shuffle some paperwork around like a BBC newsreader feigning interest in whatever drivel they’ve just spouted and pretend the region was being folded into Israel’s preferred order like some complex piece of genocidal origami.

Netanyahu had other ideas, because of course he did.

Lebanon was going to be the exception, the bit where he could carry on warmongering his weaselly black guts out. Nobody was going to stop him, or so he thought.

And then the incident Kfar Tebnit this happened.

Southern Lebanon. The front Netanyahu wanted to keep outside of the rules, outside of the deal, he needs war somewhere to keep himself in post. This was the security zone, the bit nobody else could have and it just blew up in his face and then some.

Four Israeli soldiers killed. A battalion commander lost.

Troops eliminated because a government decided this strip of Lebanon had to stay under Israel's boot.

Right, so Andy Burnham has won a landslide in Makerfield, completely contrary to a typical Starmer Labour by election result because usually Starmer has all the appeal to voters of a wasp at a picnic on a summers day, so the fact Burnham has a majority now north of 9,000 votes still comes with a big caveat attached to it: Makerfield did not fall in love with Andy Burnham. Makerfield rejected Keir Starmer. Burnham won because he promised a leadership challenge, he really didn’t have much else to offer. This is definitely not a Labour resurgence bedtime story here.

This is not Brave Andy riding back from Greater Manchester. Reform beaten. Hope restored. The grown-ups are back in charge. The band plays Things Can Only Get Better and everyone pretends the last few years were just a very expensive misunderstanding.

No. This was not a love letter to Burnham.

This was a warning shot through Starmer’s front window.

Burnham won the seat. Reform were beaten. Starmer took the damage. But Labour’s great act of renewal, as this is being touted, is now a man who has spent years orbiting the same old party machine, walking back into Westminster and saying the word “change” with a bit more warmth than the bloke currently sucking all the oxygen out of Downing Street.

Right, so the Iran deal has landed as it is being broadcast, such as it is, a Memorandum of Understanding is just a diplomatic nod with nothing yet formally agreed to at all, but for all the pomp and ceremony going on ad nauseum, all gleefully and unquestioningly broadcast by the mainstream media, for once the story is not that Donald Trump has wandered up to a microphone, powdered himself in bronzer, declared himself the saviour of civilisation and is now eagerly awaiting the arrival of the Nobel committee on horseback. They’re sure to come this time aren’t they?

Trump is in the story, obviously. That is the obvious bit. It is his deal. His signature. His announcement. His great big diplomatic peacock routine.

So he is not the problem in this story.

The problem is Benjamin Netanyahu.

Because this deal does everything Netanyahu didn’t want and backs him into a corner he can’t get out of either. It takes Lebanon - the bit Israel wanted to treat like an open-ended military playground - and drags him out of it while at the same time he has the likes of Itamar ben Gvir screaming that Israel will not withdraw. Trump is desperate for this deal and it’s put him at loggerheads with Israel over it all while Netanyahu’s administration starts to eat itself over it. And the conflict here is clear to see. Lebanon is an Iranian red line, Trump has been forced to concede the point, such is his desperation and yet all of us can still point and say: hang on, if this war is winding down, why are Israeli troops still sitting in southern Lebanon?

Right, so Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right minister for making every situation somehow more grotesque than it already was, had a big brave message for the United States.

Israel is not subject to America, apparently.

Trump’s deal does not bind us, apparently.

Israel is sovereign, independent, answerable to nobody, all very stirring stuff if you like your diplomacy delivered in the tone of a man shouting at a traffic warden.

Lovely.

Except there is one tiny little bit of American power Ben-Gvir does still appear to be subject to.

Not the President. Not the State Department. Not Congress.

No appropriate sanction regime he’s well overdue for inflicted by people who appear to have suddenly discovered the concept of principles.

No, no.

It was a visa desk.

It was a form.

It was a request to put his fingerprints on file. Now what could possibly be so scary about that?

Right, so that did not take long, did it?

Starmer’s government gets the Palestine Action ban kept in place, the Home Office gets the legal result it wanted, and almost immediately one of its own ministers decides the best use of anti-terror law is apparently to turn Twitter into a Home Office loyalty checkpoint.

This is more than a normal “minister said something stupid on X” story. The story is that Starmer’s government fought to keep the Palestine Action ban, won the legal result it wanted, and then one of its own Home Office ministers, Mike Tapp, publicly used that ban like a political trap against Zack Polanski. All very Joseph McCarthy. And when amongst a large number of people on X called this out, including journalist Owen Jones, calling out the danger of Tapp’s tapped tweet, Tapp did not back down; he dug deeper. He answered with innuendo, and then like a good little Labour Friend of Israel, reached for the antisemitism card.

Trying to get another politician to say something that would incriminate them, resorting to slurs when called out over that and weaponising antisemitism as the cherry on top, Tapp went for the triple. But this guy is weaponizing the Minister for Migration and Citizenship, sitting inside the Home Office, publicly treating terror law like a toy for winning arguments online.

Right, so every launch, every flash, every flaming rocket put out in news clips or by the Pentagon or US Central Command is very deliberately put out there into the public sphere. It looks impressive, it promotes a sense of power, it lets you know who’s in charge when the good ol’ US of A is the one doing the shooting, all very flashy. Very presidential. Very “don’t mess with America.”

For as much as such imagery makes for handy propaganda though, these missiles are not exactly infinite and the tangerine toddler has been spending them like water. They don’t just automatically replenish themselves because Trump snaps his fingers and bellows into a microphone for the hard of thinking MAGA crowd or if Pete Hegseth fixes his stares at a camera like he’s trying to intimidate a parking meter.

Every one of these things gets counted somewhere afterwards where there is no TV and no cameras and no adulation.

Inventory. Replacement. Production. Cost.

And that is where Trump’s stupid, unnecessary Iran war starts turning into something rather awkward for the people who sold it to the American people as an act of US self defence, because America’s defences are now significantly weaker than they were before.

Where the clips are theatrics, the inventory has to be replaced and that isn’t immediate, but it is very expensive. $2.5Billion expensive, but to listen to the bungler in chief who has blown the arsenal, you’d think the end of this story was a foregone conclusion.

So there it is. “The deal’s all signed.” The Strait is opening. Everything is moving. The great man has solved it. Everyone may now clap like trained seals for the greatest dealmaker that there ever was. Except it isn’t a deal and there’s nothing great about the orange bungler orchestrating this farce. A Memorandum of Understanding is just an acceptance of what the other side wants, not a deal that actually gets it.