Right, so Andy Burnham thinks the best thing to do during the air-bombing of Yemen by the Saudis is to send one of the RAF’s flying petrol stations in to refuel the perpetrators of the carnage.

But of course it gets tarted up as anything but doesn’t it? Labour calls it "defensive," because, don’t they always? We’re not involved, honest guv. If you say something often enough eventually it becomes the truth is apparently the thinking. Like claiming you had nothing to do with the bank robbery because you only drove the getaway car.

It was a day when Saudi bombs were falling on Yemen; families were picking through what remained of their homes; and an RAF Voyager was in the air, keeping the Saudi military supplied, like Deliveroo for airstrikes.

Here’s what they had to say about that decision.

“Defensive military support.”

That is the government’s explanation. Three words, apparently meant to turn Britain from the bloke holding the ladder into a passer-by who just happened to be there.

Air-to-air refuelling keeps military aircraft in the air longer, lets them go farther from their base, stay longer in an area, and return less often to the ground. It is intrinsic to any actions the Saudis may choose to be carrying out.

The British tanker does not hand over fuel having been given a solemn assurance that it will be used only for charitable purposes and spontaneous hugs has it?

There’s no special shut-off valve marked “defensive only”; no Labour-approved nozzle, with a rosette on and a Vote Andy sticker, which shuts itself off, in case the aircraft ever gets aimed at Yemen. It is simply fuel supplied to an air force actively engaged in a bombing campaign.

Right, so, it seemed that Benjamin Netanyahu assumed Israel’s military superiority was something to be passed down like a hoard of treasure.

Definitely not to be shared. Hardly to be questioned. Certainly not something Saudi Arabia should be allowed anywhere near without first handing him that lovely normalisation deal he’s been after for so long but there’s fat chance of that fairy tale coming true anytime soon.

Israel has been the only state in West Asia in possession of the F-35. Not just operating it either, but enjoying its own specially modified version, because apparently ordinary preferential treatment wasn’t quite preferential enough.

Washington, however, is also knee-deep in this particular mess. Keep the Saudis hooked on American armaments, American training, American software and every overpriced Pentagon contraption bolted onto the thing. Keep Riyadh looking to Washington, rather than Beijing. Keep one of the Gulf’s biggest powers tied into the American military system for years to come. Especially now they are getting a wee bit desperate with regards to getting their oil shipped out and Little Donnie refusing to save them from those man and nasty Houthis.

And, naturally, that procurement process keeps them heading back to the American arms bazaar whenever they need an upgrade.

After all, Donald Trump, who is always in search of opportunities to sell weapons, greenlights a deal to sell the Saudis 48 F-35 jet fighters for $24.3 billion. And of course Israel immediately starts scribbling down a list of compensations faster than a little boy who saw his brother open a bigger, more attractive present.

Yes, the Saudis are apparently being allowed to purchase F-35s and Israel is whining like a little b*tch that it won’t have the biggest and best toys anymore.

Right, so Donald Trump has won Greenland. Apparently.

He hasn't bought it. He hasn't annexed it. He hasn't even managed to claim sovereignty over a single Greenlandic wheelie bin. Still, none of that matters because Trump says he's won - and as we all know, reality is contractually obliged to catch up with his imagination sooner or later.

According to Trump, the United States now has "permanent control" over Greenland's security and "all other needs." Forever. Eternity. The Infinite Life Agreement, which sounds less like a diplomatic breakthrough and more like the sort of thing you'd get upsold by a Bond villain moonlighting as a dodgy broadband salesman.

So here's the announcement.

There you have it. Permanent authority. Security. "All other needs." America's wildest dreams fulfilled, courtesy of the greatest deal-maker ever to shuffle a deck, lose half the cards, and still declare himself the winner.

And this, rather wonderfully, is how that breathtaking triumph was being described in Denmark.

"Congratulations, President Trump. You've just achieved exactly what you always had."

Oh dear.

Sadly for Little Donnie that is the truth of things, even if his oatmeal for brains can’t quite process it. They handed him what amounted to a rusty old key and Trump mistook it for the deeds to the palace, and now he's out front boasting that no president in history has ever owned a doormat quite as magnificent as his.

Which is why this is why we’re all finding this so bloody hilarious.

Right, so the former Labour deputy leader Tom Watson has joined Palantir. He has gone all-in and signed on as Palantir UK's Senior Vice President no less. What a convenient vacancy to have come up!

The thing is though, since Tom Watson is still a Labour peer, and Palantir as we know is unfortunately very much already in the British public sector, the whole thing would be a nasty enough Labour Party story in and of itself if we just covered that.

But the timing is, as it were, almost poetic: Camden Council’s pension fund is now entangled with Palantir, Camden is in trouble because of its association with Israel, and the Labour candidate to run against Zack Polanski in Holborn and St Pancras is the Camden Council Leader, Sagal Abdi-Wali. So a bad optics news story has now just got so much worse and it’s all collapsing onto that election now. Abdi-Wali has hardly covered herself in glory without Watson’s help though.

She stood right there, in the middle of Camden Council, where the protesters were spelling out an issue which the Labour Party keeps trying to sweep under the carpet and which keeps coming back every time.

Gaza.

Palestine.

Israel.

And now the very pro-Israel Palantir on top.

Four topics the Labour Party would I am sure have loved to keep completely separate, because if they were put together, Zack Polanski's Green Party campaign leaflets will basically be writing themselves

So lets dig into all of this and see where it all comes together then.

Right, so the Saudis are claiming to have heroically struck down an Ansarallah drone that was heading for Mecca, before it even got to the gates.

Who can tell? It might be so. It might well be that unicorns also occupy the sky over Riyadh.

But before Riyadh starts preaching, expecting the world to sit obediently like a car dashboard figurine, let's actually look at the ground reality.

This is the Bab el-Mandeb Strait of course, one of the world's most important shipping routes.

And now it's quieter than a Saudi press conference when the PowerPoint presentation breaks down, and the generals have run out of excuses.

Saudi Arabia has been bombarding Yemen for years with money, munitions, aircraft, and other people's sons. Despite all this, they have just lost te city of Mokha, Mayyun-or Perim Island, as it is known-and the strategically important territory surrounding these straits.

The Gate of Tears.

A very splendid name, really, and a most poetic one for Mohammed bin Salman, who right now is probably going through boxes of tissues as fast as his air force is getting through fuel.

Those are Ansarallah, or Houthi fighters reportedly celebrating in Mokha.

While all this was going on, the Saudis were dropping bombs elsewhere in Yemen. The Houthis had marched right down to the coast, and now the world watched another crucial shipping lane in the Middle East empty because the Saudis couldn't hang on to the terrain.

They look like they need a bigger boat to pinch a line from Jaws. So then, as if by magic (or maybe it was just desperation), something new suddenly appeared.

Mecca.

Right, so, five of Israel’s six major Mediterranean desalination plants had been shut down after an algae bloom clogged the seawater intakes of the plants.

Five out of six. How could this have happened, is this the next Biblical plague after the bees and the rats that I covered the other day?

No rocket had been fired. No Iranian missile had flattened the crucial machinery. No Houthi drone had given an unexpectedly accurate survey of Israel’s water resources.

Only a bunch of green pond scum, which, as far as causing Israel significant problems, effectively has better aim than half the region's artillery.

Now it should be said that since the worst of this, plants have been brought back online, so it's not like Israeli taps are all spitting out green stringy muck, and Benjamin Netanyahu hasn’t been reduced to brushing his teeth while swishing imported Evian in his mouth-but give it some time perhaps, because the problem hasn’t exactly gone away either.

And whilst it might seem a bit trivial, this is actually a pretty significant thing. Of the six major plants which supply Israel with water from the sea, five went offline at the same time. Karma some might argue after they took out so many desalination plants in Gaza.

If this doesn't qualify as a crucial system collapsing, what exactly are we waiting for? Bibi going about in the street with a saucepan to catch rainwater for his morning coffee?

Right, so Malaysia has taken possession of three Israel-bound containers, which are now hanging around one of Southeast Asia's busiest ports like lost luggage. They have been sitting there since 19 August without batting an eyelid, awaiting divine intervention or for someone in Tel Aviv to explain why a Malaysian port should do as it’s told.

Malaysia has banned Israeli shipping and Israel-bound cargo since 2023, which, if you were already aware of this, might make you wonder what all the fuss is about now. And it’s a case of, they always made an exception when they get to play the middle man. Transhipment as its called, where cargo gets offloaded from one vessel to another, without ever being imported, so Malaysia don’t technically handle the goods, they just let others do it instead.

That changed on 7 August however, when Malaysian border officials pulled a container reportedly headed for Elbit Systems, Israel’s weapons giant, aside for a spot of very unwelcome attention.

Now, Malaysia did not say it had found weapons. It said it was investigating whether the contents amounted to controlled or strategic goods. But Elbit ended up discovering nonetheless, that a shipping manifest, even an Israeli one, is not, in fact, a royal decree ordering Malaysian authorities to mind their own business.

Two weeks later came three more containers bound for Ashdod in Israel. They also got held while Malaysia reviewed the cargo and Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim decided nobody should be left squinting at the shipping labels trying to work out the message as if they were written in code. Malaysia, he said, would not allow itself to become “a conduit for any shipment that supports or contributes to Israel’s military capabilities.”

And that is when the policy stopped being a statement and started becoming enforcement.

Right, so carrot-coloured calamity Donald Trump’s war on Iran has consumed half to two-thirds of America's most advanced interceptors, the very missiles designed to prevent Iranian drones and ballistic missiles from turning American bases into costly fires.

They're mumbling about a lack of strategic inventories, military speak for: we ran out of all our best toys, and our factory elves can't come up with anything new anytime soon to bail us out of this self-inflicted act of idiocy. The Congressional Budget Office, the CBO, now says it will take five years to make it up, and that is after they’ve converted hundreds of US military barracks into modern art installations and have sent dozens of planes to the scrap heap.

Trump has, without doubt, left the US insufficiently stocked for the next conflict, and replenishment may be difficult to complete before his term ends. Quite the legacy.

Trump's Iran war has already melted down thirty-eight billion dollars of American cash; US military bases have been tenderised like discount steak, planes have been shredded or vaporised, and the interceptors that were to protect them have been burnt so quickly that they won't be able to be replaced for five years either.

So what is Donald Trump's answer to this sparkling new American crisis of defence then?

He has, of course, come out for Israel again, with another $2.8 billion arms package that will include 40,000 bombs some of which will weigh in at more than 2000lbs.

America pays for Trump’s war in Iran. America pays again for all the things this war eats up and spits out.

And then America pays yet again, because heaven forbid Benjamin Netanyahu's bomb pantry ever looks a bit bare. Israel first, then Israel again and then Israel again.