Peter Westmacott

Significant even brave intervention by Oman foreign minister @badralbusaidi at Cambridge calling for the Gulf States to form a non-aggression pact with Iran and Iraq. Says US should no longer be primary provider of security in region, adding external partners have imposed the most damaging of the priorities - "the requirement that Iran be excluded. Not just excluded. Worse. Positioned as the threat against which regional security had to be organised." He argues "What holds us back is that issues which ought to be handled at a regional level by the states of the Gulf themselves, are made more complex, more intractable and sometimes simply impossible to resolve because the region's security arrangements are insufficiently developed. "And they are insufficiently developed because they have relied for too long on the involvement of external powers. "The complications which stand in the way of successful resolutions to both the Iranian nuclear issue and the question of free navigation through the Strait of Hormuz are simply the latest effects of an unstable combination of power projection and dependency in the Gulf. "In other words, the nuclear issue and the Hormuz issue are both impossible to resolve because external powers continue to define the terms of engagement, while regional powers are unable to take collective responsibility for making their own security arrangements and reach a consensus on them". Says Iran "has for nearly half a century been systematically excluded from playing any meaningful role in the security arrangements of the region. "An exclusion with profoundly negative consequences, not just for Iran, but for the region as a whole". He says "Instead of a genuine security structure designed to maintain stable relations between the eight states of the Gulf, an unstable regional system has been constructed on the entirely false perception that there is a fundamental regional antagonism between Iran and the Arab states of the Gulf. "There is no such fundamental antagonism. There are problems, yes, of course. But the plain fact is that Arabs and Persians have lived in peace around the Gulf for centuries. It’s not a matter of whether you’re friendly or hostile to Iran. "Today, Persia is a fact, 93 million people and three thousand years of history. Roughly half of the Gulf littoral. "Any Gulf security architecture that doesn’t include them is inherently unstable. It’s structurally unsound. And recent events expose the terrible cost of allowing the false perception of antagonism and exclusion." "It is us, in the Gulf, who ultimately bear the responsibility for devising, developing and implementing a new regional security structure. The time has come when it no longer makes sense just to blame everyone else. We need to begin a new regional dialogue on Gulf security, and we need to do so before other solutions are imposed on the region which would effectively consolidate the pattern of dependency and exclusion for which we urgently need to find an alternative. What is needed, instead, is a new and inclusive framework, involving all eight Gulf littoral states".

I haven’t written anything about his wife, Peter. My story was about his irritation over Miliband ignoring his counsel

As revealed by the Spectator on Thursday morning

I’m so sad to hear that Jeffrey Archer has died. A brilliant, generous and kind human being. When he heard I’d also written a book about our mutual hero years after his, he bought me lunch and offered me any help he could for mine (including below’s joint talk). What perhaps less people knew is just how hard he worked. When I admitted I’d only written two drafts of my book, he told me “that’s the problem with you bloody journalists”. For each book he wrote, he did 14 drafts. And he pumped out 42 best sellers like that. RIP in novelists’ heaven Jeffrey.

It was Fighter Command’s worst day of the Battle of Britain. It was also the day Britain finally unleashed the Poles! On August 31, 1940, the Luftwaffe hammered airfields across southeast England. Fighter Command lost 39 aircraft, 31 in the air and eight on the ground. Ten pilots were killed or fatally wounded. That afternoon, No. 303 Polish Squadron flew its first operational combat patrol. Its pilots claimed four "One-O-Nine" destroyed and two more probably destroyed. They had already fought over Poland and France, but language barriers and British doubts about their readiness had kept them waiting. Forty-two days later, No. 303 had been officially credited with 126 victories, the highest claimed total of any Fighter Command squadron during the battle. The precise wartime tally remains debated. Their extraordinary impact does not! 🎬 Video excerpt from Battle of Britain (1969), directed by Guy Hamilton. Follow @Vanguard_WW2 for more extraordinary WWII stories.