Review of Complicit: Britain’s Role in the Destruction of Gaza by Peter Oborne (OR Books, 2025)
“We need to make sure that the story is told properly so that when the history books write this (sic), they don’t write about the victims of Gaza.”
These are the words of Mike Pompeo, secretary of state in the first Trump administration, in January 2026. They were greeted with applause by his audience.
Though spoken brazenly, they announce the secret hope of the transatlantic political and media classes. They know, as Pompeo does, that if history is recorded accurately, it will damn them for all time.
These fears must only be growing after Canadian prime minister Mark Carney told the 2026 Davos summit that, of course, the supposed values of the international system were largely a mirage: “We knew that international law applied with varied rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.”
The Gaza genocide formed the indubitable backdrop to Carney’s remarks. No admission less stark than this would have been plausible in its bloody wake.
Such trepidation is nowhere greater than in the United Kingdom, the successor state of the empire that helped give life to the Israeli colony, and which in recent decades has only become more indulgent of its crimes.
Peter Oborne’s endeavor in his book Complicit is to set down the role of the UK in the destruction and slaughter of Gaza, and its deforming effects on British politics and society. He brings to this reckoning the neglected craft of traditional, long-form current affairs journalism.
Oborne gives the actors in the savage drama the right of reply, though they seldom use it, and the possibility of the most humane interpretation of their motivations, though it is never deserved. Only one participant in this carnival of cynicism mutters an apology. Appearing alone in a landscape of desolation, it is crushing.
Peter Oborne’s endeavor in his book Complicit is to set down the role of the UK in the…
Auteur: David Jamieson
