President Trump is clearly unimpressed by the UN’s record in trying to resolve recent conflicts and establish peace. He has referred to how he has had to assume the peace mantle in Gaza, Ukraine and many other hotspots around the world, faced with a UN that does not seem able to get the parties to the table or to enforce a peace once there is a ceasefire.
As a result he is setting up a new Peace Board for the world which he will chair, whose aims will be to establish and manage peace settlements around the globe. He is inviting world leaders to join him and claims that 35 have so far agreed to do so.
European countries and the UK are reluctant or unwilling to join because Mr Putin is going to be a member. President Trump’s point is you do not get peace unless the main powers and regional protagonists are round the same table. He could also point out that the presence of Mr Putin at the Security Council of the UN with a right to veto does not prevent EU countries belonging to the UN nor prevent the UK and France being fellow Security Council members around the same table as Russia.
What can this new body do? The original sketch seemed to be to get interested parties together to help stabilise and rebuild Gaza after the war, but the remit now seems much broader. It would be good to know if this is seen as a ginger group to show the UN how to get progress to peace, or a planned replacement for a UN adjudged too unwieldy and wrong headed by the US President. Will this body end up concentrating on Gaza? Does Mr Putin’s likely presence make settlement of Ukraine any more likely? As countries wishing to be permanent members are invited to contribute $1bn, what will they do with the money? Will this body soon have staff and a prestigious headquarters? Will this body carry on after the Trump Presidency? What are the succession plans for its chairmanship?
There are plenty of questions to be answered before you can come to a fair assessment of this initiative. Many of us want peace and will back ways that can promote it effectively. A UN that works better would be great, or an alternative to the UN that works would be good, but a contest between rival bodies dividing the democracies over which to support would not be helpful.
January 23, 2026
It seemed at cursory glance that the UK was being asked to fork out a billion dollars to have the privilege of one T.Blair on the board as our rep.. even enough to put Starmer off ? I sincerely hope so.
January 23, 2026
It seems almost perverse to have Blair on board. Almost as perverse as him being made a special envoy for the Middle East, (or whatever his title was) considering the catastrophic effect of his dalliance there.
Effects we still feel today.
January 23, 2026
Well they can save over £30 billion plus just by ditching the mad Chagos lunacy and a further £50 billion (every year) by ditching net zero! Making our defence and the economy far stronger in the process too. The UK government would be stupid not to be involved. But we know the UK government is indeed either extremely stupid or they actually do want to damage the UK surely no other explanations!
January 23, 2026
Starmer gave Davos a swerve as his courtship of Trump seemed to be failing. Trump himself was still moaning in CAPITAL letters about being denied a Nobel Peace Prize!
Who would have imagined that this is what international diplomacy would turn into. I never know if Trump is being serious or if it his own private joke. Maybe the lunatics have taken over the asylum?
January 23, 2026
The UN is a captured institution:
1, The mass immigration scandal is proof of its biased agenda.
2. The offshoots like the WHO are downright dangerous. Yesterday the USA officially left that dangerous body which has taken the unilateral power to declare worldwide ‘pandemics’.
3. The current Chairman is ( rest deleted as wrong. He is from Ethiopia where he was Health Minister)
Moreover it is an outrage that France has a permanent seat in the Security Council, it was NOT an ally but cooperated with the Nazi’s during the war. Churchill was far too magnanimous in victory.
It is important that the world powers have a place to talk and negotiate and put their case before terrible action like that forced on Russia in Ukraine is undertaken. We do NOT want one country, even the USA to have hegemony, because unfettered power corrupts.
It is a great shame that the U.K. judges itself unfit to be present, after watching Lammy and Reeves contribution at Davos I’m am relieved that these unfit people will not have that world stage to humiliate us. The English speaking world have to accept that the USA now speaks for us.
Let’s hope the United Kingdom survive as the home for the 4 nations which constitute the British people and recovers itself so that one day we can take our rightful place on the world stage once more.
All current international bodies, NGOs and Charities need to be sidelined and dissolved asap.
January 23, 2026
The UK need a similar construct of the great and the good to contribute to government and advise in the name of national unity. Perhaps you could head this up John? The House of Lords is too unwieldy. It needs 8 -10 wise sages (refreshed every 2 years) to save us from the ill-advised, course we appear to be on with some fresh ideas.
January 23, 2026
@Simon Hodges. In theory, debateably good. In practice, demonstrably bad. Instead of 8 Redwoods you would get 8 Blairs. Let’s not go there!
January 23, 2026
The UN isn’t seeking to keep the peace. It’s seeking to become a Communist/Socialist One World Government.
January 23, 2026
Good morning.
The Un started off OK when it could project its will with force, albeit with US and coalition troops. It currently does not have its own army and, what forces it can rely on are not for combat. It is simply a Paper Tiger.
January 23, 2026
What is the UN if not just another globalist money gobbling entity with jobs for the boys of certain political persuasion.
If Trump sees it as such himself and thinks he could field an alternative, well more power to him.
There would have to be rigorous checks and balances to ensure it didn’t end up going the same way once certain types got their feet under the table (T. Blair)
However, mainstream media and globalist players will cut their own throats rather than even begin to entertain anything Trump does or says as being sincere in its initial aims.
As his language isn’t wrapped up in nonsensical buzz phrases and politically correct terms, they, through their inability to connect with the common man often misunderstand his meanings, and always wilfully misinterpret them.
January 23, 2026
“…you do not get peace unless the main powers and regional protagonists are round the same table. ”
The Palestinians aren’t on the Peace Board for Gaza.
I can’t see this working out well for peace anywhere unless all parties involved in the dispute have their grievances and proposals neutrally considered.
Also many of the wars, conflicts or their underlying instabilities will have been started by Peace Board members playing power games. They will continue to want to play these games, using their dominance on the Peace Board to do it.
Look at the utter mess across the Middle East and North Africa and consider how we got there. Look at Ukraine (and I don’t cast the Russians as the provocateurs here). Look at Latin America.
If the Peace Boards are talking shops for the disputing and involved parties, that might help; if they are top-down we-know-best solution-imposing bodies run by whoever has most influence over the POTUS then they will create problems. The Balfour Agreement didn’t work out too well: with the “Peace Boards” we risk having a multitude of similar “agreements” in various corners of the globe.
January 23, 2026
W,
Saying anything critical about Gaza is antiseptic. Best let Trump and his son in law turn it into Gaza-a-Lago with a huge statue of a golden calf with Trump’s head on it.
Tony Blair is there because he has a history of saying what suits. Netanyahu complained that there were no Israelis on the Peace Board and now he is a member. You can guess the rest.
January 23, 2026
“President Trump is clearly unimpressed by the UN’s record in trying to resolve recent conflicts and establish peace.”
Trump is not alone.
The UN is a greatly misunderstood body. It was best summarised by its representative (can’t remember his name) who visited us at the Joint Services Defence College some years ago as “nothing more than a talking shop”. It has no legal authority to compel countries to do anything. Enforcement of its resolutions is a matter for sovereign states. This is made clear by the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (1969) which recognizes and reaffirms the sovereignty of nation-states as a foundational principle of international law. There is an exception to this in the EU which removes the sovereignty of its member states to make itself a supra-national government. Nicer people than me say the member states ‘share’ sovereignty which is as daft a notion as criminal Islamophobia. States in the EU can gang up on another member state and compel it to act against its own national interests. Why anyone thinks that a good thing is beyond me. But many people see the EU as a model for one-world government and wish to restructure the UN similarly.
The UN fails not because Putin has a veto over resolutions of the security council (not over everything the UN does). So does China. It fails because so many UN agencies are captured by truly dreadful ideologies, notably socialism, anti-white racism, gender wokery, climate CAGW, human rights that insist all ideologies and all cultures are equal, and in some cases like UNWRA, it is actually run by terrorists and is a very active agent of conflict and violence.
On the other hand some parts like UNESCO, while still Left leaning, overall does some good.
The world is plagued by conflicts of various levels of intensity and always has been. The UN has done much to intensify and prolong the conflict in Gaza and has really played no part in Ukraine. So at least on these two conflicts I agree that an organisation outside the UN has amuch to commend it, depending on how it is setup. It cannot have any authority over the protagonists but it might be able to act as an interlocutor. There is no existing body that can. So worth a shot. But I would not let Blair anywhere near it. He is an absolute ratbag. You can’t trust him as far as you could throw him. If people think a better way to resolve the conflict in Ukraine is to bang heads together then it can only be a sovereign state with the necessary clout. There is only one: Trump’s America.
January 23, 2026
UK should decline to join the Peace Board because we can’t afford the membership fee and just sit back and watch. With USA and Saudi being on the board and funding it it may do some good in the Middle East. Trump’s foreign policy initiatives have been rather successful when compared to his predecessors – de-escalting the situation with North Korea during his first term and imposing some sort of better-than-nothing deal on Gaza, also putting Iran on notice by stopping their nuclear programme. I assume when Trump is gone the Globalists will seep back and things will revert to normal. We don’t hear much from the UK Foreign Secretary on any of these matters, all we see is Starmer swanning around the world and getting humiliated.
January 23, 2026
Trump was forced into a famous climbdown over Greenland at the Davos meeting. Presented with a united NATO front with Canada, Britain, France and Germany siding with the Greenlanders, he had little option.
Carney delivered an impressive speech, telling Trump to his face exactly what Canada thought of him, while announcing severe restrictions on the transfer of Canadian lake water to America in response to Trump’s tariffs
Uniting and standing up to bullies is always the best option. They are cowards at heart. Trump, who received multiple deferments for the Vietnam war draft and was ultimately given a medical exemption, famously referred to the American heroes buried at Arlington as “losers”
At Davos, Trump insulted the memory of hundreds of NATO troops (including 457 British servicemen) who lost their lives during the Afghanistan conflict – by claiming that they were stationed “away from the front lines”
This man, clearly suffering from megalomania, goes to bed each night within reach of the US “nuclear football” Good grief.
January 23, 2026
Looking at the Lords they have or have had about 8 wise sages JR, Matt Ridley, Peter Lilly, Toby Young and four more sensible ones but that is about the limit. So just fire all the dire 800 plus rest of them – start with Theresa May, Cameron, Adonis, Amis, Hale, Blunkett, Gove, Warsi, Kinnock, all the Lords Temporal (Bishops), Heseltine… all the Two Tier Kier appointments, all ex labour and LibDim politician and most ex Con-Socialist ones appointed by Major, Cameron, May, Sunak, Boris, Blair, Brown …
January 23, 2026
The concept of a world body able to broker peace when two nations conflict is a great ambition.
The UN was a replacement for the League of Nations that had been unable to prevent the Second World War. The UNs original objective to bring forward peace has been compromised over the years with branching activities that now make the organisation incapable of fulfilling its basic role.
The UNs priorities have also been weaponised primarily by left wing activists that has brought us to the Net Zero policies and promotion of a world without fossil fuel ideology.
If the UN was properly run and maintained its true function of settling conflict through arbitration and dialogue it would be worth maintaining it. If it continues on the path towards its goal of being the One world Governing Body, (unelected) which is the ambition of the globalists and the ambition of the UN bureaucrats themselves, then the time is right to close it down.
The UN lacks the basic lever needed to be a key player in peace talks. It does not have a big stick. That missing component is clearly where Trump sees the US role by chairing the Peace Board.
The last war in Europe was stopped by NATO intervention led by the USA. It was not stopped by UN peacekeepers being on the ground ignoring the atrocities taking place in Bosnia and the surrounding lands.
January 23, 2026
Posturing at a level never seen before……..
January 23, 2026
The UN, like many global authorities, is weakened by having to appoint administrators from corrupt, tin pot third world countries to its boards in order to maintain any influence. The members of the security council have enough leverage to sit without rotating members.
With the power of veto of the big five the additional members are powerless anyway
January 23, 2026
Trumps erratic performance, misinformation and lies presented at Davos are sufficient to deter membership of any institution chaired by Trump.