An unreliable US President cosying up to Russia. War in the Middle East. And a global oil crunch... 70 years after the Suez Crisis, history is repeating itself in truly brutal ways

A major world power has made a misguided attack on a Middle Eastern country, and many think its strength is waning. The price of petrol and diesel is soaring.

Meanwhile, in Eastern Europe the Russians are brutally attempting to extirpate a much smaller country, which is mounting a heroic but ultimately doomed resistance.

I'm not, as you may think, describing President Donald Trump's ill-conceived and abortive assault on Iran, or Putin's wicked war in Ukraine, both of which have led to global instability.

No, I am talking about different, and yet in many ways similar, cataclysms that were unfolding 70 years ago this week. Their effect on Britain and the world was tumultuous.

Seventy years ago Britain was about to invade Egypt with its junior partner France in what turned out to be a tragic misadventure, while the Russian jackboot was on the verge of crushing thousands of rebels in Budapest.

I am, of course, talking about the Suez Crisis and the Hungarian Revolution – two upheavals that preoccupied our parents and grandparents, and touched the lives of millions of people who are still alive, and yet are largely forgotten.

Following the imbroglio of Suez, Britain ceased being a Great Power almost overnight. We found ourselves on a new path along which we are still trundling as a lesser nation, never quite sure of our place in the world, and often harking back to past glories.

As for the Hungarian Revolution, it showed that Russia – or the Soviet Union – was a ruthless adversary entirely inimical to freedom. It also disenchanted many on the Left who finally grasped that the communist country they had idealised was far more repressive than imperial powers such as Britain.

Dwight Eisenhower, virtually ignored Russian excesses in Hungary while busily opposing Britain, supposedly its closest ally

Levin's War is a novel I have written set during this period. Its characters are caught up in these events and profoundly affected by them. Robert Upton is a privileged young Foreign Office official. Like many of his colleagues, he is appalled by the prospect of Britain invading Egypt.

His friend, Daniel Levin, is a journalist on the communist Daily Worker newspaper (nowadays, much diminished, called the Morning Star). Daniel is an outsider – a Jew and a homosexual at a time when the authorities were entrapping and arresting men denigrated as 'queers'.

Although coming from backgrounds that are far apart, and holding different political beliefs, Robert and Daniel form a deep bond fighting together in the Eighth Army during the war in North Africa and Italy.

But when they meet again in the grey, grimy, smog-ridden London of 1956, they become divided and their friendship begins to crumble. The betrayal by one of them of the other is at the heart of Levin's War.

Looking back over 70 years to an immeasurably different Britain, it is sometimes hard to understand the thinking of the politicians who effectively drew the curtain on the British Empire, which was the last thing they meant to do.

At the centre of events was Sir Anthony Eden, who succeeded Winston Churchill as prime minister in April 1955 before winning an increased Conservative majority in the following month's general election.

Eden was suave, able and experienced. He was steeped in foreign affairs, and knew a lot about the Middle East. As a young man, he had taken a First at Oxford in Persian and Arabic, an unusual accomplishment for a future politician. He also won a Military Cross in the First World War.

But his debonair appearance concealed a testy nature, probably inherited from his eccentric landowning father. His temperament hadn't been helped by a botched gall bladder operation a few years earlier that left him in constant discomfort.

In July 1956 Egypt's president Nasser seized the Suez Canal, which was owned by British and French shareholders. This was regarded by the Government as a grave threat to our interests, and in particular to the free flow of oil. Sound familiar?

Critical moment: Ships blocking the Suez Canal in Egypt at the height of the crisis in November 1956

Labour was for a time equally horrified, with its leader, Hugh Gaitskell, comparing Nasser to Mussolini. But as the months passed, the party became increasingly critical of Eden's intransigence and the apparent drift towards war.

Eden, who had opposed appeasement in the 1930s, although less stoutly than Churchill, made the mistake of exaggerating Egypt's power. He wildly compared Nasser's nationalisation of the Suez Canal to Hitler's takeover of the demilitarised Rhineland in 1936.

Public opinion was divided. Most Tories and sympathetic newspapers supported Eden's robust response. Labour, the majority of trade unions and the Left-wing Press expressed mounting dismay. The BBC, though its chairman was an old friend of Eden's, was subtly critical of the Government.

In Levin's War opinion is also split. Robert is strongly opposed to invasion, as is his artist wife, but his doughty cleaning lady and his father Matthew regard Nasser's behaviour as an affront. Daniel is contemptuous of Eden while regarding the Hungarian Revolution as far more significant than a row over the Suez Canal.

One momentous historical event witnessed by Daniel, and also Abena, a Ghanaian colleague from the Daily Worker, was a huge rally in Trafalgar Square. It took place on November 4, the day before Anglo-French forces invaded Egypt.

It was addressed in mild terms by a succession of Labour worthies until firebrand Left-wing MP Aneurin Bevan whipped up the crowd by claiming that the Tory Government 'had offended against every principle of decency'.

The more agitated demonstrators then marched down Whitehall, where they were charged by mounted police. A few of them threw ball bearings under the hooves of the horses in the hope of unseating their riders.

Some demonstrators laid siege to Downing Street (there were no security gates then) where Eden was present in No10. The mob was held back by mounted police, but for a moment the British state seemed to be in peril.

A day after British and French troops invaded Egypt, Sir Anthony Eden announced a ceasefire. The military operation against vastly inferior Egyptian troops was successful, but there had been a run on the pound and the Soviet Union had made vague nuclear threats against Britain and France.

What really spooked Eden, though, was the implacable opposition of the United States to Anglo-French military action. Incredible as it may seem, a few days earlier America had voted with the Soviet Union against Britain and France in the United Nations Security Council.

This was only days before Russian soldiers rounded up and killed Hungarian rebels in their thousands and jettisoned their provisional government along with its leader, Imre Nagy.

Then, as now, an American president was bewilderingly oblivious to Russian excesses as, 70 years later, Donald Trump seems determined to indulge the warmonger Vladimir Putin

The United States (whose president, Dwight Eisenhower, was re-elected on November 6) virtually ignored Russian excesses in Hungary while busily opposing Britain, supposedly its closest ally. Who said that Donald Trump was a uniquely unreliable American leader?

None of this is to say that Eden or the British government behaved wisely. They didn't. But the uncompromising resistance of the US administration was an unfriendly act towards an ally. Eisenhower subsequently regretted it, and rightly so.

Interestingly, Israel was also snubbed by Washington. Britain and France had made a secret agreement with Israel for it to invade Egypt so that the two European powers could follow suit and restore order. Rather weakly, Eden had felt the need of a pretext.

Before the Suez Crisis, Britain was the foremost power in the Middle East. After it, the United States was – and what a mess of things it has made in that role! Britain has never pursued a wholly independent foreign policy since its humiliation, not even during the Falklands War.

An inevitable readjustment to the new realities of power? Maybe. But it's hard for a sceptic not to see America's conduct during the Suez Crisis as being partly motivated by a desire to supplant Britain in the Middle East. This belief tortures Matthew Upton, Robert's dying father.

If one peers back 70 years, there are of course differences. One change is America's attitude towards Israel. In 1956, Washington had not yet become an unquestioning ally of the Jewish homeland. That came later, after the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War of 1967. Nor does it seem likely that, following its recent reverses in the Middle East, the American Empire will crumble as quickly as the British Empire did after the shock of 1956.

Despite its setbacks, the United States is still the richest and most powerful country in the world. It retains one of the largest armed forces. 

Trump's escapades have highlighted its limitations but America is surely far from finished. As for Putin's Russia, although a threat to Europe, it is less formidable than the Soviet Union was in 1956, and has a smaller population and less industrial capacity.

Nonetheless, the many similarities between now and then keep coming back.

There is the fuel crisis.

I can remember how the pumps in our small local petrol station in rural Shropshire ran dry. My mother, so as not to disturb my four-year-old mind, chose to explain this shortage as being owing to a single oil tanker having sunk.

I can recall her turning off the car engine to save fuel so that we would glide downhill.

I was too young to know about the soaring petrol prices that followed Eden's capitulation but I was vaguely aware of rationing, which we haven't yet had to put up with this time around. Then, as now, the Middle East was a very volatile place. Then, as now, Russia was a threat to civilised values, though Putin's Russia may be more desperate and therefore more dangerous. 

Then, as now, there were wicked, unpredictable leaders and plenty of incompetent politicians.

Then, as now, there was an American president who didn't appear to value the so-called special relationship with Britain very much, although Eisenhower had been made Supreme Allied Commander in 1943, and knew this country well.

And then, as now, an American president was bewilderingly oblivious to Russian excesses as, 70 years later, Trump seems determined to indulge the warmonger Vladimir Putin.

Anthony Eden pleaded illness, and two weeks after putting up the white flag took a holiday with his young second wife Clarissa (Churchill's niece) in Ian Fleming's villa in Jamaica. He left office in January 1957, and spent the remaining 20 years of his life attempting to justify his behaviour.

And Britain? What have we become? Writing Levin's War – which I should stress is a novel, not a history book – I felt that I was encountering a vanished race. The old imperial ruling class, already exhausted and dispirited in 1956, has gone for ever. Not everything has got worse – far from it. I'm thinking of the persecution of homosexuals, which Daniel Levin suffers, and the blatant racism to which Abena, the young Ghanaian journalist, is subjected. Much of the odious snobbery that beset society has disappeared.

The wonder is that it's only 70 years. Less than many lifetimes. We're a changed country, a different place, yet it turns out that we are experiencing many of the same old problems.

But now, alas, we are also so much weaker, and no one truly believes we are able to play much of a part in solving them.

• Levin's War by Stephen Glover (Biteback, £16.99), to be published tomorrow.
• © Stephen Glover 2026. To order a copy for £15.29 (offer valid until November 7, 2026; UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.