It started out as an organisation committed to disarmament, preventing war through collective security and settling disputes between countries using negotiation and diplomacy. Before long, however, it became a laughing stock, riddled with accusations of favouritism and rendered irrelevant by the great powers’ refusal to listen to it. Sound familiar? The current problems that look endemic to the UN are in fact nothing new. Its predecessor, the League of Nations, lasted only 26 years, failed to stop conflicts in Manchuria, Abyssinia and, of course, the Second World War.

There are differences however between this benighted League and our current UN. For one, the League lost its authority when key aggressors failed to engage with it. The withdrawal of the Axis powers from the League in the 1930s put an end to any notion of “collective security” the toothless organisation might once have had. By contrast, the modern-day UN is failing – rotting from the inside – because aggressive states have become adept at inserting themselves into the organisation’s machinery.

Several dictatorships have vetoes on the UN Security Council; and a single “no” vote from any one of the five permanent members prevents action on any measure put before it. Russia maintains its permanent UNSC membership unaffected by the Ukraine war. So does China, despite its repression of the Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang and the downfall of a free society in Hong Kong.

Where else but the UN could Afghanistan end up on a commission devoted to gender equality and the advancement of women? Where else could North Korea, a country that literally imprisons its population, bleat about Israel’s “ruthless suppression of peaceful protesters”? If it weren’t so appalling you’d almost laugh at the irony of it all.

However the reality of the UN’s hypocrisy is very dark indeed. Tomorrow, grotesquely, the Islamic Regime in Iran will become Chair of the UN Human Rights Council Social Forum – just days after a 16-year-old girl was declared brain-dead following an alleged beating by the theocratic regime’s morality police.

The UN’s crippling obsession with Israel is explicitly embedded into their bureaucracy. Sessions of the UN Human Rights Council regularly feature a standing agenda targeting Israel, unique among all member states.

The UNSC has adopted far more resolutions condemning the Jewish state than any other nation. According to the organisation UN Watch, in 2022 there were a total of 15 resolutions condemning Israel, compared with 13 for the rest of the world. This is no coincidence; autocratic regimes frequently propose anti-Israel motions to dominate the voting agenda and deflect from their own domestic human rights abuses.

This wouldn’t matter so much provided people were honest about it; yet the UN remains a byword in many parts of the world for peacekeeping and attempts to create prosperity. We and other leading nations in the West send many of our finest diplomats and aid workers there. In recent weeks, it has repeatedly been invoked as an impartial international body, rather than a talking-shop of often grossly corrupt member states, whose activities at the UN reflect their own priorities (and prejudices).

Naturally, the alarming wave of global anti-Semitism has passed without censure. In Paris, Jewish schools are being evacuated amid bomb threats and Jewish homes marked out for vandalism. A would-be pogrom erupted at an airport in Dagestan in the Russian North Caucasus, where a violent mob trawled the tarmac looking for Jews.

The UN, which was formed in the midst of the great declaration of “Never Again” following the Second World War, has nothing to say about these developments. Nor has it voted to condemn the October 7 terror attacks that precipitated the Israel-Hamas war. How many more stars of David have to be scrawled on the doors of Jewish homes, schools, synagogues and businesses in the capitals of Europe before the UN realises that “again” is now?

Is Britain still a country where the law is applied evenly?

Speaking of moral rot in institutions, images have emerged in Manchester and London of police officers removing posters of kidnapped Israelis. The Met Police has issued a statement saying it believed the officers acted in “good faith”.

Its online communication strategy appears to be centred on pronouncements that have the credibility of North Korean state announcements and the stylistic finesse of a toddler. Some wondered why footage of protesters shouting “jihad!” at a pro-Palestine march in London hadn’t triggered arrests. The Hadith scholars of the Met tweeted out a helpful reminder that “jihad” has many meanings.

Whatever inspired these officers to rip down the faces of missing Jews, their actions will only embolden Hamas sympathisers on our streets, who can now point to the police’s behaviour as justification for their own public anti-Semitism.

The message it sends out to the Jewish community is obvious, and too depressing for words. The implications go further still. If policing now means resolving “community tensions” in favour of the most angry and potentially disruptive groups, rather than dealing with the sources of tension in the first place, then Britain can no longer claim to be a country where the law is applied evenly. That is a terrifying proposition.