Category Archives: Britain

Britain, European Union, Government, Politics, Society

EU Referendum: Argument for and against and public reaction…

(From the archives) Originally posted on January 24, 2013 by markdowe

 EUROPEAN REFERENDUM

Argument For:-

…At last, voters are trusted to choose Britain’s future. David Cameron has given Britain a far better chance of securing a satisfactory settlement with the European Union

David Cameron cannot have imagined when he became Prime Minister that he could conceivably preside over both the break-up of the United Kingdom and its exit from the European Union. The likelihood must be that neither will happen; but the possibility has been raised that both might. Almost out of nowhere, we have an epochal moment in British politics.

The referendum on Scottish independence will take place next year, but the plebiscite on Europe is contingent on a Tory victory at the next election. That, indeed, was one of the principal aims of the Prime Minister’s speech yesterday: not just to address the vexed question of Britain’s position in Europe, but to woo the voters by promising them something they have long wanted, but have not been given since 1975.

Not for the first time, Mr Cameron has shown a capacity to surprise whenever the pressure is greatest. Even though his speech was long-awaited and vigorously debated in advance, it lost none of its impact. It was well judged, elegantly phrased, persuasively argued and expertly delivered. No one should doubt its importance both for domestic politics and for Britain’s foreign policy, which for decades has been based on retaining a central role within the European project. Indeed, despite his criticisms of the current arrangements, Mr Cameron made clear that this remains not just Government policy, but his overwhelming personal preference: he explicitly ruled out the halfway house of a looser association on the Norwegian or Swiss model. Still, while his aim is to campaign to stay within a reformed EU, he proposes that it will be the country, not its politicians, that makes the choice – and has the option to leave.

Politically, the speech was an immediate success. Conservative MPs, who have been agitating for just such a statement, were delighted. Ideally, they will now give their leader some breathing space while the shape of his plans becomes clear, ending the rows that have done much to destabilise the party. Ukip, while outwardly pleased to have the debate finally conducted on its territory, must privately fear that it will now be marginalised. Labour found itself boxed in, with many asking how Ed Miliband can sustain his bizarre position, adopted at Prime Minister’s Questions, that voters should not be offered an in-out referendum, even when so much about Europe is changing so rapidly. For their part, the Liberal Democrats now oppose the very referendum that they promised in their most recent manifesto. Then again, it is a characteristic of the most ardent proponents of the European venture that they consider it dangerous to ask the people what they think.

Rather than listing particular goals, Mr Cameron sought to frame his argument in a wider philosophical context. He argued, entirely correctly, that it would benefit Europe as a whole if its institutions were less bureaucratic and more competitive. He made a powerful case for a more flexible, adaptable and open EU – and observed that we are not alone in Europe in holding such ambitions (hence the cautious welcome that his words received from many on the Continent, including Angela Merkel). Yet if this is not forthcoming, Mr Cameron warned, “we need to safeguard our interests”.

Ultimately, what matters most to Britain is what is best for Britain. Indeed, only when this country is involved does defence of the national interest become something to be sneered at. In Berlin earlier this week, Mrs Merkel and François Hollande celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Elysée Treaty, which set the seal on the post-war reconciliation between France and Germany. Ever since, Europe has developed very much in the way decreed by these two countries. As Mrs Merkel said in Berlin, in order to underpin monetary union, the next move will involve greater economic and fiscal integration. That, as Mr Cameron argued, must inevitably change this country’s relationship with the eurozone nations.

Although the UK signed up 40 years ago to the “ever closer union” envisaged in the Treaty of Rome, our leaders have, for much of that time, tried to stop it happening. But the forward momentum has been relentless. Monetary union, the removal of internal borders under the Schengen deal, the proposed harmonisation of justice and home affairs under the Lisbon Treaty, and now the intended fiscal federation in the eurozone, mean Europe is very different from the institution we joined.

Yesterday, David Cameron set out a different vision. He may not be able to bring enough other leaders to share it, but the leverage granted by the prospect of a referendum will give us a far better chance of securing a settlement we can live with. Indeed, many of the arguments in yesterday’s speech were made in another keynote address, delivered by Margaret Thatcher in Bruges in 1988. She, too, bemoaned Europe’s insularity, its lack of accountability, its drift towards federalism, all of which have accelerated since. What even she did not offer, however, was to let the people decide whether they wanted to stay in. In proposing that they should, Mr Cameron has taken an audacious and momentous step, and one deserving of the highest praise.

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Britain, Iraq, Islamic State, Middle East, Syria, United States

Western support must include arming the Kurds. More from the West is needed…

ISLAMIC STATE

It was Respect MP, George Galloway, who said that the west must ‘strengthen the Kurdish fighters, who are doing a good job of fighting IS’. Mr Galloway gave that view during a House of Commons debate on Iraq last month.

It isn’t a contradiction to be anti-war and left-wing at the same time as being pro-Kurd and in favour of supporting and arming the Kurds. Many people have been long-standing opponents of western-led military interventions in the Muslim-majority world. All campaigns from Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq in 2003 to Libya in 2011, have resulted in civilian bloodshed and terrorist blowback. Many are not pacifist, either. To somehow hide and pretend that the response to those who carry out beheadings of the self-styled Islamic State need not involve an element of brute military force is either ludicrously naïve or disgracefully disingenuous.

And so too is the lazy obsession with airstrikes. General David Richards, the former chief of the defence staff, has repeatedly called for ‘boots on the ground’ and says that: ‘Wars, historically, have never been won by air power alone.’

Another foreign military occupation of Iraq – or, for that matter Syria – would be wholly disastrous. Further bloodshed would ensue, with yet more blowback. There are, however, secular and Sunni boots on the ground that the west should be backing against the jihadists of IS. There are Kurdish fighters not just in northern Iraq, where the peshmerga have fended off IS attempts to bring Erbil and Kirkuk under its terror-inspired caliphate, but also in northern Syria, where the People’s Protection Units (YPG) of the Kurds’ Democratic Union Party (PYD) have been heroically holding off IS in the importantly strategic town of Kobani for more than a month now.

These Kurdish units, which include all-women militias, have to all intents and purposes become the last line of defence against the genocidal fanatics of IS. But, while, in Mr Galloway’s words, they are doing a ‘good job’, they can’t do it alone. IS are equipped with US-made tanks seized in Iraq following the desertion of whole units of the Iraqi army in the face of IS threats. Progressives in the west, which should also include those of the anti-war variety, need to get behind the Kurds. A loud public voice needs to be heard. We should do so because we owe them. Kurds constitute the biggest stateless minority in the world, with a population of some 30 million, divided mainly between Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. They have been bombed in Turkey, executed in Iran, gassed in Iraq and besieged in Syria. Not to mention how they have been repeatedly betrayed by the west.

The Kurds are worth fighting for. Take northern Syria. Here the three autonomous and Kurdish-majority provinces of Rojava have avoided the worst excesses of the civil war. They have engaged in what can only be described as a remarkable democratic experiment, ceding power to popular assemblies and also to women’s and youth councils. Why would any progressive want to stand and watch the revolutionary Kurds of Kobani to fall to the murderous thugs of IS?

Another reason, too, is because of Turkey’s reluctance to do anything. The ghastly crisis unfolding in Islamic State could have been an opportunity for Turkey, under Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to build a new long-term alliance with his country’s embittered Kurdish minority against the brutal and barbarous extremism of IS. The PYD in Syria, however, is an offshoot of Turkey’s Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been locked in a violent conflict with Ankara over Kurdish autonomy since 1984. Mr Erdogan took the decision to seal Turkey’s border with Syria, but this gave the green light to IS militants to seize Kobani and massacre its PKK-affiliated populace. It then bombed PKK positions in southern Turkey for the first time since the group agreed to participate in a peace process in March 2013.

At a briefing on 4 October, Mr Erdogan said that for Turkey the PKK was the equivalent of IS. Other than shamelessly echoing the mantra of Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, that ‘Hamas is Isis, Isis is Hamas’, a clear irony emerges because if the PKK had been deemed the same as IS Turkey would have done a lot more to help. The Turkish-Syrian border hasn’t been closed to IS fighters, only to PKK fighters. On 20 October, Turkey finally agreed to allow Kurdish fighters to cross the border into Syria, but only Kurds from Iraq and not from Turkey – and not with heavy weaponry either, which has been the main request of the YBG fighters in Kobani.

It would seem that Turkey doesn’t care whether Kobani falls to the jihadists. The Turkish government insists it won’t be bullied by anyone and rejects world opinion as to how it should be acting to help. But to balance the argument it’s fair to say that western governments have never lifted a finger either to help Turkey’s Kurds – or, by extension, Syria’s. As is gaining evermore traction, these are the wrong sort of Kurds – the victims of a NATO ally, rather than a horde of jihadists. Look no further than the interpretation of the language: Kurds in Turkey are deemed ‘terrorists’, but Kurds in Iraq are associated as being ‘freedom fighters’. No one is quite yet sure about the present status of the Iranian Kurds.

Progressives, then, need to get behind the Kurds, especially those Kurds in Kobani. There is a danger, of course, that their struggle will be co-opted by western governments, particularly by those governments which often shape outcomes in the Middle East to suit their own interests. Progressives do not have an alternative stance to pursue given how squeezed the Kurds are between Bashar al-Assad, Erdogan and IS.

In the words of an old Kurdish proverb: ‘Freedom is never given but taken.’

 

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Britain, Government, Islamic State, Middle East, National Security, Politics, Society, Terrorism

The reintroduction of treason laws is no solution in dealing with Islamic State terrorists…

NATIONAL SECURITY AND THE THREAT OF IS ATTACKS ON THE STREETS OF BRITAIN

 The recent disclosure by Britain’s intelligence and counter-terrorism chiefs that an ‘exceptionally high’ number of terror plots by British citizens against Britain’s people and institutions are being investigated should chill everybody.

Such reports are no-doubt alarming, but does it justify, as one senior government minister has suggested, that those who accused of planning terrorist acts are prosecuted under the laws of treason?

We should need no reminder of the type of terrorist threat we are now faced with. It is one unlike any that Britain and the rest of the western world have so far faced, with barbarous killings and beheadings staged live on social media by Islamic State, the extreme fundamentalist sect against which war is now being waged in Syria and Iraq. Some of the suspects implicated in the terror cases which have gone to court are people who have returned to Britain after being trained in merciless terror tactics by IS – people who seem clearly intent on putting into practice what they have learned at terrorist training camps and madrassas while in the Middle East.

As many as 2,000 young British Muslims, including about 60 young women, have been radicalised by what they have learned from extremist preaching over the internet. After heeding the call of IS to wage jihad many have headed to the Middle East in pursuit of establishing an Islamic caliphate. A few have been sickened by their experiences there, but far too many have not.

We should not underestimate either that many recruits to the IS cause may also have taken up their methods without ever having left Britain’s shores, as well as those who may have been recruited and indoctrinated by those Islamists returning. It seems only too real and likely that the dreadful trademark of IS, the ghastly beheadings, along with shootings and bombings, is repeated on British streets.

In responding to this challenge Britain clearly needs to be ready. Counter-terror officers are already under severe strain as they attempt to monitor every conceivable avenue in foiling an attack. If more resources need to be allocated, either by training additional staff or by acquiring better equipment and technology they need, then so be it. National security and the safety of British citizens must rank high on the government’s agenda.

But what use would it serve, as Philip Hammond, the foreign secretary has suggested, for those caught planning such offences to be charged under treason laws? These are laws which date back some 600 years and which were last used more than half a century ago to prosecute Lord Haw-Haw (William Joyce), who became notorious as a Nazi propagandist during the Second World War.

If such laws were reintroduced they would hardly serve as a deterrent. Treason is not punishable in the UK by the death penalty because that was abolished in 1965, but rather by a sentence of up to life imprisonment (the same as for murder). For any committed jihadist, a charge of treason to a state, for which they have a stated aim in destroying, is hardly likely to make them think twice.

Mr Hammond’s mere mention of reintroducing treason laws looks like a sign of panic amongst the political elite who have no clear idea of how to handle this particular threat within existing legal and moral boundaries.

A firm resolve and necessary resources are needed, which might also include the tightening of borders and entry points to the UK. For those seeking to gain access to Britain by harming us the tightening of security at air and seaport terminals should be underpinning all other aspects of national security.

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