Syria

Thursday

Paul Wood

Desperate state

The latest video from Isis introduces a new British executioner, a successor to ‘Jihadi John’, and it is a classic of the genre: bombastic, pompous, ridiculous yet terrifying. ‘O slave of the White House, O mule of the Jews,’ says a man in a ski mask, addressing David Cameron, ‘how strange it is that the leader of a small island threatens us with a handful of planes. Only an imbecile would dare to wage war against a land where the law of Allah reigns supreme.’ He has a cold, arrogant look in his eyes and brandishes a pistol held sideways, aping American ‘gangsta style’. Kneeling before him are five men

Thursday

Steerpike

The ten worst UN moments of 2015

While a new year can mean new beginnings, Steerpike would hate for anyone to forget some of 2015’s more ‘interesting’ incidents. So Mr S thanks the Geneva-based UN Watch for the following list which highlights the ten worst moments of 2015 when it comes to the United Nations: 10. Iran elected to UN Women Executive Board ‘Electing the Iranian regime to the UN women’s rights board is like making a pyromaniac into the town fire chief,’ said UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer. 9. Genocide warnings aside, Burundi wins seat on UN Human Rights Council Although a 2010 Transparency International report named Burundi as East Africa’s most corrupt country, the country won a seat

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the year | 10 December 2015

January David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that only electing the Conservatives could ‘save Britain’s economic recovery’. Labour unveiled a poster saying: ‘The Tories want to cut spending on public services back to the levels of the 1930s,’ and Ed Miliband, the party leader, said he would ‘weaponise the NHS’. Two male ‘hedge witches’ were wed under the equal marriage law in a pagan ceremony in Edinburgh. Alexis Tsipras became prime minister of Greece, heading a Syriza coalition. In Paris, gunmen murdered 17 people, 11 at Charlie Hebdo, the magazine that had published cartoons of Mohammed. The price of Brent crude oil dipped below $50 a barrel, down from $107

Michael Gove

Faith is left, right. . . and central

There was, of course, something very special about the House of Commons debate on Syria earlier this month. The moral challenge of how to face those who embrace evil without limits, the long shadows and sombre memories generated by military actions past, the divisions within parties and between friends, the wrestling with conscience that brought good men and women close to tears. The importance of what the House of Commons was being asked to authorise inspired outstanding speeches, most notably of all, Hilary Benn’s. While I was listening to the shadow foreign secretary, I noticed a hunched figure in the gallery also held spellbound by the speech, his head occasionally

Kate Chisholm

Radio is flowering because it’s so much more potent than TV

Who would have thought in this visually obsessed age of YouTube, selfies and Instagram that radio, pure audio, no images attached, nothing to hold on to but a voice, a tune, a blast of birdsong, could not only survive the arrival of the new image-making and digital technologies but experience an extraordinary flowering of talent and expression. Thousands of radio stations are popping up right across the globe, ready for you to tap into via your smartphone or tablet, taking you straight from SW9 or NE69 to Chicago, Cape Town, Lviv or Marrakech. The quality of the sound produced by these stations is less important than an ability to draw

Tuesday

James Forsyth

The ground forces problem

As the row over David Cameron saying that the Joint Intelligence Committee estimate there to be 70,000 potential anti-Islamic State fighters in Syria showed, the big question mark about the West’s anti-IS strategy is who will provide the ground troops for it. The Kurds will only fight in their own area and so far, there is little sign of a credible Sunni force emerging to take on Islamic State. While working with Assad has its own drawbacks. (In many ways, the existence of IS–albeit, in weakened form–suits his interests.) David Ignatius details just how wrong US efforts to train up Sunni fighters have gone in the past year in Washington

Monday

Steerpike

John McDonnell tweets abuse at himself

While the abuse Labour MPs — including Stella Creasy and Ann Coffey — have received since they voted for airstrikes has been much-reported, what about the Labour politicians who voted against airstrikes on Syria? According to John McDonnell, these MPs are subject to online abuse too. The Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer appeared to try and prove this point over the weekend, by sharing a tweet directed at McDonnell which criticised him for showing ‘sympathy towards the cause of terrorists’. Alas, the mentioned abuse came from his own account, so he was in fact just tweeting abuse at himself: As users began to question whether he had meant to tweet abuse at himself from a

Joseph Power

I used to mock non-interventionists like Corbyn, but events have proved them right

I hate to say it, but Jeremy Corbyn is right where I have been wrong. Corbyn’s protest that the Syrian intervention displays a ‘lack of a strategy worth the name, the absence of credible ground troops, the missing diplomatic plan for a Syrian settlement…’ was spot on. I am embarrassed to say that last year, I penned a rather conceited piece – for Spectator Australia, no less – in which I mocked proponents of non-intervention against the millennial, genocidal fascists of Isis. Having watched events since publication, I feel little but embarrassment. True, it makes little sense to restrict our campaign to Iraq: as James Forsyth rightly noted, Isis don’t

Friday

Ed West

European countries are now united by the war against Isis

If anything positive comes out of the Syrian crisis, and I appreciate it’s like looking for silver linings in the Great Storm of Jupiter, it is that it has brought the European nations together as never before. Perhaps the last time that England, France and Germany fought in a major campaign together was the Third Crusade in the 12th century, a military adventure in the Middle East. Okay, so it ended disastrously, and ended up costing the English treasury about four year’s worth of taxes, but let’s hope history doesn’t repeat itself. Part of me does wonder whether the Germans, having now engaged in military action again, will suddenly find something triggered in their brains. (‘Zis feels gut ja, Gunter?’)

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Can ‘democratic’ bombs defeat ‘fascism’ in Syria? I have my doubts…

Au contraire. Au contraire. I thought Hilary Benn’s speech was well delivered, but workmanlike in construction and told us nothing that we did not already know – and was vacuous and banal of the geopolitical consequences. I suspect it was adored by the media because it accorded with their point of view; bomb people – they’re gagging for it, those secular and democratic Syrians, they want hi-tech UK ordnance. Nothing they want more than to be bombed. It will all make things worse than they are at present; not much worse, I grant you, because our airstrikes are at best peripheral. Just a bit worse. Dupes such as Benn still

Steerpike Steerpike

Family values: Jeremy Corbyn’s brother takes a swipe at Hilary Benn – ‘a disgrace to his father’

After Hilary Benn gave a passionate speech in favour of airstrikes, many on the left praised him for his words even if they did not agree with the sentiment. Alas Alex Salmond took a different approach and instead claimed Benn had shamed his late father Tony Benn who would be ‘birling in his grave’ after his son’s pro-war speech. While Salmond’s comments were widely condemned by members of Labour — including Tony Benn’s own granddaughter Emily, the party may need to address a similar personal attack on Benn which is closer to home. Jeremy Corbyn’s brother Piers has taken to Twitter to criticise Hilary, claiming that he is a ‘disgrace’ to his socialist father: WELL DONE

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 3 December 2015

Bombers without borders Sir: To define this week’s debate as being about ‘bombing Syria’ (‘The great fake war’, 28 November) is ludicrous. That’s not what it’s about. It’s about fighting Isis. Whatever you call them, and wherever they are. The current deal, under which we bomb Isis in Iraq but not in Syria, is as if we are content to fight them in Yorkshire but not in Lancashire. If people do not think we should be engaging Isis at all, that’s a different argument. But I would ask, ‘Where do they need to get to before you would engage them?’ Two years ago, we had a similar situation to today. The

The Spectator

It is time to join the fight against IS in Syria

The Islamic State is as monstrous an enemy as we have seen in recent history. It crucifies and decapitates its victims, holds teenage girls in slavery and burns captives alive. It is wrong to call it a medieval force, because such institutionalised barbarity was seldom seen in medieval times. As far as five centuries of records from the Ottoman Empire can establish, stoning was authorised only once. Isis now regularly stones suspected adulterers to death. It is not seeking inspiration from the Middle Ages. We are witnessing a modern form of evil — and it is spreading fast. Labour MPs, now accustomed to receiving threats from hard-left activists, were told

Sebastian Payne

Jeremy Corbyn’s New Politics has ushered in an era of appalling online bullying

It was meant to be about open debate and discussion, consensus through dialogue. But so far, Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour party and the arrival of the so-called New Politics has resulted in division and a lot of abuse and bad feeling. In light of last night’s vote on Syria airstrikes, Twitter and Facebook have been exploding with extraordinary levels of comments and abuse that no one, MPs or otherwise, should be subjected to. For example, hard-left groups such as Lefty Unity, have been using Twitter to stir up agitation against the MPs they disagree with: Again here is the list of the 66 Labour MPs who voted to

Michael O'Connell-Davidson

Forget Syria: a weak Greece endangers us all

There is nothing waiting for people who leave school in Greece today. It does not matter how much young Greeks might be able to give to their nation, because their nation has little to give them in return. Over the weekend, The Times reported that young Greek women are selling sex for as low as €2. Some are even exchanging sessions for cheese pasties, because they cannot afford to eat. It’s not just young Greeks who are suffering. Pensioners are being squeezed by Greece’s creditors, and drugs thrive amongst the homeless in Athens. Election after election has only served to make the country’s political crisis worse, with the second general strike in

Ruth Sherlock

The more we bomb Isis, the stronger they become

Isis can’t be seen as a single entity; as one cohesive army. The reality is that probably only a small percentage of the group are the types that pose a real threat to the West. Only a tiny minority of its members in the Middle East, at this stage, are hardline ideologues with any serious intent to carry out attacks in America or Europe. Most members of Isis have joined more out of pragmatism than fervour. Raqqa was always known in Syria as a more secular city (while it was still in the hands of the Syrian regime, other Syrian rebel groups would scoff to me that Raqqa’s population were blasphemous

Sebastian Payne

Podcast: the real victims of climate change and the oddballs in youth politics

Are the elderly and poor the real victims of climate change? In this week’s View from 22 podcast, presented by Isabel Hardman, Matt Ridley and Michael Jacobs debate the Paris climate change conference and whether politicians are too concerned about protecting ‘our grandchildren’. What is the point of this conference and will anything be achieved? Are attitudes towards the environment changing? James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson also discuss the Labour party’s civil war over the Syria airstrikes and whether this will help Dan Jarvis’ leadership chances. How much has the party damaged its reputation over national security? Is Jeremy Corbyn still safe as Labour leadership or will moderates in the party try

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Yesterday’s vote wasn’t about Syria’s war. It was about Labour’s

Parliament is always in a way a comedy of vanity. Yesterday it was a narcissistic farce. Our elected representatives spent ten hours making the same unconvincing points over and over again. The standard of speaking was poor because nobody had much worth saying. The pro-bombers kept arguing that we had to stand with our allies, and that Isis was horrid. The anti-bombers urged us not to make another tragic mistake in the Middle East. And everybody had to say how they felt personally — as if personal feelings are more important than right or wrong. Yet all the MPs knew deep down that Britain’s intervention in the Syrian conflict would be so small-scale as

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Hilary Benn’s speech was just a shallow historical re-enactment

What’s with the orgy of fawning over Hilary Benn’s Syria speech? It was eloquent, yes, but content-wise it reminded me of those historical re-enactment shebangs where sad men in their fifties try to inject meaning into their lives by pretending to be a Viking in a field for a couple of hours on a Saturday afternoon. Only instead of donning archaic armour and a horned helmet, Benn and his overnight Bennites – those currently clogging up Twitter with wild claims that his speech was the best oration since the Gettysburg Address – are wrapping themselves in the moral garb of the mid-20th century warriors against Nazi Germany. Benn’s speech, and

Richard Galustian

What’s the plan in Syria? Yesterday’s debate gave us few answers

David Cameron may now have his bombing mandate, but he still has no strategy. The PM’s ‘hope for the best’ rhetoric yesterday was distinctly un-Churchillian: ‘I know that will take a long time and that it will be complex,’ he said, ‘but that is the strategy, and we need to start with the first step, which is going after these terrorists today.’ It is not much of a plan, and those in the know know it: from defence chiefs – some of them friends of mine – giving anonymous briefings, to Parliament’s own foreign affairs committee, and even the voters, whom polls show swinging ever further away from air strikes.