Libya

Home After the killings in Paris, David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that seven terrorist attacks on Britain had been prevented in the past six months. He met President Vladimir Putin of Russia at a G20 meeting at Antalya in Turkey. Mr Putin said: ‘We should join efforts in preventing terror. Unfortunately our bilateral relations are not of the best.’ Mr Cameron said in the Commons: ‘Raqqa, if you like, is the head of the snake… we need to deal with it not just in Iraq but in Syria too.’ He said funds from maintaining defence spending at 2 per cent of GDP would go to special forces, drones and fighter aircraft. MI5, MI6 and GCHQ would be able to recruit an extra 1,900 officers to their 12,700 staff.

When the first schoolgirls ran away to Isis I had some sympathy for them — at least, I could see how they’d been suckered in. The girls were young, daft, desperate for a cause. They’d nosed about online, and found the Twitter feeds of jihadi wives who sell Syria as a teenage paradise: all fast food, deathless love, martyrdom and shopping. Because I felt for those first schoolgirls, I kept following their progress, checking for them online as they set up in Syria, married, and began to tweet themselves. But as I followed them on social media, my sympathy soon turned to disgust. ‘Happy #9/11’ wrote young Zahra Halane, one of the twins from Manchester who fled to Isis last year. ‘Happiest day of my life. Hopefully more to come. InSha Allah #Is.

Watch the videos of 1950s Iraq on YouTube and you glimpse something close to an idyll. It’s true that Pathé News was not big on gritty realism, but history relates that here it was not using a heavily rose-tinted lens; Hugh Trevor-Roper even went so far as to describe Iraq at the time as a Levantine Switzerland. Or you can go to Google Images, tap in ‘1960s Afghan women’ and be offered photographs of a mixed university biology class, and others of young women with short skirts, long hair and smiling faces. This was life under the kings, and knowing what followed is enough to make a grown man weep. But let’s be hard-headed and forward-looking: the creation of new constitutional monarchies is a sensible solution to such clear and present dangers as Isis.

Leptis Magna was deserted when I last visited — no wonder. Tourists daren’t visit Libya these days and so I had the ruins to myself. I climbed the steps of the vast Roman theatre, looked out to where the Wadi Lebda meets the sea, then stopped. Men with AK-47s. My immediate fear was that they were Islamic State. Isis move closer to Leptis Magna every day and it would make sense for this most spectacular site to be next on their hit list. Their last great coup was on the other side of the Med, when they blew up the Temple of Baal Shamin in Palmyra, known as ‘the Pearl of the Desert’. It’s part of their cultural jihad, but they also do it for the global outrage that follows. No such thing as bad press for Isis.

Home Andrew Burnham described calls from Yvette Cooper, a rival candidate for the Labour leadership, for him to withdraw from the contest as ‘quite strange’. The problem was how to prevent Jeremy Corbyn, a left-winger, from being elected by the alternative vote system by 610,000 party members and registered supporters. Gordon Brown, the former disastrous Labour prime minister, contributed by making a 50-minute speech in a small room at the Royal Festival Hall, during which he paced up and down continuously for an estimated 1 mile 1 furlong 5 chains and did not mention Mr Corbyn’s name. Kezia Dugdale, a Member of the Scottish Parliament, was elected leader of the Scottish Labour party; the party has only one seat in the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

David Cameron should be in real trouble over Calais. It goes to the heart of two of the central issues by which British voters judge governments: are you competent and can you control immigration. Judging by the unstoppable growth of the chaotic 'Jungle', the increasing number of assaults on Eurotunnel staff and the rising number of tragic and needless deaths, we know the answer to the competence question. To paraphrase Sam Goldwyn, there are two words for the government: incompetent. Every time a minister comes on the radio or TV to explain what the government is doing, I immediately think 'who is that useless Lib Dem junior minister? No 10 must hate having to compromise on immigration policy.' Then I remember.

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said of the EU referendum: ‘If you want to be part of the government, you have to take the view that we are engaged in an exercise of renegotiation to have a referendum and that will lead to a successful outcome.’ This caused a certain amount of uproar, with newspaper headlines saying things like ‘PM: Back me or I will sack you.’ Mr Cameron the next day said: ‘It’s clear to me that what I said yesterday was misinterpreted.

 Lampedusa The young hang about in packs or speed around town, two to a scooter. Old women group together on benches around the town square in front of the church. The men continually greet each other as though they haven’t met for years. The likelihood is small. With fewer than 6,000 inhabitants, and as close to Libya as it is to Italy, Lampedusa is the sort of place from which any ambitious young Italian would spend their life trying to escape. Yet every day hundreds and sometimes thousands of people are risking their lives to get here. ‘Please tell people we have nice beaches,’ one islander pleads.