Libya

Monday

Fraser Nelson

If Tony Blair thought that Gaddafi wanted to cut a deal, why did no one follow up?

Just a few months ago, almost everyone thought that David Cameron was a goner. That he was about to go down in history as a one-term Prime Minister who failed to win against a bad Labour leader in 2010 then lost to a worse one in 2015. During this period, Anthony Seldon spoke to a long line of well-placed people for his biography of David Cameron; people who would have imagined they could talk freely because his book would be an autopsy. As a result, the former Master of Wellington College seems to have drawn plenty information from people who perhaps regret their candour now. David Richards, the former head of the military, is candid about how he believed that the Libyan project was a disaster – embarked upon primarily to assuage the Prime Minister’s friends in Notting Hill.

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 20 August 2015

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.

Thursday

Kim Sengupta

Who’s running Libya?

When I covered Libya’s revolution in 2011, I had a driver named Mashallah. Mashallah was a decent and stoical man with an interesting propensity for malapropisms. He was regarded with fondness by us journalists — so when I decided to return to Libya recently, I sent him an email: did he want to work for me again? Unfortunately, replied Mashallah, he was in Paris. This seemed strange. How would he have got a French visa? I emailed again suggesting another week and received another profound apology. That week he was going on to Ankara and Istanbul. A quick look online solved the mystery.

Friday

John McTernan

The Calais crisis needs a better response than fences and dogs, Prime Minister

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.

Thursday

Lara Prendergast

Yet another tragedy in the Mediterranean. Here’s an actual rescue plan

Another week, another appalling boat disaster in the Mediterranean, another round of the same tired row on migration. Yesterday a boat carrying 600 people sank off the coast of Libya; 400 people were rescued, the rest are feared dead, trapped in the belly of the boat. This morning the same round of cliches are being trotted out. The pro-immigration lobby says our restrictive policies are cruel. The anti-immigration brigade say we must not encourage masses of people to come. But the migrant crisis is too great for such shallow responses. In this week's Spectator, Paul Collier says that this 'lazy thinking' gets us nowhere. He has an alternative, and it involves more than just a few Royal Navy ships fishing people out of the water.

Tuesday

Rod Liddle

We’ve always messed up the Middle East. Let’s stay out, for once

I suppose I should cease carping. We got a Blue Labour budget (except for the ludicrous stuff on inheritance tax), and far better than anything we would have got under my party, Labour. And at least the Prime Minister is addressing the issue of Islamic 'extremism'. Yes, I suppose, I would concur that taking away the passports from juvenile wannabe jihadis is a good idea. Just about. A horrible part of me thinks they should be taken away once they have left the country, though. Certainly that should apply to the adults. Encourage them to go, then nullify their passports. However, to disavow our own role in facilitating the Islamic State is evidence, to my mind, of a delusion.

Thursday

Toby Sculthorp

Africa’s most wanted

It’s Saturday morning in the courtyard of the Al-Zawiyah detention centre on the outskirts of Tripoli and Colonel Nourdeen Mishaal of Libya’s Ministry of Interior’s Department for Combating Illegal Immigration is about to have his weekend ruined. The Colonel has delivered an impassioned speech praising his own government and exhorting the West to do more to help in the battle against the people smugglers responsible for the thousands of migrants arriving in Europe every week. He dismisses his regime’s pariah status (the Islamist government has no international recognition). If there is a problem with migrants, he states with the full authority of his office, then the blame lies with western intransigence.

Tuesday

Jonathan Foreman

Aid is no substitute for defence, and Michael Fallon knows it

It’s been obvious for a while that the Prime Minister is exasperated by the way American and other allied officials – including President Obama himself – keep expressing concern about Britain’s rapidly shrinking defence capabilities and the prospect of yet more defence cuts. David Cameron also dislikes being reminded that he lectured other Nato leaders about meeting the alliance’s minimum of spending 2 per cent GDP on defence, when by any honest calculation the UK is not going to meet that target. He hasn’t responded directly to the multiple warnings from Washington.

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 18 June 2015

Growing congregations Sir: I would like to take issue with Damian Thompson (‘Crisis of faith’, 13 June) and his assertions that England’s churches are in deep trouble. Last Saturday 250 Christians ranging in age from zero to 80, from two independent and orthodox local churches in Lancaster and Morecambe, met in a school to sing, pray, and hear preaching about Jesus Christ — this as well as our normal Sunday services. We believe we are doing what the Bible tells us to: preaching the good news of Christ from the pages of the Bible — and our churches are growing. Indeed, we can testify to growth in many local churches in the UK (whether independent or within a denomination).

Nicholas Farrell

The invasion of Italy

Let us suppose that along the coast of Normandy up to one million non-EU migrants are waiting to be packed like sardines in small unseaworthy vessels and to cross the English Channel. Let us suppose that first the Royal Navy, then the navies of a dozen other EU countries, start to search for all such vessels in the Channel right up to the French coast, out into the North Sea and the Atlantic even, and then ferry all the passengers on board to Dover, Folkestone, Hastings, Eastbourne and Brighton in a surreal modern-day never-ending version of the Dunkirk evacuation of 1940. Would the British government agree to take them all? What of the British people? And if they did agree, what would the British government and people do with all the migrants? How would they cope?

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 11 June 2015

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.

Hugo Rifkind

Why does no one blame Cameron for Libya?

Call me petulant, but I’m not sure Britain is getting enough credit for our fine, fine work in Libya. The Islamic State, so recently present only in the semi-mythical lands of Syria and Iraq — places you see on the news, but don’t really have to believe in — has now set up residence a short hop away from Italy, in the Libyan town of Sirte. Which is, just to be clear, a hell of a lot closer to Italy than we are. Maybe one-and-a-half times the stretch of a Hull– Zeebrugge ferry. We did that. Well done everybody. Top marks all around. Also, Derna. That’s another town they’ve got. I’d never heard of Derna before, but apparently, Isis has held it since last October.

Friday

Brian Klaas

Europe cannot allow an ungoverned space to exist on its doorstep

Last month, 700 migrants attempting to sneak into Europe drowned when their rickety vessel capsized in the Mediterranean. This week, the European Union announced a naval initiative to crack down on migrant smugglers. It won’t work. These tragedies are going to recur endlessly, as long as a steady fleet of unsafe boats are able to set sail from Libya. The country has become a political vacuum which no longer deserves to be identified as a sovereign state. The civil war has left no functional state; in many parts, nobody is keeping the electricity running or schools open, let alone policing the coastline to stop illegal migration or the flow of jihadists.

Thursday

Douglas Murray

The people from the sea

 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.

Sunday

Jason Pack

Miliband’s position on Libya is deeply hypocritical

What Ed Miliband lacks in charisma, he is attempting to make up for in polemic. Tragically for the UK's future, this represents an 'Americanization' of British electoral politics. In all likelihood, its origins are David Axelrod cynically taking a page out of the Republicans' playbook. Fortunately, repeated screaming of 'Benghazi' as if it were a primordial voodoo incantation, is unlikely to work on this side of the Atlantic. Speaking at Chatham House on Friday, Miliband sought to pre-empt his critics by laying out a cohesive vision for foreign affairs - usually considered his weakest policy area.

Friday

Julia Hartley-Brewer

Ed Miliband should be careful when discussing foreign policy errors

If someone accuses you of doing something that you haven’t done, there’s a really easy way of convincing them that you are not in fact guilty. The first thing you can do is deny the accusation. Very clearly, emphatically and categorically. Let me give you an example taken completely at random: 'Are you accusing David Cameron of being personally to blame for the refugee crisis in Libya and hence the deaths of hundreds of desperate people in the Mediterranean?' Now, can anyone think of a good way of answering that question which would be unequivocal and make it clear beyond any doubt whatsoever that this is not in fact what you are doing? One suggestion might be to say something roughly along the lines of this: 'No, I am not.' See, it’s really easy.

Isabel Hardman

Ed Miliband thinks Libya’s failure is so obvious he’s barely mentioned it until now

With less than two weeks until polling day, it’s nice to see that Ed Miliband has discovered foreign policy as an important issue worth discussing. The Labour leader will attack the Tories today on a failure of post-conflict planning for Libya which has contributed to the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean. The Conservatives have decided to get very cross about this, claiming that the overnight briefing on this included Labour spinners saying the Tory party was responsible for the deaths. They have decided to make this about Miliband’s fitness to be Prime Minister.

Sebastian Payne

Campaign kick-off: 13 days to go

For the first time in this campaign, foreign affairs are not only being discussed but also dominating today’s agenda. Ed Miliband is set to criticise the coalition’s record on foreign policy, putting at least some of the blame for the Libyan migrant crisis on David Cameron. To help guide you through the melée of stories and spin, here is a summary of today’s main election stories. 1. The Libya blame game At Chatham House this morning, Ed Miliband will deliver a speech on Britain’s international role and responsibilities. Before Miliband has even taken to the podium, a row has broken out over whether he is accusing the government of abandoning Libya, after failing to properly plan for the aftermath of the 2011 bombing campaign.

Thursday

Rod Liddle

Will jailing Katie Hopkins save the lives of migrants? I have my doubts

More than a thousand migrants have died attempting to get into Europe over the past week, including 900 who perished horribly, trapped in the hold of a Tunisian ship near the Libyan coast. Many thousands have died before and many thousands will die in the near future attempting the same venture unless we in Europe change our policies. Everybody is agreed that something has to be done. For the liberal left, the answer is to sack Katie Hopkins, a fellow columnist of mine at the Sun. Not just sack her but also prosecute her and prosecute the editor of the Sun. More than 200,000 people have signed a petition got up by someone called Izzy Saunders demanding her removal from the paper because she wrote something with which they disagreed.

Monday

Ed West

Don’t get angry at Katie Hopkins if you don’t support policies that could save migrants

The latest issue of The Spectator carries an interesting piece by James Bartholomew on ‘virtue signalling’, the bane of social media and political debate; that is, people expressing how ruddy good they are by telling the world how much they hate bad things like Ukip and the Daily Mail. He writes: ‘It’s noticeable how often virtue signalling consists of saying you hate things. It is camouflage. The emphasis on hate distracts from the fact you are really saying how good you are. If you were frank and said, ‘I care about the environment more than most people do’ or ‘I care about the poor more than others’, your vanity and self-aggrandisement would be obvious, as it is with Whole Foods. Anger and outrage disguise your boastfulness.