Terrorism

In advance of the Home Secretary’s speech today the Conservative party issued an advance briefing of its ‘new strategy for tackling extremism’. It was gratifying to see that a huge chunk of it credited a piece of mine from four and a half years ago. It is always gratifying when the political consensus catches up with you. So in my self-anointed role of prophet, let me highlight something which, four and a half years from now I will expect another Home Secretary to say. Because although there were many things to admire in Theresa May’s speech there was also one horrible, glaring and nearly unforgivable error. That is that the Home Secretary chose to speak about religion – indeed to lecture the hall, and the nation, on religion.

By 524 votes to 43, the House of Commons has voted to support air-strikes against Islamic State in Iraq. The margin of victory is not surprising given how limited the motion was, it rules out ground troops and makes clear there’ll be another vote before any action in Syria. But in a sign of the unease of some on the Labour side, Rushanara Ali, who represents George Galloway’s old seat of Bethnal Green and Bow, has resigned from the front bench over Labour’s support for the motion. Indeed, the first estimates are that 24 Labour MPs voted against while just five Tories opposed. The question now is whether, and when, Cameron might return to the Commons to try and gain approval for action in Syria.

Why is the UK still supplying arms to those who helped fund the so-called Islamic State, and what leverage does it bring? In the Prime Minister’s statement to the House of Commons following the Nato summit over the weekend, he spoke of seeking a broad base of support through the UN. Yet there was no mention of military action—as opposed to diplomatic assistance—from Gulf States. Islamic State has been bankrolled by wealthy Gulf individuals from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait, and their Governments have failed to act to prevent it. In March 2014, Nouri al-Maliki, the outgoing Iraqi Prime Minister, accused Saudi Arabia and Qatar of being ‘at war with Iraq’. Six names were added the latest UN sanctions list, issued on the 14th August.

A few days ago, one would have expected the first PMQs of term to be a rowdy affair as Labour went for Cameron over the Carswell defection. But the recent, hideous events in Iraq have changed all that and today’s PMQs was instead a sober, statesmanlike affair which reflected well on both Cameron and Miliband.

The talks between the Lib Dems and the Conservatives on the anti-terror measures that David Cameron will unveil this afternoon have finally finished. There are a few more details to be thrashed out - crossing of Ts and dotting of Is rather than major policy decisions - but the two parties are basically there. That the talks have only broken up with just over an hour to go until the statement shows how contentious these measures have been in the Coalition. David Cameron's press conference, in which he set out the heightened threat, was partly a softening-up exercise to push the Lib Dems into accepting what the security and intelligence services had told him: that they needed to plug the 'gaps in Britain's armoury'.

The Coalition parties are gearing up for a week of minding the gaps. Tomorrow, David Cameron plans to tell MPs about measures that he feels are necessary for plugging the gaps in Britain's armoury. They're gaps highlighted to him by the intelligence and security services, and where the Tories once said they would be very sceptical about gaps, whether they existed, and whether it was right to plug them, the Prime Minister seems pretty keen to listen to the spooks. But the Lib Dems are still cross about the gaps, and possibly cross about another change of heart from the Conservatives.

It was not so much the announcements that David Cameron made in his press conference about the terror threat to the UK that were significant, but what he looks like he's going to have to announce on Monday. The Prime Minister confirmed that the threat level to the UK has been raised from 'substantial' to 'severe'. But he also said that on Monday he will be unveiling new measures to address 'gaps' in the UK's 'armoury': 'I said very clearly last week that there would be no knee-jerk reactions. We will respond calmly and with purpose. And we'll do so driven by the evidence and the importance of maintaining the liberty that is the hallmark of the society that we defend. But we have to listen carefully to the security and the intelligence officers who do so much every day to keep us safe.

[audioplayer src="http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_07_August_2014_v4.mp3" title="Douglas Murray and Tim Stanley discuss Baroness Warsi's resignation" startat=462] Listen [/audioplayer]I have never issued a call for violence before, and I’m certainly not going to start now. But I wonder if people might consider the following, purely hypothetical situation. In her resignation letter over the UK government not being anti-Israel enough for her, Sayeeda Warsi backed up her ‘case’ by writing: ‘Early evidence from the Home Office and others shows that the fallout of the current conflict and the potential for the crisis in Gaza and our response to it becoming a basis for radicalisation could have consequences for us for years to come.

The Hallett Review was published yesterday. This is the review ordered by the Prime Minister in February after the collapse of the trial of John Downey. Readers will remember that Downey was about to face trial over the 1982 Hyde Park bombing – in which four British soldiers were murdered – when his lawyers produced a letter from the Police Service of Northern Ireland saying that Downey was not being sought for any offences. This opened up the remarkable discovery that unbeknown to most people involved in the political process in Northern Ireland: that such ‘amnesty letters’ had been sent to almost 200 ‘on-the-runs’ (people being sought for terrorism offences who had not yet faced trial). The people given these letters of assurance were all Republicans.