Douglas Murray

The head of Amnesty, Kate Allen, was busily talking the most terrible balls on the radio this morning. In an interview on the Today programme she reminded everyone of how bad the situation in Syria is and indulged in the usual Conservative-bashing by arguing that Britain wasn’t doing enough to alleviate the refugee situation. Despite spending more than almost any other country on regional solutions to the humanitarian catastrophe and a commitment to take in 20,000 refugees over 5 years, Ms Allen particularly lamented that we were ‘not joining with the rest of Europe.’ Seemingly unaware that most of the ‘refugees’ flooding into Europe are not Syrians and not refugees, she insisted that Britain should nevertheless bring in far more of them.

As some light relief from all this EU discussion, I thought readers might like to hear about Isis. Or at least what to do about Isis. The week before last I teamed up in London with General John Allen to argue that Western boots may be needed on the ground in Syria and Iraq to destroy Isis. We were opposed in the Intelligence Squared debate by Ken Livingstone and the journalist Rula Jebreal. A video of the event went out over the weekend on BBC World and is now available to view here. I should add a note to say that in order to fit the schedules the BBC edit has to lose about half of the debate. It's a fine art, and the final edit keeps in most of the main points.

Almost everything about the EU debate so far has been a fraud.  The ‘Remain’ campaign has lied to the public about what David Cameron achieved in his ‘renegotiation’.  They have lied about the consequences of leaving the EU, in the hope of terrifying us into staying.  And now they are rushing us towards a referendum because the later they leave it the less likely it is that they will get the answer they want.  An innocent might rub their eyes in disbelief that a Conservative Prime Minister with the connivance of nearly the entire political class could be trying to bounce us into such a decision. But there it is.

In the wasteland of principles that is Westminster, Tim Montgomerie has always been an exception.  The area is filled with ambitious, bland careerists whose idea of taking a stand (as with most of the commentariat) consists of trying to locate two ‘extremes’ before comfortably wedging themselves equidistant between them.  But in resigning from a lifetime’s membership of the Conservative party, Tim Montgomerie has demonstrated that there is still room for principles in politics. Because nothing has so highlighted Westminster’s prevalence of careerism over principle than the aftermath of the great EU renegotiation charade.  In private absolutely nobody thinks that David Cameron achieved anything real with his ‘renegotiation’.

I see that Hilary Benn has been doing his bit for 'Project Fear'. According to Mr Benn one of the best reasons for staying in the EU is that 'President Putin would shed no tears if Britain left the European Union.' So what? Caliph al-Baghdadi may laugh like a drain if we stay in.  Anyone can play that game. According to Mr Benn, 'the weakness of European solidarity' caused by Brexit would be particularly damaging at this time, 'just when strength needs to be shown in the continent.' To which one might ask, how did that 'solidarity' and 'strength' go vis-a-vis Crimea and Ukraine? It is true that the EU was 'united' - it united in doing nothing.

Is it really wise for David Cameron to threaten us with migrants? That is what he has done today with his warning that if we ‘leave’ the EU then the migrant camp in Calais could have to be moved to Folkestone, Dover, or our own back gardens. Not only is the claim wrong (our Calais arrangements are with France, not with the EU) it neatly shines a light on the biggest failure of his time in office. The ‘jungle’ in Calais is currently home to around 5,000 people. They are there because the EU does almost nothing to control its external borders and made a principle of abolishing its internal borders (‘free movement of people’).

I’ve never had much time for Chris Patten, generally disliking the Tory Europhile and late Roy Jenkins impersonator.  But the whirligig of time brings in strange revenges and none is odder than Chris Patten emerging as the only adult in the room.  In the great Cecil Rhodes debate at Oxford – a debate which like all such ‘safe-space’ debates has been crying out for the intervention of an adult – Chancellor of the University of Oxford Chris Patten has intervened. For anyone fortunate enough not to know about this embarrassing episode, it relates to a campaign by certain ‘Rhodes scholars’ at Oxford who will not rest until all memorials to the munificence of Cecil Rhodes are removed.

Written after the Charlie Hebdo shooting in January and revised after the Paris attacks in November, Douglas Murray's piece on politicians' responses to Islamic terror attacks was The Spectator's third most read article of 2015: The West’s movement towards the truth is remarkably slow. We drag ourselves towards it painfully, inch by inch, after each bloody Islamist assault. In France, Britain, Germany, America and nearly every other country in the world it remains government policy to say that any and all attacks carried out in the name of Mohammed have ‘nothing to do with Islam’. It was said by George W. Bush after 9/11, Tony Blair after 7/7 and Tony Abbott after the Sydney attack last month.

The findings of the UK government’s review into the Muslim Brotherhood have finally been published.  Commissioned by the Prime Minister in April 2014, the full report will not be released. Although the review finds that the Muslim Brotherhood does not meet the threshold of violence which would see it proscribed in the UK, it described members of the Muslim Brotherhood as possible extremists. As such the government has listed a set of renewed actions, including visa bans, on individuals associated with the group and promises to keep the group’s activities under review in order to consider proscription at a future date.

[audioplayer src="http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/thegreendelusion/media.mp3" title="Douglas Murray and Steph Smith discuss whether all young politicians are oddballs" startat=1130] Listen [/audioplayer]Whenever the curtain is pulled back on youthful political activism, the picture is ugly. Three years ago, in Young, Bright and On the Right, the BBC followed students at Oxbridge fighting like vipers to get ahead in their university Conservative clubs. Along with the inevitable three-piece suits, wildly invented accents and endless talk of what ‘the party’ expected, there was also that characteristic lack of awareness that ‘the party’, like the rest of the world, remained largely indifferent to them.