Have you ever experienced one of those moments when you feel like utterly railing against something or someone? They’ve let you down, they’ve treated you badly, and you’re determined to do what you can to draw the flaws of the whole system to as many people as you can?
I have, and there’s a fine line to tread between, on the one hand, acting on a natural – and often legitimate – sense of injustice, and on the other, being aware that mishaps happen in life and one’s own indignation isn’t always the best guide to social injustice.
There’s a debate raging in the USA about reforming the system of medical care. The only headlines it has made over here came when Daniel Hannan, the Conservative MEP and supposedly a rising star of the party, described the NHS in an American TV debate as ‘a terrible mistake’ which we have lived through for 60 years.
I don’t know what Dan Hannan’s experiences of the NHS are. I can only assume he’s had some bad ones, and in this he’s not alone. But can anyone really justify calling the NHS a 60-year mistake?
He also said the NHS ‘makes people iller’. What, everyone? A majority even?
I sometimes get frustrated with the NHS, and in my more cynical moments feel it should be called the National Sickness Service, because by and large it only wants to know you if you’re sick. I wish it concentrated more on ‘health’ and did more preventative work like its excellent babies/toddlers health visitor service, and its many screening programmes, but is that sufficient ground for calling it a 60-year mistake?
There are two indisputable facts about the British system compared with the American. Firstly, the average person is better off under the NHS than in America. The NHS is geared up for catching everyone, regardless of circumstances – you don’t find poor people here having to hold fund-raising events to pay for operations, as frequently happens in the USA.
Secondly, we pay only 8.4% of GDP on healthcare, compared to the 16% of GDP spent by Americans, and all like-for-like comparisons show the NHS as better than the sum total of American medical care. Because we pay for the NHS through our taxes, the cost is spread across the entire country and so isn’t nearly the burden that insurance is for Americans.
What Hannan has done is to compare the medical care the rich of America get with the medical care the rich of Britain get. On that comparison, I wouldn’t be surprised if the US system comes out better. But that’s not the basis on which I want to build a national medical insurance system, thank you.
And this lies at the heart of why the Conservatives still haven’t won people round to the idea that they would be a more benign government than they were in the 1990s. Personally I think David Cameron is a fundamentally decent guy, but he has some nasty people in his cabinet, and Dan Hannan’s outburst merely shows how difficult it is for a Conservative leopard genuinely to change its spots.
Sunday, 30 August 2009
Tuesday, 21 July 2009
PUBS NEED HELP, NOT THE GLASS KNOCKED OUT OF THEIR HAND
A feature of battles between Liberal Democrats and Conservatives is that both try to claim they are better guardians of rural areas than the other. Both have large support out in the sticks, and thus speak from a position of strength, even if they represent different interests and policies.
So why on earth were Tory MPs last week voting against a plan to scrap the alcohol tax escalator? This was a measure that would have given a boost to the country pub, that staple of rural (and urban) life that was struggling even before the credit crunch knocked the glass out of its hand.
The pub has been hit by a double-whammy of people having less money to spend on non-essentials, and the ban on smoking in public places.
The smoking ban is an improvement that would have come sooner or later anyway, but one of its side-effects has been to endanger the life of the local pub – it has made pubs nicer places to drink in but has left many with fewer drinkers enjoying these nicer places. Nationwide, more than 2000 pubs have closed in the past year, while beer sales dropped by 8.2% in the first quarter of 2009.
And it’s likely to get worse, after the Chancellor introduced the alcohol tax escalator in his budget – a measure which sees alcohol duty go up 2% above inflation every year.
So a group of Lib Dem MPs tabled a motion calling for the escalator to be dropped. It was supported by 62 MPs, 49 of them Lib Dems. It was opposed by 311 MPs, almost all of them Labour and Conservative.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m not calling for people to drink more alcohol. Much havoc has been wrought by people drinking too much and at inappropriate times, and the ‘everything in moderation’ philosophy applies to drinking. But pubs are part of the fabric of community life, often bringing people together in ways that might not otherwise happen, especially since the demise of village shops and community facilities.
Tax escalators are good if your idea is to wean people’s dependence off something. But if we want to wean people off pubs, then we will be left with a pub-less landscape. That’s not something I want to see.
So why on earth were Tory MPs last week voting against a plan to scrap the alcohol tax escalator? This was a measure that would have given a boost to the country pub, that staple of rural (and urban) life that was struggling even before the credit crunch knocked the glass out of its hand.
The pub has been hit by a double-whammy of people having less money to spend on non-essentials, and the ban on smoking in public places.
The smoking ban is an improvement that would have come sooner or later anyway, but one of its side-effects has been to endanger the life of the local pub – it has made pubs nicer places to drink in but has left many with fewer drinkers enjoying these nicer places. Nationwide, more than 2000 pubs have closed in the past year, while beer sales dropped by 8.2% in the first quarter of 2009.
And it’s likely to get worse, after the Chancellor introduced the alcohol tax escalator in his budget – a measure which sees alcohol duty go up 2% above inflation every year.
So a group of Lib Dem MPs tabled a motion calling for the escalator to be dropped. It was supported by 62 MPs, 49 of them Lib Dems. It was opposed by 311 MPs, almost all of them Labour and Conservative.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m not calling for people to drink more alcohol. Much havoc has been wrought by people drinking too much and at inappropriate times, and the ‘everything in moderation’ philosophy applies to drinking. But pubs are part of the fabric of community life, often bringing people together in ways that might not otherwise happen, especially since the demise of village shops and community facilities.
Tax escalators are good if your idea is to wean people’s dependence off something. But if we want to wean people off pubs, then we will be left with a pub-less landscape. That’s not something I want to see.
Thursday, 25 June 2009
HAVE THE CONSERVATIVES LEARNED NOTHING FROM THE EXPENSES SCANDAL?
The most repugnant element of John Bercow’s election as Speaker of the House of Commons was the way in which many Conservative MPs were so unmagnanimous about it, and even talked about him being ousted if the Tories have a majority after the next election.
It’s blatantly wrong to judge someone before they’ve had even a day in office. In addition, the Speaker is a neutral figure who should command respect from all parties. But most importantly, such a grudging, even parsimonious response to a victory that was as hard-fought as any constituency election shows that the Conservatives have not learned a thing from the public’s indignation about the expenses scandal.
Of course, when a Parliament with a Labour majority (yes, there’s still a Labour majority in Parliament in case you’d forgotten) votes for a Conservative MP to be Speaker, you know it won’t be a dyed-in-the-wool Tory. But that’s precisely the point! John Bercow has been elected because he has shown he understands points of view that go beyond the boundaries of his own party.
What the British public has been screaming for is a politics that reflects the reality in their own lives. That reality is that you have to make do with increasingly tight budgets, and that you have to find areas of compromise.
By contrast, our politics has become a parliamentary bubble in which members think it’s OK to claim for everything that moves (or flows, in the cast of moats). By doing so, MPs have got themselves and this country’s democratic traditions into deep water. So the election of a new Speaker became a signal of whether the Westminster village was willing to think outside its own bubble – and in the election of John Bercow, it showed it was.
I have no idea how good a Speaker Bercow will be, but in the current circumstances the election of a man who has clearly modified his convictions on the basis of experience and listening to other people’s points of view is a good sign. And if he’s too far to the left for many Tories, that is precisely what makes him a Speaker in whom many of us can have some hope.
I understand he has a manner that can alienate as much as attract, but the man deserves a chance. And if the Conservatives can’t accept that a 46-year-old Speaker who has some ideas of his own might be good for British parliamentary democracy, it makes you wonder how fit they are to be the party of government.
It’s blatantly wrong to judge someone before they’ve had even a day in office. In addition, the Speaker is a neutral figure who should command respect from all parties. But most importantly, such a grudging, even parsimonious response to a victory that was as hard-fought as any constituency election shows that the Conservatives have not learned a thing from the public’s indignation about the expenses scandal.
Of course, when a Parliament with a Labour majority (yes, there’s still a Labour majority in Parliament in case you’d forgotten) votes for a Conservative MP to be Speaker, you know it won’t be a dyed-in-the-wool Tory. But that’s precisely the point! John Bercow has been elected because he has shown he understands points of view that go beyond the boundaries of his own party.
What the British public has been screaming for is a politics that reflects the reality in their own lives. That reality is that you have to make do with increasingly tight budgets, and that you have to find areas of compromise.
By contrast, our politics has become a parliamentary bubble in which members think it’s OK to claim for everything that moves (or flows, in the cast of moats). By doing so, MPs have got themselves and this country’s democratic traditions into deep water. So the election of a new Speaker became a signal of whether the Westminster village was willing to think outside its own bubble – and in the election of John Bercow, it showed it was.
I have no idea how good a Speaker Bercow will be, but in the current circumstances the election of a man who has clearly modified his convictions on the basis of experience and listening to other people’s points of view is a good sign. And if he’s too far to the left for many Tories, that is precisely what makes him a Speaker in whom many of us can have some hope.
I understand he has a manner that can alienate as much as attract, but the man deserves a chance. And if the Conservatives can’t accept that a 46-year-old Speaker who has some ideas of his own might be good for British parliamentary democracy, it makes you wonder how fit they are to be the party of government.
Friday, 22 May 2009
FEEL THE ANGER, BUT DON’T SHOOT THE LOCAL GUY WHO CAN HELP
There’s nothing like spending three hours putting leaflets through people’s doors to give you a perspective on what politics really is.
In the current angry – perhaps even hysterical? – climate, it would be easy to think that politics is rotten to the core. But it isn’t. Do you remember those ‘Love is ...’ cartoons that had as many answers as people wanted to think up? Well let me paraphrase.
Politics is:
· Bleeding knuckles from dropping leaflets through metal letterboxes
· High blood pressure from having dogs threatening to bite your fingers off
· Low self-esteem from being the recipient of people’s anger for all sorts of reasons nothing to do with you
· Finding the wallet is empty because the party has asked for yet another donation to funds campaigning work
· That look in one’s partner’s eye that says ‘You said you’d be home an hour and a half ago’ when you get back from yet another meeting.
And many more – all because you believe in something enough to be willing to go out and put your money (and the skin of your knuckles) where your mouth is.
Normally when I go from door-to-door asking people if the Liberal Democrats can count on their vote at the forthcoming election, I listen and don’t generally challenge what people tell me – it’s like a surgery on foot. But I have become, not aggressive but politely assertive when people say, as they do at lot at present, ‘Oh you politicians are all as bad as each other.’
What I don’t say – though often want to – is that there are very few people who have a totally clean record on their expenses, and that those who do should be the ones to cast the first stone. Many people – waiters, hairdressers, even my own profession of journalists – have been caught up unwillingly in a system that underpays but has a tacit acceptance that income can be topped up by ‘expenses’ claims, so it would be wrong to assume that MPs are all bad apples because they too have got caught up in it (a system largely instigated incidentally by Margaret Thatcher).
The anger people feel about MPs’ expenses is totally understandable. But it is a travesty of justice to take it out on their lay councillors and council candidates (unless they have done something illegal or unethical). So I say to people on the doorsteps: ‘I understand your anger, but surely you’re not going to let the goings-on at Westminster stop you saying who should represent you in filling in the potholes in your road and making sure your council tax is well spent, are you?’
Whether I get through to them will only become clear after 4 June. But I urge every voter in the forthcoming county council elections to vote – and to vote on local issues. If we get a turnout that’s higher than Westminster, that will send the signal that people do believe in democracy – it just has to be a fair, representative and clean one.
In the current angry – perhaps even hysterical? – climate, it would be easy to think that politics is rotten to the core. But it isn’t. Do you remember those ‘Love is ...’ cartoons that had as many answers as people wanted to think up? Well let me paraphrase.
Politics is:
· Bleeding knuckles from dropping leaflets through metal letterboxes
· High blood pressure from having dogs threatening to bite your fingers off
· Low self-esteem from being the recipient of people’s anger for all sorts of reasons nothing to do with you
· Finding the wallet is empty because the party has asked for yet another donation to funds campaigning work
· That look in one’s partner’s eye that says ‘You said you’d be home an hour and a half ago’ when you get back from yet another meeting.
And many more – all because you believe in something enough to be willing to go out and put your money (and the skin of your knuckles) where your mouth is.
Normally when I go from door-to-door asking people if the Liberal Democrats can count on their vote at the forthcoming election, I listen and don’t generally challenge what people tell me – it’s like a surgery on foot. But I have become, not aggressive but politely assertive when people say, as they do at lot at present, ‘Oh you politicians are all as bad as each other.’
What I don’t say – though often want to – is that there are very few people who have a totally clean record on their expenses, and that those who do should be the ones to cast the first stone. Many people – waiters, hairdressers, even my own profession of journalists – have been caught up unwillingly in a system that underpays but has a tacit acceptance that income can be topped up by ‘expenses’ claims, so it would be wrong to assume that MPs are all bad apples because they too have got caught up in it (a system largely instigated incidentally by Margaret Thatcher).
The anger people feel about MPs’ expenses is totally understandable. But it is a travesty of justice to take it out on their lay councillors and council candidates (unless they have done something illegal or unethical). So I say to people on the doorsteps: ‘I understand your anger, but surely you’re not going to let the goings-on at Westminster stop you saying who should represent you in filling in the potholes in your road and making sure your council tax is well spent, are you?’
Whether I get through to them will only become clear after 4 June. But I urge every voter in the forthcoming county council elections to vote – and to vote on local issues. If we get a turnout that’s higher than Westminster, that will send the signal that people do believe in democracy – it just has to be a fair, representative and clean one.
Tuesday, 5 May 2009
A KICK IN THE TEETH FOR HARD-WORKING COUNCILLORS
I had to laugh. “Vote for change!” said David Cameron, launching the Conservative Party’s county council election campaign this week. Er, has no-one told him that his party holds 19 of the 27 shire counties of England and Wales up for election?
Like East Sussex, for example. I’d be happy for people to follow Cameron’s example and vote for change. Get the Conservatives out of County Hall in Lewes where they’ve inflicted enough damage for the past eight years.
But this column isn’t actually an attack on the Conservatives. David Cameron is just the latest national figure to have put party tactics before the realities of local government, and thereby to have kicked in the teeth the thousands of lay councillors up and down the country – councillors of all parties – who put in loads of time for little thanks.
Think about it. If our democracy is to function, if we’re to have real people making decisions on behalf of their communities rather than faceless Whitehall mandarins, people need to volunteer to be councillors. Most councillors are members of a party, though many of them aren’t ideologically attached to their party – it can be a convenience thing, or even a reflection of who most of their friends are. When the friends of a community-spirited individual ask “Why don’t you stand for the council?”, the party label is often just that – a label.
And so, thousands of councillors spend lots of time doing good work, often in amicable cooperation with councillors of other parties, and at the end of their term of office ask the voters to approve the work they’ve done by giving them another term. Except that then national figures jump in and hijack the whole process, asking people not to recognise the hard work done by councillors but to use the election as a stick with which to beat a rival at national level.
I have seen countless good councillors put in four solid years, and then lose their seats, not because the voters are ungrateful (though they frequently are), but because a party is going through an unpopular phase. It can be heartbreaking, and a real turn-off to those considering whether to stand.
So when I hear David Cameron asking people to “vote for change”, knowing full well that he means change in Downing Street, it makes me very angry. How dare he make the hard work of county councillors – for it’s mostly county councillors who are up for election next month – a pawn in his battle with Gordon Brown! These elections have nothing to do with Brown, nor with Cameron, but with local issues.
I would like to see the Conservatives lose control of East Sussex, because I believe they are leading us in the wrong direction on vital issues such as waste disposal and transport, and frequently have their priorities wrong. For those reasons I hope voters vote Liberal Democrat, but I would never dream of degrading the work put in by our four dozen county councillors over the past four years by saying people should vote on national issues. That is an insult to them, and to our democracy.
I hope it backfires on David Cameron – either by people voting for the change he doesn’t want, or by Labour being so crushed that they get rid of Gordon Brown in favour of a more electable leader and the Tories find they’re not such a shoo-in for election next year as they thought.
Like East Sussex, for example. I’d be happy for people to follow Cameron’s example and vote for change. Get the Conservatives out of County Hall in Lewes where they’ve inflicted enough damage for the past eight years.
But this column isn’t actually an attack on the Conservatives. David Cameron is just the latest national figure to have put party tactics before the realities of local government, and thereby to have kicked in the teeth the thousands of lay councillors up and down the country – councillors of all parties – who put in loads of time for little thanks.
Think about it. If our democracy is to function, if we’re to have real people making decisions on behalf of their communities rather than faceless Whitehall mandarins, people need to volunteer to be councillors. Most councillors are members of a party, though many of them aren’t ideologically attached to their party – it can be a convenience thing, or even a reflection of who most of their friends are. When the friends of a community-spirited individual ask “Why don’t you stand for the council?”, the party label is often just that – a label.
And so, thousands of councillors spend lots of time doing good work, often in amicable cooperation with councillors of other parties, and at the end of their term of office ask the voters to approve the work they’ve done by giving them another term. Except that then national figures jump in and hijack the whole process, asking people not to recognise the hard work done by councillors but to use the election as a stick with which to beat a rival at national level.
I have seen countless good councillors put in four solid years, and then lose their seats, not because the voters are ungrateful (though they frequently are), but because a party is going through an unpopular phase. It can be heartbreaking, and a real turn-off to those considering whether to stand.
So when I hear David Cameron asking people to “vote for change”, knowing full well that he means change in Downing Street, it makes me very angry. How dare he make the hard work of county councillors – for it’s mostly county councillors who are up for election next month – a pawn in his battle with Gordon Brown! These elections have nothing to do with Brown, nor with Cameron, but with local issues.
I would like to see the Conservatives lose control of East Sussex, because I believe they are leading us in the wrong direction on vital issues such as waste disposal and transport, and frequently have their priorities wrong. For those reasons I hope voters vote Liberal Democrat, but I would never dream of degrading the work put in by our four dozen county councillors over the past four years by saying people should vote on national issues. That is an insult to them, and to our democracy.
I hope it backfires on David Cameron – either by people voting for the change he doesn’t want, or by Labour being so crushed that they get rid of Gordon Brown in favour of a more electable leader and the Tories find they’re not such a shoo-in for election next year as they thought.
Wednesday, 22 April 2009
METHADONE PROGRAMME FOR ADDICTED CAR MAKERS
Credit where it's due. The government's attempt to set price signals - through taxes and charges - to encourage environmentally beneficial behaviour is correct, if long overdue.
If we're to retain many of our freedoms but still take the environment seriously, we have to make sure the prices of things reflect the true price, which includes the cost to the environment. If a product or an activity has an environmental cost, that has to be paid for by the user - simple economics really. And we have to move towards a situation in which doing the right thing is also the cheapest and/or easiest thing.
But the idea that offering motorists £2000 to scrap an old vehicle and buy a new one is not, repeat not an environmental measure. Nor is the idea that it has been successful in Germany a comment that should go unchallenged.
It's not an environmental measure for two reasons. Firstly, around 20 per cent of the energy used by a car in its lifetime comes in its manufacture, a factor seldom taken into account when emissions from old vehicles are compared with emissions from new. There's also the waste problem of disposing of even larger numbers of used vehicles.
Secondly, much less progress has been made on emissions reduction than the car makers would have us believe. A study in 2008 showed a Volkswagen Beetle now is no more fuel-efficient than a Beetle made 60 years ago. The car makers held out scandalously against EU efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from the average new car to 120g per kilometre, saying it was technically not feasible when several makers were already doing it! What they meant was that they make greater profits on the bigger gas guzzlers. Regrettably the Commission and member state governments fell for it.
The 'scrappage' payments in Germany (they offer €2500, very close to Alistair Darling's £2000) have been a success in terms of a massive take-up, so successful that the government has exhausted the money it put aside and has been forced to make more available. It's like a drug German car buyers have become addicted to in a very short space of time.
A central argument made in all this is that the car industry is central to our economic well-being. But it isn't! We have learned - for cost and environmental reasons - to treat electricity, gas, oil and other sources of energy as something we need to use as little as possible of. We should view transport the same way - some is needed, some is even desirable, but the sign of a well managed and efficient economy is that we use no more than is necessary.
Imagine offering state subsidies to encourage people to use more fuel than necessary to heat their homes - it would be laughed out of the political arena! So why is offering state subsidies to boost an industry whose dependence we should be weaning ourselves off any different?
These £2000 payments are like a financial methadone programme for addicted car makers.
If we're to retain many of our freedoms but still take the environment seriously, we have to make sure the prices of things reflect the true price, which includes the cost to the environment. If a product or an activity has an environmental cost, that has to be paid for by the user - simple economics really. And we have to move towards a situation in which doing the right thing is also the cheapest and/or easiest thing.
But the idea that offering motorists £2000 to scrap an old vehicle and buy a new one is not, repeat not an environmental measure. Nor is the idea that it has been successful in Germany a comment that should go unchallenged.
It's not an environmental measure for two reasons. Firstly, around 20 per cent of the energy used by a car in its lifetime comes in its manufacture, a factor seldom taken into account when emissions from old vehicles are compared with emissions from new. There's also the waste problem of disposing of even larger numbers of used vehicles.
Secondly, much less progress has been made on emissions reduction than the car makers would have us believe. A study in 2008 showed a Volkswagen Beetle now is no more fuel-efficient than a Beetle made 60 years ago. The car makers held out scandalously against EU efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from the average new car to 120g per kilometre, saying it was technically not feasible when several makers were already doing it! What they meant was that they make greater profits on the bigger gas guzzlers. Regrettably the Commission and member state governments fell for it.
The 'scrappage' payments in Germany (they offer €2500, very close to Alistair Darling's £2000) have been a success in terms of a massive take-up, so successful that the government has exhausted the money it put aside and has been forced to make more available. It's like a drug German car buyers have become addicted to in a very short space of time.
A central argument made in all this is that the car industry is central to our economic well-being. But it isn't! We have learned - for cost and environmental reasons - to treat electricity, gas, oil and other sources of energy as something we need to use as little as possible of. We should view transport the same way - some is needed, some is even desirable, but the sign of a well managed and efficient economy is that we use no more than is necessary.
Imagine offering state subsidies to encourage people to use more fuel than necessary to heat their homes - it would be laughed out of the political arena! So why is offering state subsidies to boost an industry whose dependence we should be weaning ourselves off any different?
These £2000 payments are like a financial methadone programme for addicted car makers.
Thursday, 9 April 2009
WE NEED A SHIFT IN FOREIGN POLICY TO MAKE BRITAIN SAFER
They say in areas of the world like America and the Middle East that foreign policy is an integral part of home affairs policy, as it affects basic national security. I sense that’s becoming the case here too.
While it’s right that we should never cave in to terrorism, we always have to ask whether there is a legitimate claim behind terrorist activity. And if that legitimate claim is being thwarted, then that will feed terrorism.
The Middle East is an area of the world which has an increasing impact on how safe and secure we feel in Britain. Britain played in a part in the current grim state of affairs. OK, our biggest blunder was 92 years ago when the Sykes-Picot agreement totally betrayed the indigenous Arabs, and today’s politicians shouldn’t be blamed for that. But we can play a part in building a peace that would strengthen our own security.
One of the major lessons to learn from relatively successful peace settlements such as Northern Ireland and South Africa is the role of forgiveness. People who were bitter to the core about having lost friends and relatives had to put aside their understandable wish for vengeance in the interests of long-term peace. And that has to happen now in the Middle East.
I was recently listening to Paddy Ashdown, who, as well as being the former LibDem leader, is one of this country’s leading foreign affairs analysts. He said the problem Israel has is that it has yet to learn that it must deal with and make peace with its neighbours, however abhorrent it finds them. If it doesn’t, it will never know peace for itself and will endanger the safety of others.
I have a natural affinity with Israel. While not Jewish myself, some of my ancestors were, in fact I lost great aunts and great uncles in the concentration camps and have relatives today in Israel. I therefore like to feel I understand some of the pain and anger that still lingers in Israeli citizens.
But that’s no reason to turn a blind eye to some of Israel’s atrocities – and yes I mean ‘atrocities’ – in the occupied territories. And I fear those atrocities could continue with the new Israeli government.
We need to use our powers of persuasion – such as they are – to encourage the state of Israel that it must deal with its neighbours, including the hated Hamas. Hamas is a dangerous body, but it has been fuelled by the failure of past statesmen to address legitimate concerns. With the White House now in the hands of someone who seems to understand world affairs, we have the chance to put pressure on Israel, in a way that the Blair-Bush alliance miserably failed to.
Criticising the actions of the Israeli government is not anti-Semitic. I am British and pro-British, but still criticise the British government. So I can be pro-Israeli but still criticise Israeli action. If our foreign policy can be directed at persuading Israel to be more forgiving, we might reduce the extremism that fuelled the July 2005 London bombings and make our own country a little safer.
While it’s right that we should never cave in to terrorism, we always have to ask whether there is a legitimate claim behind terrorist activity. And if that legitimate claim is being thwarted, then that will feed terrorism.
The Middle East is an area of the world which has an increasing impact on how safe and secure we feel in Britain. Britain played in a part in the current grim state of affairs. OK, our biggest blunder was 92 years ago when the Sykes-Picot agreement totally betrayed the indigenous Arabs, and today’s politicians shouldn’t be blamed for that. But we can play a part in building a peace that would strengthen our own security.
One of the major lessons to learn from relatively successful peace settlements such as Northern Ireland and South Africa is the role of forgiveness. People who were bitter to the core about having lost friends and relatives had to put aside their understandable wish for vengeance in the interests of long-term peace. And that has to happen now in the Middle East.
I was recently listening to Paddy Ashdown, who, as well as being the former LibDem leader, is one of this country’s leading foreign affairs analysts. He said the problem Israel has is that it has yet to learn that it must deal with and make peace with its neighbours, however abhorrent it finds them. If it doesn’t, it will never know peace for itself and will endanger the safety of others.
I have a natural affinity with Israel. While not Jewish myself, some of my ancestors were, in fact I lost great aunts and great uncles in the concentration camps and have relatives today in Israel. I therefore like to feel I understand some of the pain and anger that still lingers in Israeli citizens.
But that’s no reason to turn a blind eye to some of Israel’s atrocities – and yes I mean ‘atrocities’ – in the occupied territories. And I fear those atrocities could continue with the new Israeli government.
We need to use our powers of persuasion – such as they are – to encourage the state of Israel that it must deal with its neighbours, including the hated Hamas. Hamas is a dangerous body, but it has been fuelled by the failure of past statesmen to address legitimate concerns. With the White House now in the hands of someone who seems to understand world affairs, we have the chance to put pressure on Israel, in a way that the Blair-Bush alliance miserably failed to.
Criticising the actions of the Israeli government is not anti-Semitic. I am British and pro-British, but still criticise the British government. So I can be pro-Israeli but still criticise Israeli action. If our foreign policy can be directed at persuading Israel to be more forgiving, we might reduce the extremism that fuelled the July 2005 London bombings and make our own country a little safer.
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