Playing it safe

So what went wrong with David Cameron’s speech?

This was supposed to be the speech that ‘sealed the deal’, the last big chance before the election to show Britain why it should vote for him rather than merely against Gordon Brown.

He blew it.

It was vague, woolly, bland, dull. Far from igniting with the passion of a moral cause, it read like a mechanical assembly of boxes to be ticked. There was hardly any sense of the urgent civilisational threats and challenges to this country.

He started with Afghanistan – good – but there was zero sense of the urgency of the mission, more an irritation that this was a task which we needed to undertake but weren’t doing properly. True enough – but there was no attempt to tell people why it is so necessary that we...

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The incitement towards a third intifada

There are clear attempts being made to spark a third intifada in Jerusalem. Violence by Israeli Arabs started two weeks ago in the wake of the meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, President Obama and the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and Obama’s inflammatory call at the UN for a Palestinian state

that ends the occupation that began in 1967.

In an ominous echo of the ‘spontaneous’ rioting over Ariel Sharon’s walk on the Temple Mount in 2000 which was used as the pretext for the mass murder of Israelis through years of suicide bombings (Palestinian leaders later admitted the riots had been part of a planned strategy) the current spate of riots followed all-too familiar and demonstrably spurious claims that Israel was threatening the al Aqsa mosque. Last  Sunday, after Palestinian Authority calls for Arabs to flood...

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The elephants in the room at the Tory party conference

At the Tory party conference in Manchester, where I currently am, there’s a whole herd of elephants in the room trumpeting forlornly for attention. One is the EU, about which I wrote in the Mail yesterday.  

Another is Abroad. You would scarcely know that this country is locked in a desperate – and desperately under-resourced --war in Afghanistan. You would scarcely know that the world stands on the precipice of an Iranian terrorist state armed with nuclear weapons. These matters are presumably finally to be discussed on Thursday morning, in a conference session dealing with the whole of international relations and defence. On the one hand, you could argue that it’s a prestigious slot, just before the Leader’s speech in the afternoon. On the other, you can be pretty sure that the Leader’s speech will crowd out anything...

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Why this man is laughing fit to explode

There are clearly no lengths to which the world will not go to facilitate Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Consider. A couple of weeks ago, the world was stunned to discover that Iran had a second uranium processing plant at Qom, thus proving beyond doubt that its pursuit of nuclear technology was to make not nuclear energy but a bomb.

Actually it wasn’t stunned at all, since this information was known to Barack Obama before he was even elected President. But anyway. This coup de théâtre was revealed, it seemed, to strengthen the world’s hand in dealing with Iran. After all, this autumn is the deadline set by the Obama administration for Iran to halt its nuclear weapons programme, after which the US said it was finally going to get really tough with Iran and...

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The Iraq/Iran axis steps up its attack on Iranian dissidents

I wrote here and here about the attack by Iraqi forces -- at the behest of the Iranian regime -- upon the Iranian opposition group, the PMOI, at its headquarters in Ashraf, as a result of which 36 of its members were taken prisoner. In recent days, the situation has got far worse. According to the National Council of Resistance of Iran, yesterday afternoon the 36 prisoners -- who are on hunger-strike -- were beaten up and tortured for more than two hours before being bundled into vans and transferred from Khalis city prison to Baghdad. The NCRI say this took place on the orders of Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, despite three Iraqi court rulings ordering the prisoners’ release.

Members of the Iraqi parliament have accordingly expressed their deep concern at this ‘arbitrary action, a violation of...

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Product placement

First the Sun declares that Labour is over. Then Boris is given a cameo role in last night’s episode of the BBC soap EastEnders, thus confirming the BBC’s love-in with the politically correct Cameroons trade-mark objectivity and sealing the Conservatives’ place in the alternative reality that is British politics. Students of British cultural and political life will keenly appreciate the creativity, modesty and statesmanlike profundity of the Mayor of London’s exchanges when he wanders into the Queen Vic pub after his bike has a puncture:

Peggy: ‘It’s such an honour to have you here, Mr Mayor!’

Boris: ‘Oh please call me Boris!’

Peggy: ...’I do so admire a man who devotes his entire life to serving society!’

Boris: ‘...If you have any ideas for how I can help Walford, here’s my card!’

Yes, a glorious new Tory age is truly dawning.

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