Syria

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson

Syrian war heats up as Turkey shoots down a Russian jet

The complications of acting in Syria have just become more apparent. The Russians are fighting in support of Assad – but Turkey, a Nato member, is backing anti-Assad rebels and has just shot down a Russian Su-24 jet. The Turkish foreign ministry says that the pilots were warned ‘ten times in five minutes’ that they were violating Turkish airspace. The pilots managed to eject and video footage has emerged:- The aircraft came down near the Antakya mountains, where Turkmen rebels (backed by Turkey) are fighting Isil and Assad’s forces (blue areas, below). The Su-24s, owned by both Assad’s regime and Russia itself, have been bombing rebel positions for some time. Turkey has been warning

Sebastian Payne

Labour supporters are still backing Jeremy Corbyn in droves

The Tories may be steaming ahead in the national opinion polls but the Labour grassroots are still pleased with Jeremy Corbyn. According to a new poll from The Times and YouGov — who surveyed the Labour membership during the leadership contest and predicted Corbyn’s victory — two thirds of members think the leader is doing ‘well’. He continues to have the overwhelming support of those who backed him during the leadership contest too: 83 per cent of this group say he is doing well. It’s not just the Corbyn backers within Labour who are pleased with his performance — almost half of those who voted for Andy Burnham this summer think the leader is doing

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Tory whips woo Labour MPs ahead of Syria vote

As David Cameron confirmed in his statement to the Commons today, he will set out his strategy on attacking Islamic State in Syria on Thursday. MPs will then get the weekend to consider their positions, with a vote expected next week. A number of odd things are happening in preparation for this vote. One is that the Tory whips are being incredibly nice to people they normally ignore: Labour MPs. I understand that there is a briefing scheduled for Wednesday for Labour MPs at the Ministry of Defence, with a similar one for Tory MPs at a separate time. As I said this morning, it looks as though Labour MPs

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Defence review: Cameron takes Corbyn to task over national security

David Cameron’s initial statement to the Commons on the Strategic Defence and Security Review was a rather high-minded affair. Cameron talked about how the world was an even more dangerous place now than it was in 2010 and conceded that governments can’t predict the future, and that you had to ‘expect the unexpected’ when it came to national security. But his reply to Corbyn’s rather rambling response – which went on so long that John Bercow felt obliged to tell the Labour leader to hurry up – was brutal. Cameron rattled off Corbyn and his shadow chancellor John McDonnell’s greatest hits on national security as the Labour benches looked even

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Corbyn facing a ‘point of reckoning’ over Syria vote

Pro-intervention Labour MPs are increasingly confident that they will help David Cameron get a majority for British military action against Islamic State in Syria. They also believe that the amount of support for such action will bring what one frontbencher describes as a ‘point of reckoning’ and another describes as a ‘turning point for the party’. This is because Corbyn is going to have to concede that he must give the Labour Shadow Cabinet a free vote on the matter, otherwise there will be a ‘bloodbath’, sources warn. A number of Shadow Cabinet members are minded to vote in favour of action if Cameron presents a sufficiently well-thought-out plan. And

Sebastian Payne

Maria Eagle: it’s ‘conceivable’ Jeremy Corbyn would support Syria bombing

David Cameron will be making the case for bombing Syria in the Commons later this week and all eyes are on Jeremy Corbyn and Labour to see if they supports his proposals. On the Today programme, the shadow defence secretary Maria Eagle summed up the party’s current position as we wait and see: ‘We are in a position in which we will make a decision after the Prime Minister puts forward his rationale – that is the sensible way of doing it and we will do that.’ Eagle also said the party’s leadership has yet to decide on whether it will whip Labour MPs in any future vote on bombing Syria: ‘We

Sunday

Isabel Hardman

Labour struggles to talk straight on Syria vote

It’s quite clear what the Tory approach to a vote on British involvement in action against Islamic State in Syria will be: the Prime Minister will set out his strategy for this later this week, warning MPs that they need to choose to be ‘Churchill not Chamberlain’. George Osborne warned this morning on Marr that a second defeat in the Commons on Syria ‘would be a publicity coup for Isil, that would send a terrible message about Britain’s role in the world’. But Labour’s position is, of course, not clear at all at present. Jeremy Corbyn’s slogan of ‘straight talking, honest politics’ sounds like an aspiration at present. Caroline Flint

Saturday

James Forsyth

Cameron to make his case for war to the Commons next week

David Cameron will set out his case for air strikes against IS in Syria to the Commons late next week. Cameron is, as I say in my Sun column today, immensely frustrated by the current British position of only bombing Islamic State in Iraq and not Syria. But he knows that it would be politically back breaking for him to lose another Commons vote on a matter of war and peace, so is proceeding cautiously.   But last night’s UN resolution has strengthened Cameron’s hand. Even before that, 30 Labour MPs were certain to back Cameron on this issue and another 30 were highly likely to. With a UN resolution

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 19 November 2015

Home After the killings in Paris, David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that seven terrorist attacks on Britain had been prevented in the past six months. He met President Vladimir Putin of Russia at a G20 meeting at Antalya in Turkey. Mr Putin said: ‘We should join efforts in preventing terror. Unfortunately our bilateral relations are not of the best.’ Mr Cameron said in the Commons: ‘Raqqa, if you like, is the head of the snake… we need to deal with it not just in Iraq but in Syria too.’ He said funds from maintaining defence spending at 2 per cent of GDP would go to special forces, drones and

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Obama’s failure is Putin’s opportunity

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/parisattacksaftermath/media.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth and Ben Judah discuss whether the West should work with Putin” startat=824] Listen [/audioplayer]The principal strategic objective in the war on terror has been a failure. Ever since 9/11, the aim has been to deny terrorists sanctuary. That, after all, is why the United States and Britain went into Afghanistan — troops were sent in only after the Taliban refused to hand over the al-Qaeda leadership and shut down the terrorist training camps. But now, a large terrorist enclave exists in the very heart of the Middle East. President Obama’s reaction to this massive strategic failure has been lack-lustre. His main concern is to stress that,

Wednesday

Maurice Mcleod

Why I didn’t sing La Marseillaise last night

When Patrice Evra and the French national football team lined up at Wembley last night, it was a moment of poignant defiance which earned an instant place in sporting iconography. I shed a tear, but I didn’t sing La Marseillaise. When horrendous things like the attacks on Paris happen, our first instincts are to offer solidarity and what help we can. And, yes, to hit back. The night after the attack, France launched 20 separate air strikes on what it said were Isis strongholds in Syria. And at home, an extra 115,000 gendarmes were deployed across France, leading to hundreds of raids with dozens of arrests.  In the days following attacks on the West,

Sebastian Payne

Public backs David Cameron on Syrian airstrikes, according to new poll

The terrorist attacks in Paris appear to have shifted public attitudes on both refugees and airstrikes. According to a new poll from the Times/YouGov, 20 per cent think we should accept more refugees — down 16 points from September — while almost half said we should accept fewer or none at all, which is a 22 point increase from September. Other factors may have played into this shift in opinion but what has happened in Paris will surely have played a big part in it. The poll also reveals that the public backs the decision to to kill Mohammed Emwazi, aka Jihadi John, via a drone strike. 76 per cent said it was the

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

David Cameron: Britain needs to take action against Islamic State in Syria

Senior politicians have so far been rather cautious in their response to the Paris attacks. But today David Cameron gave a much more robust and intentional statement on the British reaction to what happened on Friday night. He used his slot in the Commons to re-state the case for British involvement in military action against Islamic State in Syria, and said that he would be setting out in detail his strategy and reasons for getting involved in the coming days. It is clear that the Prime Minister wants to push for a vote on this soon, and given he will not bring a vote to the Commons unless he believes

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

France bombs Islamic State bases in Raqqa. But will it make much difference?

Yesterday, Francois Hollande promised “merciless” retribution against the Islamic State. This evening, armed with American intelligence, the French Air Force dropped 20 bombs on two Isil positions in Raqqa – in what tomorrow’s newspapers will almost certainly portray as a swift and dramatic act of vengeance. But in fact, it won’t be much different to what the French have been doing in the last few weeks as one of the United States’ partners in what has been a year-long bombing campaign (along with the Saudis, Turks and Aussies). It’s a campaign that doesn’t seem to have been too effective in holding back the Islamic State. The French targeted an Isil command centre, an

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 12 November 2015

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, outlined four changes he sought in Britain’s membership of the EU. He wanted to protect the single market for Britain and others outside the eurozone; to increase commercial competitiveness; to exempt Britain from an ‘ever closer union’; and to restrict EU migrants’ access to in-work benefits. Mr Cameron put the demands in a letter to Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council. David Lidington, the Europe minister, said that others in the EU could put forward ‘alternative proposals that deliver the same result’. In a speech to the Confederation of British Industry, Mr Cameron had said: ‘The argument isn’t whether Britain could survive

Michael Karam

How Lebanon is coping with more than a million Syrian refugees

Beirut If any of the Syrian refugees who have made it to the relative safety of Europe have been watching the smash-hit TV show Homeland (season five), they would be baffled by its warped depiction of their compatriots’ plight in Lebanon. Unlike the vast majority of Homeland’s viewers ,they would know there are no government-sanctioned camps guarded by nervy UN soldiers and run from the inside by menacing Hezbollah operatives. This is out-and-out nonsense and insulting to the Lebanese, who have arguably done more than any country to absorb this unfolding human tragedy. For the record, Lebanon, a country a tad bigger than Wales, plays host to around 1.5 million

John R. Bradley

The caliphate strikes back

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/jeremyhunt-scatastrophicmistake/media.mp3″ title=”Douglas Murray discusses what Isis might do next” startat=1814] Listen [/audioplayer]When the creation of a new caliphate was announced last year, who but the small band of his followers took seriously its leader’s prediction of imminent regional and eventual global dominance? It straddled the northern parts of Syria and Iraq, two countries already torn apart by civil war and sectarian hatreds. So the self-declared caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, appeared to be just another thug and opportunist ruling over a blighted no-man’s land, little known and still less revered in the wider Islamic world. He was surrounded by a rag-tag army of jihadis, whose imperial hubris seemed to reflect

Tuesday

Steerpike

Benedict Cumberbatch defends his ‘f— the politicians’ rant

After Benedict Cumberbatch indulged in a foul-mouthed rant about the government’s response to the refugee crisis, he was criticised by several figures — including Boris Johnson — for using the theatre as a platform for his political views. In fact, the incident even left Mr S asking: is Benedict Cumberbatch the new Russell Brand? Judging by comments he made today after collecting his CBE, the actor could well succeed the retired-revolutionary. When reporters outside the palace put to the Sherlock actor that he may regret his comments — which included the line ‘f— the politicians’, Cumberbatch said actually it was quite the contrary: ‘Have you been to the theatre recently? How many times? Have you

Friday

James Forsyth

Our policy towards Islamic State makes no sense

If Islamic State is a threat to Britain that requires a military response, then surely we should be attacking it on both sides of the Syrian/Iraqi border? Our current policy of only hitting it in Iraq, when its operation there is directed from Syria and resupplied from there, makes neither strategic nor moral sense. So, why is Britain not hitting Islamic State in Syria too? Well, that goes back to the legacy of 2013 and the Commons refusal to back bombing Syria then. But the truth is that bombing Islamic State in Syria is not the same as ‘bombing Syria’; it is hitting a terrorist group in a part of

Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Why are student-union officials censoring criticism of Islamic State?

Just when you thought the self-important, ban-happy uber-bureaucrats who run student unions couldn’t get any worse, they go and No Platform a guy who fought with the Kurds against Isis. Yes, not content with expunging lads’ mags from campus, crying for the censorship of everyone from Germaine Greer to Dapper Laughs, and wailing about Robin Thicke’s ‘Blurred Lines’ like outraged nuns at a school disco, now they have silenced someone who spent five months facing down the head-choppers of the Islamic State. Macer Gifford, a former student at University College London (UCL), was due to give a talk at UCL this week on his experiences with the YPG, the fighting