Syria

It is unsurprising that public opinion in the UK and elsewhere, resents the notion that we should engage with the politics of the Middle East and beyond. We have been through painful engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq. After 2008, we have had our own domestic anxieties following the financial crisis. And besides if we want to engage, people reasonably ask: where, how and to what purpose? More recently, Ukraine has served to push the Middle East to the inside pages, with the carnage of Syria featuring somewhat, but the chaos of Libya, whose Government we intervened to change, hardly meriting a mention. However the Middle East matters. What is presently

Last week, David Cameron surprised a number of people when, during a pre-Easter gathering at Downing Street, he spoke about religion. Not religion in general, the all-faiths-and-none diversity-speak of the political class, but his own Christian faith. James Forsyth writes about the implications in this week’s magazine. But what was most surprising was that the prime minister went further by saying that ‘our religion’ is the most persecuted in the world and that ‘I hope we can do more to raise the profile of the persecution of Christians’. He added: ‘We should stand up against the persecution of Christians and other religious groups wherever and whenever we can, and should

One of the more remarkable exchanges of today’s PMQs was the intervention by John Woodcock towards the end of the session. He surprised colleagues by calling the failure to intervene in Syria ‘shameful’: ‘This week marks three years since the bloodshed began in Syria. More than two and a half million people have fled the country and the dead can no longer even be counted. We must all bear responsibility for our shameful failure to intervene. But they are supposed to be the ones – they are supposed to be the ones running the country. So what renewed effort will his government make to end the slaughter before all hope

It’s ages since I last went on a decent demo and had a bit of a dust-up with the pigs. I should get out more, there’s a lot of fun to be had, throwing stuff at the police and shouting things in a self-righteous manner. I think the last one I attended was in the very early 1980s, in Cardiff. Sinn Fein was marching through the centre of the city in support of its right to maim and murder people, and the National Front decided to march against them. As a consequence, the Socialist Workers Party’s most successful front organisation, the Anti-Nazi League, insisted that it had a right to

George Monbiot had a moving piece in yesterday’s Guardian in which he reflected on the UK government’s efforts to arrest and charge returning British subjects who have gone to fight the Assad regime in Syria. As Monbiot said in his very opening: ‘If George Orwell and Laurie Lee were to return from the Spanish civil war today, they would be arrested under section five of the Terrorism Act 2006. If convicted of fighting abroad with a “political, ideological, religious or racial motive” – a charge they would find hard to contest – they would face a maximum sentence of life in prison. That they were fighting to defend an elected government

Cunning work from Milband at PMQs. He played Syria like a fixed-odds betting machine and came away with a minor jackpot. Last week he had urged the prime minister to accept a few hundred of the neediest Syrian refugees. Cameron duly said OK. Today Miliband was quick to claim a victory for decency, for humanity, and for Miliband. ‘I welcome this significant change of heart,’ he said. Choice word, heart. He’s got it. And Cameron hasn’t. That’s the implication. Miliband tried the same tactic with the 50p tax rate. When Ed Balls unfurled this this new policy he got a mixed bag of reviews. Economists put their fingers in their

As expected, the government has changed its stance on Syrian refugees this evening ahead of what had looked to be a difficult vote in the House of Commons tomorrow. Nick Clegg has just announced that the UK will now offer refuge to vulnerable Syrians such as women and girls who have experienced or are at risk of sexual violence, the elderly, survivors of torture and disabled people. This will only likely equate to a few hundred, but there will be no quota for the number of refugees the UK takes. Clegg said this evening: ‘The Coalition Government wants to play our part in helping to alleviate the immense suffering in

Yvette Cooper chose to focus her attack at Home Office questions on the government’s position on Syrian refugees. She continually pushed Theresa May on whether the the Home office would change its position and sign up to the UN’s refugee programme. May replied that the United Kingdom has a ‘fine record’ when it comes to the amount of money it is providing in aid, and has accepted several thousand asylum seekers from Syria. But added that ‘I am indeed working with the Foreign Secretary to look at what further support can be provided by this government and further announcements will be made on that in due course.’ Cooper pressed further,