Our status needs checking apparently.
Chancellor George Osborne says he expects some “national soul searching”.
Those who argue a fundamental change has taken place put it like this: when Parliament stops the prime minister taking action, and risks straining relations with the US, how can the UK conduct an outward-looking foreign policy with any confidence?
Cabinet ministers, like Mr Osborne and defence secretary Philip Hammond are left hoping Britain does not – to use the Chancellor’s terms – turn its back on the world.
Frankly, I don’t give a hoot about our status in the world. Foreign policy should be about furthering trade and looking after our interests and nothing else. it should not involve poking about in other peoples’ conflicts and it should not involve policing the world. So, yeah, I’m all for a bit of isolationism. It’ll do us some good.
MPs who voted against action are unapologetic and say they – and not ministers – are in tune with public feeling.
They would be right, I suspect. This is one of those issues that crosses the normal political divide. The Guardian has a poll currently showing 87% in favour of keeping out. Libertarian blogs seem almost universally to be taking the same approach – it is none of our concern, so leave well alone. Not least because there are no good guys here; merely two lots of bad guys and neither can be relied upon to thank us for getting involved. Far morel likely is that we would have stirred up even more suicide bomb attacks and even more clamping down on our liberties by a paranoid, jittery and incompetent government.
Former Liberal Democrat leader Lord Ashdown argues that simply means voters need persuading.
He told the BBC: “I recognise that the public is wholly against this. That is why they need political leadership.”
Of course, those pesky voters who have opinions that differ from our betters. We don’t understand, we need persuading and we need leadership; the saucy git. We understand the arguments perfectly – it is none of our business. We don’t need to be persuaded because we are right and Ashdown is wrong. And we don’t need any leadership that takes us into yet another war causing yet more death and destruction. Syria is tearing itself apart. So be it. Syrians must solve their own problems. We must stand aside and let them, because it is their fight and they must work it through.
For once the warmongers lost. For once, right triumphed. For once, I can look at some good news, which makes a pleasant change….
No doubt, normal service will resume – along with the fruity language – in due course…
I quote, “… there are no good guys here; merely two lots of bad guys …”
There’s one lot of bad guys ‘in charge’ who are having their collective arses handed to them, but who’s doing the handing? Not one unified group. Far from it. Facing the Alawite rulers (12% of the population) are the Sunni majority (75% of the population), with admixtures of al Qaeda, the Moslem Brotherhood, Hezbolla and a rag-tag mess of local hoodlums.
al Assad might be, and probably is a bad bastard but which really bad bastard do we want to replace him?
It’s a lose-lose situation if we so much as stick a finger into that festering pie. Let’s leave it to the long- suffering Syrians to sort out their own mess. Then we can try and deal with whichever bastard emerges as the ‘winner’.
We either deal with him or we nuke him.
For once MP’s were in touch with public feeling. The reason the Prime Minister was stopped is pure and simple because hes a raging megalomaniac.
How dare George Osborne tell me I need to search my soul.
I searched my soul and came to the conclusion that we have been far too gung ho in recent years over walking into so called “Dictatorships” and “freeing” people *enraged snort of disgust* only to see those same countries collapses into social meltdown under muslim so called *democratic* governments.
Now our own Government wants us to sanction an attack that will assist and support The Muslim Brotherhood (Sharia Muslim extremists) who repeatedly back Al Qaeda in any unrest in the middle eastern region, and hand them Syria on a plate to turn into another Egypt. This is like a government in the times of Irish unrest telling us we should help Sinn fein because it’s not the same as helping the IRA, this is a nonsense, by helping the Syrian rebels we would ultimately be helping Al Qaeda and therefore in turn ultimately be killing our own troops. How can any decent minded politician say thats the RIGHT thing to do!
Dear god how many British soldiers need to lose their lives before the Government realise that their friends in the “Religion Of Peace” are A/ NOT PEACEFUL B/ are using them to get what they want and will then turn on us and savage us and C/ can not be trusted in any way shape or form as their beloved Quran tells them it is okay to lie to non believers as a means to an end (Non believers that’s anyone not of the Muslim persuasion, who refuses to convert to Islam so unless Camoron et al are preparing to convert thats them too).
As for Paddy Ashdown saying the British public just need brainwashing, sorry sorry persuading …is that not what Hitler did in Germany 1939, he *persuaded* the population of Germany that he should invade Poland?
Mr Ashdown is no longer of any significance and thank God for that, because if he tried to “Persuade” me he would find himself on the sharp edge of my tongue with a biff across the skizz for good measure to ensure he got MY message.
Dear Lord WHO do these people think they are to tell us what to think, and to be so arrogant to believe they know better than us!
It’s the arrogance that gets my goat. The assumption that they are so right and that we need to be educated, persuaded and cajoled around to their way of thinking. The idea that we are so ignorant that we need their leadership. It just doesn’t enter their thinking that we could come to a different conclusion having looked at the evidence and decide for ourselves that the morally right thing to do is the polar opposite of theirs.
Yes and for me that is a very telling sign and indicative of today’s corrupt politicians the assumption is they know best, for me that is them attempting to take us even further down the path of Dictatorship than we have already wandered.
Very scarey to me indeed and something I have fought for some time this whole “Nanny knows best” culture they are building on, this is another example of the attitude they have that “The people of this sceptered Isle are all to dumb to have any say”
Growing up I studied Orwell and his vision, yes we are way past 1984 as a year but my god we are heading into Orwell’s vision, and personally i think he can be excused for getting the year wrong when you consider 1984 was written in 1949 to him 44 years in the future especially given he wrote the book post war and times were moving slower would have seemed like a lifetime away. By todays standards of course things move so quickly that 44 years is the blink of an eye.
*Deep sigh* “it’s life Jim but not as we know it” to quote a little Star Trek.
It sounds like Osbourne and Ashdown are proposing a UK dictatorship. They may as well just say that the government knows best and will be making all the choices from now on.
Well, yes, they do, don’t they?
“That is why they need political leadership”
Well, yes, I think we do – but we won’t find it amongst any of the bunch of knuckle-dragging incompetent yes-men currently occupying the Palace of Westminster. It’s precisely because all we’ve got at the moment are out of touch old (or young) duffers with less integrity between them than I’ve got in my big toe that the country’s in the parlous state that is now.