The road to Damascus

After all, this is hardly the first atrocity to be perpetrated in this brutal internecine conflict and the use of nerve gas, appalling though it is, is far from being Assad’s only method of inflicting carnage and suffering on his civilian population.

It was the deployment 
of chemical agents, 
however, that Barack Obama chose to use as his now infamous red line, stressing that serious consequences would follow any contravention of this.

It is ironic, therefore, that – having finally decided to take action – Mr Obama finds it is his British ally that is vacillating. David Cameron was eloquent and impassioned yesterday in his attempt to persuade the Commons that the time for action has arrived.

For those who witnessed Tony Blair’s pleas for MPs to support the invasion of Iraq in 2003, however, it was impossible to watch the Prime Minister’s performance without comparing the two.

For British foreign policy, like that of the US, 
remains haunted by that conflict and the faulty intelligence which preceded it. Indeed, it is a direct result of this – and of desperate political calculation by Labour leader Ed Miliband – that the motion being debated yesterday was not one authorising military strikes but instead an anodyne call for agreement on the principles of intervention.

The reason that Mr Cameron has had to capitulate to Mr Miliband on this is that he knows 
his own party cannot agree on the need for action. And Mr Miliband had little choice other than to prevaricate in this way because Labour, too, is divided.

In many ways, of course, this petty politicking is an insult to the thousands of innocents who have died in the Syria conflict. And yet it is also a sign not merely of post-Iraq caution but of the fact that there are no simple options here.

Nor is there, as yet, any indication of what military action would involve. No one, it seems, has the appetite for a long-term strategy that would embroil Western nations in Syria’s war. But equally, there seems little point in a one-off strike that would be swiftly forgotten.

Until it is clear what, precisely, they would be voting for, MPs are right to be cautious.

In the shadow of Digital Region

COUNCILLORS in West Yorkshire can be forgiven for cursing their luck that their plan to improve superfast broadband access should require final approval just weeks after their South Yorkshire counterparts pulled the plug on the calamitous Digital Region project.

A scheme which in other circumstances might have been praised for ensuring no community is left behind in the digital era will, rightly, now be the subject of far closer scrutiny in the light of the horrendous cost to taxpayers in the flawed pursuit of the same aim in Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham and Sheffield.

The structure of the two schemes is very different and should not expose West Yorkshire councils to the open-ended commercial risks that ultimately proved to be Digital Region’s downfall. In cash terms the sums are much smaller too.

However, Superfast West Yorkshire will nevertheless have to demonstrate a return on this investment.

Local authorities in Yorkshire have campaigned vociferously against the savings they are being asked to make by the coalition and the knock-on impact on services but that argument is dented every time ventures such as Digital Region are exposed as wasteful follies.

It is increasingly argued that with so much leisure and business activity now conducted online, internet access should be regarded as much an essential utility as water and electricity and in that context there is a case for the public sector intervening where the market has failed to meet need.

But before committing public funds, councillors should content themselves that there is genuine demand for superfast broadband in areas the private sector is ignoring and they are not simply helping to pay for the digital equivalent of a road to nowhere.

Reality behind migration figures

THE fact that fewer people are leaving Britain has certainly slowed progress towards the Government’s target of reducing net non-EU migration to less than 100,000 by 2015.

Theresa May, however, is still battling on, even though her primary weapon remains merely the restriction of visas for overseas students. But even if the Home Secretary declares victory in time for the election, it would only be a statistical triumph at best.

For one thing, little progress has been made in speeding up the removal of illegal immigrants. For another, even if the flow of non-EU migrants was slowed to a trickle,

Ministers remain impotent in the face of the thousands arriving annually from Eastern Europe.

And for another, it was only last month that a committee of MPs declared the methods for measuring net migration so inaccurate that the figure was “little more than a best guess”.

All in all, then, not quite the reassuring position that Ministers would have us believe.