Should UK join Syria offensive?

Will military intervention make Britain safer, people are asking, or will the country be more vulnerable to terrorism?

This catch-22 conundrum explains the Prime Minister’s caution as he heads to the United Nations for crisis talks with, amongst others, the Iranian president Hassan Rouhani – the first meeting between the leaders of the two countries since the Islamic revolution of 1979. That such a dialogue is taking place reflects the scale of the threat.

The Tory leader is in an invidious position. There is revulsion at the beheading of UK hostages by barbaric British-speaking jihadists – captured journalist John Cantile featured on the latest IS propaganda clip while pleas for the release of humanitarian aid worker Alan Henning, a Salford taxi driver who poses no threat whatsoever, continue to be ignored.

Yet Mr Cameron also has to contend with the ramifications of Tony Blair’s wars – intervention must only be a last resort – and the implications of last year’s Commons vote which rejected UK involvement air strikes against Bashar-al-Assad’s regime in Syria for its own indefensible crimes against humanity.

Yet it is the West’s indecision to this threat which has created the dangerous vacuum being ruthlessly exploited by IS militants as they extent the territory that they control in Syria and Iraq. That said, lessons from past mistakes do appear to have been learned with America thankfully building alliances with five Middle East countries and the UK looking to secure the legal authority of the United Nations before acting.

That said, it is still essential that the PM seeks Parliamentary approval before committing Britain to air strikes – any parameters need to be approved by democratically-elected MPs. It should not come to this, people should be able to trust Downing Street’s judgement, but the legacy of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars – and last year’s aborted intervention in Syria – will demand the recall of the House of Commons if Mr Cameron opts to deploy fighter jets.

Miliband and politics of division

IF ED Miliband thinks Britain will be greater together with the 10-year plan that underpinned his party conference speech, he is likely to be seriously disappointed.

This was not an uplifting narrative to reach out to the aspirational and heal the splits that have emerged across the United Kingdom following the divisive vote on Scottish independence.

Quite the opposite. It was an address that confirmed the politics of envy is alive and well at a time when the Labour Party when should be going out of its way to encourage the wealth-creators of tomorrow to invest in Britain.

Why will they bother when they know that their reward will be higher taxes because of the state intervention that will be pursued by the next Labour government?

This lengthy speech, an antidote to the Tory “we’re all in it together” mantra, which also blatantly failed to address the now totemic issue of English under-representation – despite Mr Miliband’s embracing the ‘better together’ mantra adopted by pro-Union parties in Scotland – or public sector overspending.

Those are the issues which voters in Yorkshire want addressing rather than the Leader of the Opposition trying to set a world record for the repeated use of one word – ‘together’ – in a solitary speech. Unless Mr Miliband begins to reward hard work and enterprise, the key to the less well-off becoming more prosperous, the electorate is likely to take the view that the country will not be better together under his proposed ‘divide and rule’ premiership.

Trust requires accountability

THE INDEFENSIBLE actions of one crime commissioner – South Yorkshire’s Shaun Wright – and his refusal to resign over the Rotherham sex grooming scandal should not, alone, determine the fate of these tsars. The jury is still out on their value.

Yet this would not be an issue if there were effective ‘recall’ laws that enabled voters to hold MPs, councillors and commissioners to account if their decision-making, and conduct, fell short of excepted norms.

The sooner this fundamental issue of accountability is reconciled, the sooner the political establishment per se can begin to win back the public’s broken trust.