David Cameron has highly developed skills in the art of following where he should be leading. And so, after being taught an excruciating lesson in compassion, decency and leadership by Angela Merkel, and sensing himself behind opinion again, he has produced a plan to take in 20,000 refugees – over five years. Nothing better shows the PM’s tone deafness to the urgency of the situation than to announce this headline figure, and then add that it will take five years to implement.
My emphasis.
Just as Europe wakes up to the scale and urgency of Syrian people fleeing for their lives, Cameron reveals no sense of either the scale or the urgency.
Paddy lambasts Cameron’s failure to lead on this issue, analyses the effect of his being hostage to the headbangers on the right of the Conservative Party, and calls for a Europe-wide strategy.
We in Britain have a refugee “problem” as well – 3,000 of them throwing themselves at the gates of the Channel tunnel. Whether that is a large number or a small one, measured against the 1.5 million in Turkey, or the 800,000 who will be accepted by Germany, or the 68,500 who settled in France last year, depends on your point of view. But one thing is common to all these figures. The refugee problem is Europe-wide and can only be solved by a Europe-wide solution. Yet Cameron rejects any smell of a European solution. And in doing so he undermines our national interest, makes solving our refugee “problem” harder, damages his own bargaining power with Europe and betrays our age-old, proud record as a nation of generosity to those in need.
You can read the whole piece in the Guardian.
* Joe Otten was the candidate for Sheffield Heeley in June 2017 and Doncaster North in December 2019 and is a councillor in Sheffield.
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15 Comments
And it should be added, to patch together the refugee announcmenet with another announcement about counter-terrorism and airstrikes was pretty cynical too. I recognise the crises are linked, but they deserve to be addressed as separate issues.
I agree that they are two seperate issues. I also would say that the air strikes have been mentioned because the tories were caught on the back foot by the refugee events. This is their revenge on being caught napping so that they can regain the initiative Both issues should not be allowed to go away.
Joe Otten | Tue 8th September 2015 – 10:26 am Not over five years, during this parliament, elected in May 2015, and the policy is not yet in place because the government has been asleep at the wheel.
I thought the timing of the event was to curry favour with the right wing rebels. By showing how tough he was, Cameron was implicitly saying ” look at the threats we’re against, and how well I’m tackling this, don’t vote against me in the EU Referendum vote” .
Paddy, unlike others is at least offering what seems a sensible, but not without risk, way forward to solving the real problem in the last two paragraphs of the linked article:
“The new rapprochement with Tehran offers us new possibilities to build a wider coalition that spans the Sunni-Shia divide in a way that strangles Isis, and creates the context in which military force makes sense. This is a framework into which Russia, with its own Sunni jihadist problems, could be drawn too.
Isis will not be defeated by killing more Arab Muslims with more western bombs. What is needed here is more clever diplomacy, not more pointless bombing, and this is where Britain should be taking the lead.”
Phyllis – my reading of it was more cynical than that …
Cameron ‘s people calculated that reporting of yesterday’s events today would be overshadowed by the bombing issues and the release of new, previously secret information, and the embarassing U-turn on the refugee crisis (plus the failure to really put anything meaty and substantial in place) and any failure in last night’s vote would be somewhat eclipsed or muddied.
I do also wonder if he wanted to thow in something that would tempt Corbyn to attack him (the alleged ‘judicial killing’) on an issue where Cameron is possibly more in tune with public opinion than the Left, to counteract the effect of Cameron having been temporarily out of step with public opinion on his callous refusal to consider taking in any refugees.
I also think it does the agenda of the drooling, kneejerk Right and their tools in the press no harm to highlight that Syria might be Where Bad People Come From, and take the shine off the compassionate response to the refugee situation.
Arrggh. The Tory leadership. Why are they so cynically, ruthlessly, arrogantly, smugly, effective, why do people not actively reject this way pof doing politica, and why did we not see this, and at least get out from under them at least 2-3 years earlier?
I listened to Paddy Ashdown on TV yesterday and have now read his article. Following his hat eating prophesy on election night and his attitude now, I really get the feeling that he is losing touch with much of public opinion and is believing too much of his own propaganda! What David Cameron is proposing makes sense to me as I would rather help those Syrians who are playing by the rules than those, a large majority of whom appear to be single young males, who seem to have had the money to have engineered an escape across land and sea. Whether 20,000 people over five(?) years is enough is my main concern.
Angela Merkel’s approach may have its basis in humanitarianism; but it may also be a pragmatic way of acquiring people with the skills and muscle to maintain the German economy, just as the East German refugees did back in the 1950s and early 1960s until the Berlin Wall was erected and also the massive influx of ‘Gastarbeiter’ from various European countries which helped, together with massive injections of cash via Marshall Aid to fuel the ‘Wirtschaftswunder’. Also, given Germany’s ever declining population, the arrival of many youngsters with their parents might help to reverse this worrying trend.
As to solving a mess we in the west largely created ( How far do we want to go back? The Afghan wars of the 19th century? The Sykes Picot plan for the former Ottoman Empire after WW1? The Balfour accord which saw the establishment of a homeland for the Jews, whose expansion outside its 1948 borders was enabled to a large extent by the militancy of certain Arab states – and that’s even before we consider Desert Storm and the Blair/Bush/Cameron/Sarkozy adventures in Iraq and Libya in recent years?) over to you Captain Ashdown!
Paddy concludes his Guardian piece by reminding us about The Daesh and saying that they –
“……will not be defeated by killing more Arab Muslims with more western bombs.
What is needed here is more clever diplomacy, not more pointless bombing”
He is correct on both counts.
Liberal Democrats must unite around principled and practical opposition to Cameron’s push for more war.
“What is needed here is more clever diplomacy, not more pointless bombing, and this is where Britain should be taking the lead.”
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/07/cameron-20000-syrian-refugees-offer-derisory?CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p031ll18 Flash Player needed.
If Cameron’s offer to take 20,000 is “derisory”, how should we describe Caron Lindsay’s suggestion last week that 4,000 would be a “fair share”?
I’m not pointing this out to embarrass Caron, rather to highlight the fact that the Lib Dems collectively don’t have a clue how to respond to this crisis, other than instinctively criticise anything David Cameron says.
Paddy Ashdown talks a lot of sense in this article, but he also says some very bizarre things. Particularly baffling is the bit where he seems to think that a refugee who has made it safely to European dry land is still in danger of sinking, whereas a refugee in a Turkish camp who may be planning such a deadly journey is actually completely safe.
Then there is this :-
“Cameron tells us that not helping those in flimsy boats struggling to Europe will reduce the temptation for others to take this ‘lethal journey’. This is exactly the same inhuman logic that government ministers gave us last Christmas when they insisted (albeit at Europe’s behest) that not saving drowning refugees in the Mediterranean was the best way to stop others following them. Hundreds had to drown before we finally saw that this immoral policy didn’t work.”
Has Paddy really not heard about all the drownings that have continued to take place since the rescue operation was restored – some of them as a direct consequence of rescue attempts themselves? The previous policy wasn’t working, but the current policy certainly isn’t working either, at least for the unfortunates who end up washed up on the beaches.
John Marriott
‘Angela Merkel’s approach may have its basis in humanitarianism; but it may also be a pragmatic way of acquiring people with the skills and muscle to maintain the German economy’
Spot on,pleased that someone else can see through what’s going on.
In the past 20 years the population of Germany has increased by 0.5 million,during the same period the UK’s population has increased by 7 million.
Thanks for your support, Kevin. I am getting a bit tired of the Germany trying to act as Europe’s moral policeman/woman. If other members of the EU copy their approach, as far as our continued participation in the European Project is concerned, this could be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Unlike Nick Clegg, I, for one, do not want the EU in ten years time to be “more or less the same”. Equally, I don’t want a competition between EU members for the so called moral high ground. As far as migration is concerned Great Britain plc should be open for business; but not at any price. Once again, whether we like it or not, David Cameron would appear to have his finger on the nation’s pulse when he concentrates on those people in UN refugee camps. I wonder whether Angela Merkel is speaking for the majority of her fellow countrymen and women when she says that Germany could take half a million migrants per year. Personally, knowing Germany and the Germans as I do (I used to teach the language for 34 years), I doubt it.
Please consider Article 4 HRA. Compare the price of tea in Fortnums and Masons with the selling price in Assam.