I saw on Facebook over the holidays that Layla was off to Estonia and just assumed that she was off on a jolly.
Not so much, as her website reveals.
She was actually in the Baltic state to take part training exercises with British troops.
Layla, a former teacher, was part of a cross-party group of 7 MPs that spent several days with armed forces personnel as they carried out training exercises and duties in Estonia.
More than 800 British personnel are currently stationed in the Baltic state as part of NATO’s ‘enhanced forward presence’ along with Danish, Canadian and Estonian forces. The scheme is designed to deter Russian aggression.
The visit was part of the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme which sees MPs undergo military training and go on exercises alongside armed forces personnel to help inform better decision-making on defence issues in Parliament.
Layla Moran said:
“It was an honour to spend time with armed forces personnel from the Yorkshire Regiment and to find out more about their work in Estonia protecting us and our allies from Russian aggression.
“As well this visit, I’ve also been spending time at RAF bases and on exercise across the country to find out more about the outstanding work that our armed forces do serving our nation, including here in Oxfordshire.
“I hope that by getting a better understanding of day-to-day challenges of our armed forces, I will be able to contribute more usefully to the debate about whether we spend enough on our defence forces or not – and, crucially, what type of defence spending we need to meet the threats of the future.”
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
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As a result of being incorporated into the former Soviet Union after World War One each of the three Baltic states has a substantial minority of Russian speaking people.
Moscow has tended to try to use minorities such as these to undermine the stability of neighbouring states “the near abroad”.
We may recall that what Germany did in the 1930s, falsely claiming that ethnic Germans in the former Czechoslovakia were persecuted and that therefore the frontier should be moved to include them in Germany. This happened (shamefully for the then British Prime Minister) and an important consequence was that Czechoslovakia’s defences along their border with Germany were incorporated into Germany, leaving Czechoslovakia vulnerable to further pressure which it was unable to withstand.
Switzerland also had a proportion of ethnic Germans and Berlin wanted to include them in a larger Germany, but the Swiss were determined to resist and the leader(ship) in Berlin decided not to invade in the short term.
In the longer term there was no opportunity.
If there is ever a sequel to The Sound of Music it should show the Austrian escapees fleeing into Italy, not into Switzerland as might be thought to be implied.
Obviously some people are getting worried that she may be the answer to the nations problems. She is being taken seriously.
The so called ‘Baltic States’ of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia illustrate, in my opinion, why Europeans often think differently about ‘Europe’ than most of us over here. These three countries have spent most of their history under the orbit of their much larger neighbours. You could probably include Finland, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia as well. In the case of the Baltic States and Finland that neighbour has been Russia. They have needed to be flexible in geographic, cultural and linguistic terms in a way that we never have.
Let me provide an example. A teaching college of mine when I was working in Canada, whose grandparents migrated from Poland before WW1 when Poland was governed by Imperial Russia, once told me that, as ethic Germans, this was the language his family spoke at home. When they were out shopping, for example, they spoke Polish and, when in school, they were forced to speak Russian. No wonder many Brits living as they do on an island, which, for much of its history has remained in isolation, and largely speaking only one language, struggle to empathise with our neighbours in continental Europe.
I’ve not got much time for Putin; but just imagine how some Russians must feel, having been told for decades that the ‘enemy’ i.e. NATO was a good distance away on the other side of the Iron curtain suddenly find him on their border. As Tim Farron said in defence of the EU, those guns and missiles on Baltic State and Polish soil, which were during the Cold War pointing westwards are now pointing eastwards.