Big Weekend for the Big Brothers

Alphen, the Netherlands. 5 March. This has been a big weekend for the big brothers. President-elect Vladimir Putin somehow managed to get himself ‘re-elected’ in Russia. He should next time try to become EU President as the system is by and large the same. China announced a paltry 11.2% increase in defence expenditure, whilst at the same time highlighting ‘disappointing’ economic growth figures of 7.2%, the lowest ‘for decades’, which is never a good combination. Meanwhile, President Obama, speaking to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), said that the US “will not hesitate” to use force to stop Iran obtaining nuclear weapons, but says diplomacy could still succeed. All three events imply a rocky road ahead.

What is also interesting is that all three events take place against a backdrop of change at the top of world affairs. Indeed, four of the five Permanent Members of the UN Security Council are either in the midst of election campaigns (France and the US), or handover campaigns (China and Russia). The only one that is not is Britain. However, Britain today cuts a rather forlorn figure of a Permanent Member with a government in London patently running out of both ideas and steam leading a country that due to self-inflicted decline is losing influence by the day - both in Europe and the wider world. France is locked into the Eurozone crisis and increasingly a surrogate of Germany, Europe’s only real power of influence, albeit power of a distinctly soft nature. So, what does this moment of change imply for world peace?

President Putin claims to have won over 64% of the vote this weekend but amidst allegations of vote rigging the figure is probably nearer 50%. It is clear that Putin has lost a lot of support across Russia and his term could face significant challenge from an increasingly vocal big city opposition. Like many a previous Russian leader he seems to be leaning towards nationalism as a means to shore up his regime. Two weeks ago Putin wrote that “For Russia to feel secure and for our partners to listen carefully to what our country has to say,” Russia will about $775 billion by 2022 for new armaments and a more professional military. That will be a heavy burden for the Russian economy to bear but the intent is clear.

Beijing’s announcement this weekend that it will grow the Chinese defence budget by 11.2% in 2012 (although slightly lower than the 12.7% in 2011) is but the latest double digit increase. Indeed, China has been growing its military at that rate since 1989 and the official figures are probably ‘conservative’. What makes this year’s increase interesting is the timing. It is likely that Vice-President Xi Jingping will succeed President Hu Jintao when he steps down in 2013. Xi is known to be close to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and his accession will doubtless strengthen the influence of the forces and with it their sustained access to investment. Worryingly, during Xi’s recent visit to Washington the Americans tried to interest him in new military-to-military exchanges. They were met with a flat ‘no’.

President Obama’s weekend warning to Iran comes in the wake of Israeli President Shimon Peres saying that Iran “was a danger to the world”. What makes Iran particularly worrying is that Teheran is also in the midst of what passes for democracy in the Islamic Republic and with it an implied power struggle between the clerical elite and radical elements around President Ahmadinejad. Worried that Israel might be tempted to launch a preemptive strike against Iranian nuclear sites President Obama said, “Iran’s leaders should know that I do not have a policy of containment – I have a policy to prevent Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon”.  Cue confrontation - soon!

It is not simply leaderships that are changing (well, sort of). Russia, China and the US are also changing their respective strategic orientations. Russia is increasingly looking east towards China.  Expect and increase in the Kremlin’s anti-Western rumblings and tensions in the High North and with Ukraine over the coming years, not to mention another stand-off with NATO as it tries to update its collective defence structure.

China is beginning to move beyond the Strategic Harmony which has driven its growth-friendly foreign policy for many years. Beijing is also beginning to use the wealth it has generated to begin to assert itself both in its own neighbourhood and beyond. With the PLA now ascendant one can expect a more techy relationship between Beijing and its neighbours and, of course, with Washington.

For Washinton real difficulties lay ahead.  The US is drawing down both its global military and diplomatic footprint even as forced obligations expand. Rather like Britain in the 1930s, which could no longer defend its Eastern Empire, the Suez Canal and the home base, Washington is being forced into hard choices. Implicit in both Beijing’s and Moscow’s defence hikes are efforts to make America’s choices just that bit harder. Were they up to the task the UN’s two other Permanent Members, Britain and France, would realise the game that is afoot and re-discover true strategy. It is vital London and Paris assist the US by exploring ways to take the pressure of an over-stretched America by leading efforts to maintain stability in Europe and its neighbourhood.

Tragically, it will also mean that 'in-between' places such as Syria, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, together with a host of others, will see little concerted humanitarian action as big brother politics again paralyses the United Nations.

Julian Lindley-French

Mark Easton's Attack on Britain

Alphen, the Netherlands. 3 March.  Mark Easton is the BBC's Home Editor. It is a mark of the BBC's shift to the political Left that Mr Easton has been appointed Home Editor.  On the BBC website today Mr Easton has written an extended blog questioning what it is to be British.  In fact this is just the latest of a series of Mr Easton's serial attempts to undermine the concept of Britishness.  His basic point is that Britishness is all things to all people and is therefore nothing.  He occupies the usual space of the Left on this issue by implying that all other countries - the French, the Germans, the Dutch and the rest of course have national identities but not we British.  He also regularly champions all minority identities particularly against the English and is quick to find any range of excuses for law-breaking and criminality.  In Mr Easton's world no-one is ever responsible for anything unless that is one is English.  He is a Scot by background. 

Precisely because Britain is comprised four of consitituent nations (and thanks to hyper-immigration many more now) being British is by definition a construct.  However, that is the point - it is an important construct that offers a complex society a chance of social cohesion without which no society can function.   The whole point of Britain has been to establish a common identity sufficiently strong enough around which we can all gther. Moreover, we British all live on an island called Britain and are therefore British simply by association with the rock that keeps our collectiuve heads above water.  

In fact Britain has been both successful idea and defined place. Take it from my Dutch neighbours who have no problem with understanding Britishness.  Not least because by and large the Dutch are also pretty comfortable with the multiple identities that each of them possesses. 

What Mr Easton and his friends on the Left really seek is an end to Britain as an idea and the BBC should have nothing to do with that.  

If you value your reputation for balance and objectivity BBC then get rid of Mr Easton before he does any more damage.

Julian Lindley-French 

Onion Blarney

Alphen, the Netherlands. 2 March. Irish wit Oscar Wilde once said, “Before you call for one for one for the road, be sure you know the road”. Europe’s road has now been chosen. With today's signing of the European Fiscal Stability Treaty (or Treaty of Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union to give it the sexy title)  who knows where the road will eventually lead. However, the inference is clear – fiscal union. Do the people of Europe have a say? 

No.  The extent of the changes being pushed through with this treaty go far beyond “fiscal consolidation as an essential condition of higher growth” as called for in a letter by the German and French duarchy. Without any reference to 'we' the European people Herman van Rompuy has been made EU president...again. Maybe it is my age but I do not recall ever having elected ‘Mr’ van Rompuy. As such he is no president of mine. Clearly, being Greek the Onion's euro-aristocracy have decided this democracy thing is not for them. Mr van Rompuy's 're-election' merely confirms that.

PR Meister David Cameron is of course twittering from the margins into which he cast himself by retreating from his principled position of 8 December. Cameron is fast becoming a parody of Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher. She once famously said, “U-turn if you want to, the lady’s not for turning”. Be it over Europe, health care reform, immigration and asylum policy, Scottish independence and a host of other things that matter to the British people Cameron’s mantra is ‘U-turn if you want to, if you are at all nasty to me I will turn with you’.

To cover his somewhat supine political back he has wrangled 11 other European leaders into signing a wholly meaningless ‘letter for growth’ which he wanted inserted into the final communique of today's summit. Far from demonstrating his influence the letter merely serves to highlight his impotence. Over dinner last night Cameron complained that his calls for a growth-friendly reduction in Omission bureaucracy were being ignored by the European Omission. Really, David?

The true test for Cameron will come when the Omission accelerates efforts to impose a financial services tax of which Britain will pay 80% to save a currency of which it is not part. There is no such thing as a free tax. The very growth which Cameron needs is now under severe threat from the ambitions of Germany, France and the Omission. All the PR-Meister has done has delayed the final battle and what a battle royal it will be. Will Cameron be King Arthur or King Harold (Battle of Hastings and all that)? Sadly, I suspect the latter. The last few months have revealed a sad truth about Cameron – more iron maybe than iron ‘lady’. He is no leader.

Cameron apart what really matters at this summit is what is not in the headlines – the quiet but inexorable retreat from democratic oversight implicit in this treaty. Not for the first time it is the Irish, long used to dealing with over-bearing power, who have revealed a dangerous sleight of political hand. Not far from Cork lies the Blarney Stone, a block of bluestone built into Blarney Castle. According to legend, kissing the stone endows the kisser with an ability to tell wonderful tales, to flatter and to coax the unwary. Perhaps the Irish should send the stone to Brussels where it clearly belongs. 

The Irish are about to hold their third referendum in four years because of all Europe’s people they know blarney when they see it. Although the new treaty is not an EU-treaty per se the fact and nature of it means it will be seen as such. Sadly, this treaty makes it much easier for the euro-aristocracy to ignore the people of Europe. In the past fundamental changes to the way the EU did business required all member-states to ratify a treaty at national level either via parliamentary vote, popular referendum or both. However, this treaty establishes a precedent which gravely undermines this principle of unanimity and replaces it with a new kind of what is called qualified majority voting in Onion-speak. If there is one principle over which Cameron should have stood his ground this is it.  He did not. 

The problem for the euro-aristocracy has been the rather annoying tendency of Europe’s people to say 'no'. Back in 2008 the Irish people said ‘no’ to the Lisbon Treaty. They were then told to vote again until they got the answer right. The same happened back in 2005 when French and Dutch voters rejected the putative European Constitution, only for it to reappear in another form pushed through by the euro-aristocracy. To avoid 'we' the euro-peasantry inflicting another such inconvenience on the euro-aristocracy the new treaty now requires the approval of only 12 countries to enter into force.

Even if the Irish people say no it will be meaningless. The leadership of Germany will be confirmed and with it the unaccountable influence of the European Omission will be extended as the Onion takes one more step on the road to Imperium. Of course our Dear Leaders as per usual have omitted to tell we peasantry about all of this as it would be far too hard for us to understand. Rather, the suffocating shroud of the ‘Brussels omerta’ has once again been draped over what passes for democracy these days in Europe.

Why is this important? A close friend of mine was having dinner with a very senior official from the Omission in Washington recently.  After a good glass of claret or two the latter explained that the European elite had always pushed forward its integrating project using what he called the “strategy of creative crisis”. By said gambit crises such as the Eurozone crisis are seen by the Omission as an opportunity. The trick, the official explained, was first to create panic and then to use that panic to push for more power for the Omission. Recognise it?

Oscar Wilde also said, “A man who does not think for himself, does not think at all”. Maybe, just maybe, a dose of Irish bravery might just wake up Europe’s slumbering masses to what is taking place in their name...and at their expense.

Erin go Bragh!

Julian Lindley-French

Christopher Tappin Update

Alphen, the Netherlands.  1 March.  You may recall that last week 65 year-old Englishman Mr Christopher Tappin was extradited to the US under the terms of a wholly unbalanced extradition treaty.  Under the treaty British citizens are deemed to enjoy an inferior status to American citizens.  Even though Mr Tappin's alleged crimes never took place in the US the Americans who demanded his extradition were able to do so because the British Government refuses to afford the same level of legal protection to British citizens as the Americans insist are applied to their own.  Today I have learnt that Mr Tappin, who is yet to face trial and is therefore innocent, is in solitary confinement, has had all reading materials confiscated, is forced to stay in his cell 23 hours out of 24, with lights shining 24 hours out of 24.  The aim seems to be to cower Mr Tappin into accepting a plea bargain and plead guilty even if he is, as he claims, innocent.  I am a friend and ally of the United States and have long stood up for the US often at a profound cost to my career here in Europe.  I will remain a friend of the United States.  However, the treatment of Mr Tappin is shaking my belief in American justice.  I am particularly saddened that a citizen of such a close ally should be treated as though the presumption of innocence no longer exists - a concept of justice that both America and England are meant to share and for which we have fought wars together.  As for the British Government it is doing little or nothing to protect a British citizen.  Nothing new there then. Were Mr Tappin a foreign national the British Government would be pulling all the stops out...and getting the British taxpayer to fund the bill.  As Mr Tappin said, "It is a disgrace". 

Julian Lindley-French  

Libya: The Transition Clock

Alphen, the Netherlands. 29 February. PRISM, the Journal for the Center for Complex Operations at the National Defence University in Washington has just published a significant article of mine entitled, “Libya: The Transition Clock” (http://www.ndu.edu/press/prism3-2.html). Some three months on from the October 2011 slaying of Gadhafi the piece offers a realistic appreciation of Libya’s progress on the transitional road to a stable, functioning, representative state.

Imagine an imaginary twelve hour clock face on which zero hour is chaos and twelve hours is a stable, functioning, representative Libya. Against that clock-face I set five principles of conflict transition established by the United States Institute for Peace and the US Army Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute: a safe and secure environment; rule of law; stable governance; a sustainable economy; and social well-being.

A safe and secure environment (3 o’clock) is defined as the "ability of the people to conduct their daily lives without fear of systematic or large-scale violence." With much of the country effectively lawless public order is virtually non-existent. The physical challenge alone is daunting. Even though 90 per cent of Libya’s 6.5 million people live on the coastal strip, the country is roughly the size of Alaska with 1.1 million square kms/680,000 square miles of territory. The coast alone is 1,758 kms/1,099 miles long with land borders totalling 4,357kms/2,723 miles. Furthermore, with so many militias spread across the country it is going to be some time before legitimate state monopoly over the means of violence is reasserted or indeed control over borders re-established. Critical to the entire transition process and, indeed, one of the key indicators will be to what extent, and at what pace, Tripoli can weld all the militias into a single national army.

Rule of law (3 o’clock) is defined as the "ability of the people to have equal access to just laws and a trusted system of justice that holds all persons accountable, protects their human rights and ensures their safety and security." Logically, the first order principle for Tripoli is to establish the equitable rule of national law in Libya’s two major population centres—Tripoli and Benghazi—and then expand its writ across the country once the seat of government has been firmly established.  However, a just legal framework for the whole of Libya will not only take time, but will prove an intensely political process. Islamist groups insist on a strict interpretation of Sharia law, a position that led Berber representatives to walk out of meetings to discuss transitional arrangements. Public order, another key facet of rule of law, is fragmented and uncertain. Furthermore, accountability under the law, access to justice, and eventually a culture of lawfulness will likely require the establishment of an entirely new system for the administration of justice.

Stable governance (4 o’clock) is defined as the "ability of the people to share access or compete for power through non-violent political processes and to enjoy the collective benefits and services of the state." Libya is in early post-conflict transition which requires the steady and sustained reduction of conflict across security, economic, and political spheres. Tripoli is only taking the first and most tentative steps toward representative government. And, what is emerging is a hybrid, instable political structure involving secular, tribal, and Islamist elements with all three vying for supreme state authority. How this equilibrium is institutionalized with the necessary checks and balances to ensure that no single group dominates will be a critical test of transition.

A sustainable economy (2 o’clock) is defined as the "ability of the people to pursue opportunities for livelihoods within a system of economic governance bound by law." According to the UN Development Programme Human Development Index, Libya ranked 53rd out of 169 states prior to the civil war. Libya thus enjoys a relatively educated population with enough of a middle class to in principle provide an entrepreneurial impetus to the economy. One of the first order requirements for the new government is to re-establish macroeconomic control over consumer price inflation, growth in the gross domestic product over one or more business cycles, changes in measured unemployment and employment, the effective management of fluctuations in government finances, and currency stability. However, Tripoli at present lacks any real influence over its conflict-torn economy and is thus incapable of establishing the functioning structures critical for effective economic governance.

Social well-being (2 o’clock) is defined as the "ability of the people to be free from want of basic needs and to coexist peacefully in communities with opportunities for advancement." Libya’s greatest assets (apart from its people) are its high-grade hydrocarbon and gas reserves. These will in time fund the resources for meeting the basic needs of the people, but only in time. Encouragingly, Tripoli has moved rapidly to establish new contracts with potential partners. At an estimated 41.5 billion barrels, Libya has the largest proven oil reserves in Africa—about 3 per cent of the global total—with much of the country unexplored due to past sanctions. The geology, however, looks very promising. Even without further discoveries, Libya has some 20 years of reserves at 2009 production rates. Libyan oil is also easy to recover. In addition, the country has proven gas reserves of 52 trillion cubic feet, making Libya the world’s 14th largest producer. That said there are profound tensions between the rural-based militias that did much of the fighting and the city dwellers that sat on the fence for much of the conflict, particularly in Tripoli, which could hamper exploitation. Moreover, it is the intellectual capital represented by Tripoli that is vital to Libya’s future stability.

Libya is thus only at 3 o’clock on the transition clock with the next year or so being pivotal for the transition process. With Tripoli only some 294 kms/184 miles from both the EU and NATO now is the moment when the transitional government in Tripoli needs maximum support.

Libya, sadly, is still a country at war with itself.

Julian Lindley-French

How Much More Discrimination Must the English Suffer?

Alphen, the Netherlands. 27 February. You will recall in yesterday’s blog I talked of how in Britain all minorities are given higher priority than the English, be they from within the British Islands or beyond. Tonight there is definitive proof.

I have just been watching the BBC TV News during which three stories stood out. First, English students attending Scottish universities are required to pay full fees, whilst those from the rest of the EU pay nothing. Welsh students are subsidised and a cap exists in Northern Ireland on all fees paid by students. This is because the English taxpayer subsidises Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. However, English students studying at English universities are required to pay up to £9000 per annum for their university fees. English students are thus facing indefensible discrimination.

Second, the sorry plight of Indian citizens who had come to Britain illegally was shown. It is a disgrace that a civilised country should treat any human being in such a way with many forced to seek shelter on London’s streets in cardboard boxes. What is more galling is that many of these people have asked for voluntary deportation but cannot leave due to appalling bureaucratic incompetence by both the British and Indian governments. There is a wider picture here – such is the uncontrolled level of immigration to England (not Scotland or Wales) that some English towns are ceasing to be English. Lincolnshire is now known as Lincolnshiregrad. And yet the government refuses to take action claiming as usual that ‘Europe’ would not permit it. I am more than willing to accept managed immigration but the current levels of immigration – both legal and illegal – are simply out of control. All government ministers can offer are the usual platitudes.

Third, the wife of Englishman Mr Christopher Timmins, who was extradited last Friday to the US under a wholly unbalanced extradition treaty that is loaded overwhelmingly in favour of the US, gave evidence today to the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee. She explained that Mr Timmins was not even allowed to give his side of the story to an English court prior to extradition. I have checked with an American lawyer friend of mine who works in this area and he tells me that as part of American legal proceedings under this treaty a US citizen does indeed have the right to put his or her case before an American court. It now transpires that Mr Timmins is allowed one hour a day out of his cell and has had his reading materials confiscated. Does that not constitute torture? If so why did the European Court of Human Rights refuse to hear Mr Timmins’s case and yet blocked the extradition from Britain of radical Muslim cleric Abu Qatada to Jordan who has called for Jihad against Britain and its citizens? This is in spite of written assurances from the Jordanians that he would not be subject to torture and verbal assurances that no evidence in his trial would be gathered using coercion.

The British government is becoming very good at inventing excuses as to why the English suffer such blatant discrimination but is doing little or nothing to stop it. During my trip to Oxford last week I talked to a lot English people and all expressed deep concerns about a government that refuses to listen or act - all talk, no action.  No wonder that is a recent poll 59% of English people said they did not believe the British Government acts in their best interest. Moreover, a 2011 study by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that active discrimination was taking place by both local and national authorities against low income English communities.

Be careful government.  Your inability/refusal to stem the rising tide of discrimination aganst the English is stoking real anger across the length and breadth of England. Politicians, you seem to have forgotten a fundamental tenet of democracy to listen to the people who put you in power.

Julian Lindley-French

British Security Policy: A Mess of Olympic Proportions

Oxford, England. 27 February. To paraphrase US President Richard M. Nixon; finishing second in the Olympics gets you silver, finishing second in security risks oblivion. I have returned to my alma mater University College, Oxford to present a copy of my new book – The Oxford Handbook of War. Olympic-mania is already apparent in this country from the moment one steps off the plane at Heathrow Airport until the moment (with relief) one gets climbs back on again. In my short stay here in Oxford several stories have broken in the British press that demonstrate not only that the London Olympics are vulnerable to terrorist attack, but that the security of Britain itself is now at risk from a dangerously unconnected and disconnected British government. Put simply, British security policy is about as ‘un-joined up’ (in the terrible jargon of Whitehall) as it is possible to be.

National security policy is comprised of six elements: effective control over national borders; effective management of immigration; the prevention of extremism and its export; the legal protection and punishment of citizens and others; (and credible) defence. The sixth and most important element of security policy is that the people trust the system and believe government is acting efficiently in their best interests. The British Government is failing in all six areas. Let me take you through a week in the life of security failure.

On 20 February Home Secretary (Interior Minister) Theresa May ordered the splitting up of the UK Border Agency after hundreds of thousands of people were let into the country without appropriate checks. This is some five months prior to the Olympics. Specifically, some 500,000 nationals from the European Economic Area travelling on Eurostar services from France were not checked against security warning lists. Secure ID checks were suspended at London Heathrow Airport some 463 times between June 2010 and November 2011. Between January and June 2011 a system for reading a biometric chip was deactivated 14,812 occasions at various British ports.

On 21 February Janes Defence Weekly reported that China would spend $120 billion on defence this year climbing to $238 billion by 2015, a rise of 18.75%. This is in addition to the 256% increase in China’s defence spending since 2005. The same day President Putin announced that Russia would spend $775 billion by 2020, including the deployment of 400 new intercontinental ballistic missiles. The two sets of increases are clearly linked. Meanwhile Britain is cutting its defence budget by a nominal 8% between 2010 and 2015 (in fact the cuts go far deeper) and is likely to cut further. Clearly the balance of power both in Europe and the wider world is shifting dangerously but government is impervious to this.

On 23 February the Office for National Statistics reported that in the year up to June 2011 some 593,000 people entered Britain with net migration rising by 250,000. Immigrants from Africa and the Indian sub-Continent totalled 170,000. The massive majority are of course perfectly decent people seeking a better life and who make a real contribution to society, although the sheer pace and scale of immigration is imposing huge pressures on British society. Equally, many come from the most conservative regions of the Islamic world, such as Nigeria, Pakistan and Somalia. This makes a mockery of government claims that British troops are fighting and dying in a corner of an Afghan field to keep radical Islam away from Britain. It is entering via the front door.

On 23 February, Prime Minister Cameron hosted the London Somalia Conference designed to kick-start serious international aid to a country that is now one of the epicentres of international terrorism. Nothing wrong with that, although it does seem strange that having failed in Afghanistan Britain is now so keen to fail in Somalia.  Once again, British taxpayers money is being 'invested' in another failed state with no particular strategy in sight. It may have something to do with the fact that there are 50 ‘British’ members of Somali Al Qaeda affiliate Al Shabab, the greatest number from any foreign country.  It would make more sense for the government to focus properly on home-grown threats. The government’s PREVENT counter-terrorism strategy is in tatters mainly because of problems in the Home Office (Interior Ministry). This weakening of effort is reinforced by the 11.3% cuts to the security services which have taken place since 2010.

On 24 February, 65 year old British citizen Mr Christopher Tappin was taken by two US Marshals from Éngland to America to face trial under an extradition treaty that is so blatantly loaded in favour of the US as to render England little more than a colony. Indeed, whilst the US population is some five times greater than that of Britain the US has successfully carted off some 75 British citizens against only 40 US citizens being sent the other way. This is due to the much higher burden of evidence demanded by American courts.

The sheer scale of the complacency at the top of government was revealed to me this week in evidence apparently given by Cabinet Office minister Oliver Letwin to the House of Commons Select Committee on Public Administration. Mr Letwin was responding to a report to which I had contributed which highlighted the need for a real national strategy to foster high-level unity of effort and purpose in British security.  Sadly, his testimony was worthy of Sir Humphrey Appleby of Yes Minister fame at his dissembling worst. Mr Letwin rejected both the idea and language of a national strategy as something he did not recognise. He implicitly trashed both the National Security Strategy and the Strategic Defence and Security Review by suggesting that all Britain needed was vague ‘strategic aims’ and to ‘scan horizons’. It was as though Britain was still an imperial power of such influence and resources that hard choices and disciplined, cohesive government in pursuit of sound security policy – the very rational for strategy - was not really at all necessary.  This was not an exercise in the management of decline, but the active encouragement of it. To Letwin’s mind it was OK for Britain to simply muddle along.  It is the job of the Cabinet Office to ensure coherence across government.  It has palpably failed.

Why is this happening? First, the culture of political correctness is now so pervasive amongst the Whitehall elite that the interests of all minorities, be they from within these islands or beyond, are placed above those of the majority English. Second, Britain has effectively lost control over much of its border to the EU and the European Court of Human Rights, which now effectively controls just who Britain can and cannot deport. Third, in the absence of strategy and leadership from Downing Street a form of market competition has broken out between the key ministries for what little money and resources are available. The tail is most definitely wagging the dog. Sadly, it is competition reinforced by profound ideological divisions within and between key ministries as to how security should be pursued which effectively prevents a coherent and cohesive cross-government security policy.

Does all this matter?  A very senior American colleague told me this week that the many contradictions in Britain’s security policy make Britain not simply a security risk, but a risk to US security and that of allies and partners.

This is a security mess of Olympic proportions….and come this summer the Olympics will be in the front-line.

Julian Lindley-French