Getting out of the burning building

There is an establishment in British politics. What I mean by this is that there is a political consensus, for I don’t want to personify the word ‘establishment’ in a way that is not true. It may be that at one time there was a group of powerful people sitting in a room somewhere that pulled the strings of whichever government was in power, but even that idea seems just a trifle paranoid. What there is however is the idea that certain things are done and certain things are just not done. Here are a few examples.

Whenever the Americans want to invade someone else’s country, it’s OK simply for the reason that they want to. Because it’s OK, the UK has to support them. If we didn’t we’d lose influence. For this reason the UK has to spend lots and lots of money on our armed forces, not so much so that we can defend our island, but so that we can do what American presidents tell us to do. Our armed forces in fact have not been used to defend our island since around 1941 and there has been no credible threat of a nation state invading us for decades. Nevertheless, we must describe our armed forces as defence event though they are never used to defend. The countries we attack however are no threat to us whatsoever. The idea of Afghanistan attempting to invade the UK with armed forces becomes faintly comical when we reflect that landlocked countries usually lack a navy.

But the threat, of course, is not from nation states, but from failed states that export terrorism. Here again we come up against the establishment. Whenever there are attempts to overthrow dictators, whenever there are people demonstrating in the street, whenever there is ‘spring’ in the air, we must support the revolutionaries. The Americans are convinced that all revolutions lead to peace, love and democracy and so they keep interfering in the world in order to make it better. But look at the results of their interference in the past decades. Libya is in a worse state than it was. Afghanistan is worse. Ukraine is worse. Syria is worse. Meanwhile the threat from terrorism has never been higher.

The establishment thinks that we can stop terrorism by attacking the countries where terrorists come from, while doing next to nothing to stop people from those countries traveling here. Ludicrously we are supposed to believe that Iraq or Afghanistan or whoever intend to wage war against our island, when in fact there is next to no terrorist threat at all from people living in any of these countries, but only from those living in ours. You actually have to be in the UK to carry out a terrorist attack, you can’t very easily do it from abroad.

The establishment pretends that the UK must live within its means, but always acts so that we spend more than we earn. We are promised that sometime in the future the UK will make a profit, but that future is like the end of the rainbow, as you approach it you find there’s no pot of gold just more debt. Meanwhile we borrow money to give to other countries. This act of 'generosity' both increases our own debt, while at the same time hindering those who we supposedly help by making them dependent on us, thus making them less self-reliant and ever more in need of our aid. This process makes the establishment feel virtuous, increases their influence in the world, while harming the prospects both of those at home and abroad.  If anyone questions this method of running our finances, they are told that there is nothing that can be done. We have to continually increase our spending here there and everywhere, for if the music stops and anyone ever realises that we all owe each other debts we can never pay back, then we'll have to go back to bartering with shells for no-one will trust money ever again. But according to the establishment this is the only way we can run our country’s finances. After all the USA has debts that it can never pay back, so has Japan. It's a select club for the elite. We would lose prestige if we ever attempted to earn more than we spend.  

We are lectured by the establishment that we must pay our taxes and that we must run our businesses honestly. But these rules don’t apply to them. If I have a business that makes a loss and has debts that are overwhelming, it will go bust and I’ll lose everything. If I do anything remotely crooked in a desperate attempt to save my business, I will go to jail. But if I am rich enough and part of the establishment, everything will be fine. The same rules don’t apply.

Big businesses being propped up and bailed out by governments is not how free markets are supposed to work. In that case they are neither free, nor are they even really markets. When the financial crisis struck, my first instinct was that the banks should be allowed to fail. Perhaps this was naïve of me. Maybe it was necessary to bail out banks that could have brought down our country. Opinion is divided on this issue. Still even if we did need to bail out some banks in the short term, it didn’t follow that we had to be quite so generous about it. Those people whose behaviour led to the economic crisis ought not to have profited by it. Some of those people ought to have gone to jail. We should have learned from our mistakes such that these banks could never hold our country to ransom again. Have any of these things happened? No, because the establishment looks after its own and the rules and disciple of the market only apply to people who can’t afford to have a bank accounts in Panama. It would be far too risky for members of the establishment to be involved in anything as vulgar as a market where you can win or lose. Better by far to rig it so that they can’t lose. Only we can lose.

The establishment tells us that we have the best health service in the world. It’s the UK’s national religion now that almost no-one believes in God. It equally depends on faith that contradicts the scientific evidence. It also depends on the fact that most Brits have never lived abroad. I've lived abroad. Let me tell you healthcare is better in Russia than in the UK. There, if I need to have my wisdom teeth out, I arrange an appointment for some time next week rather than next year. Treatment in Russia is not only a little better, it’s much better. This is despite the fact that Russia is vastly less wealthy than the UK. The treatment usually involves a detailed examination and seeing a specialist involves does not involve being put on a waiting list. The concept of a waiting list for health is met with bafflement. The reason for this is simple, Russians don’t spend all their time telling themselves that they have the best health service in the world.

Why do Russians receive better treatment than Brits? The reason for this is that doctors in Russia earn more than average, but not that much more. They’re well off, but they don’t expect to earn what oligarchs earn. In Britain, on the other hand, we decided because doctors were saints we’d pay them what merchant bankers earn. This means that they can afford their Porsche Cayenne even if they only work three days a week. It also means that we can’t afford to employ doctors and so we have to wait. This though can’t be changed because doctors are now rich enough to be part of the establishment and so we must continue to believe that they are saints while their assistants are angels. We must believe this because everyone in every political party tells us that it is so. 

The NHS sucks in ever more resources and uses those resources ever more inefficiently. Socialism doesn’t work and neither does a health system invented by socialists. But too many NHS salaries depend on keeping a shortage of doctors, rather than training more. Too many vested interests tell us that nothing can be done.  Instead of looking at examples from all around Europe where everyone gets free health care paid for in a variety of ways and thinking about what we could do better, we prefer the myth that our way is best. The establishment has told the British people that our NHS is perfect and so the people agree. ‘Mustn’t grumble’ they say as they are put on another waiting list.

The final establishment view that everyone must believe is that the UK must remain part of the EU. In Scotland this is so much the establishment view that there is hardly any dissent at all. Even many people who think of themselves as opposed to the SNP think the EU is far more important than the UK. They thus make their support of the UK conditional, which can barely be described as support at all. But then the Scottish establishment has always been soft on Scottish nationalism. They agree with the SNP that it's a problem if Scotland votes to stay in the EU while the UK doesn't. For years they have been making the SNP's argument for them. How awful that the UK votes for a Tory Government while virtuous Scotland votes for someone else. No wonder their supporters deserted them for the SNP. The Scottish establishment in effect told them to do so and thereby destroyed itself. From the ashes rose the yellow thistle of the SNP. Absurdly this new establishment wants Scotland to leave one union (the UK) but remain in another (the EU) which has the aim of creating a political union which will in time abolish this newly won Scottish independence. But at least we won't be ruled by Westminster.  

William Hague famously described the Euro as a burning building without any exits. But he was wrong. It’s the EU itself that’s the burning building. But even though it’s burning we must believe the establishment when they tell us that it is far too dangerous to go outside. But if it was so dangerous to go into this building, why did we do so all those years ago? If leaving the EU would be such a catastrophe why did they set up such a dangerous club in the first place? Shouldn’t we have been warned? What could have turned all those Eurosceptics like William Hague into Europhiles? It’s quite simple. Eventually when you are part of the establishment for long enough you just go native. Finally the civil service mandarins grind you down. The foreign office careerists continual worry about loss of influence becomes too much to bear. You begin to think what purpose would there be in life if there was a big European summit and I wasn’t there. At this point you realise that you’re in the building, it’s on fire, but that the most dangerous thing you could possibly do is to pick up the hatchet and chop your way out.

Politics for me is about the possibility of change. But in Britain there is a political establishment that says that nothing can be done. We want to deport some person who hates us. Sorry you can’t do that. We are told that the population of Britain will top seventy-five million, then eighty million. Sorry there’s nothing to be done to stop that happening. We’re told that you now will have to work until your something like eighty-five before getting your pension. That’s just the way the world works. After all someone’s got to pay back the debts and it sure won’t be members of the establishment.

The root of this idea that nothing can be done is always the EU. It’s being in the EU that means that we can’t control our own borders. It’s the EU that means that our laws and our politicians are subordinate to the will of unelected bureaucrats. It’s the EU that stops us doing what we need to do to make our country better. We won’t change the direction of our country with one vote. The political establishment will remain. But this is our one chance of telling them that we the people are really in charge and we want to get our country back. If you’re happy with the political establishment by all means vote to stay in the EU. That’s what they want too. They are so desperate that nothing will harm their power and their influence that they will say and do anything to make you vote to remain in the EU. The establishment can always come up with gruesome stories to prevent anyone doing what is contrary to their interests. How else could they have remained the establishment for so long? 

But if you want to make one small step that might bring a little bit of power back to us, then vote to leave. It won’t finish the journey of bringing democracy back to Britain, but it will be the first step in the right direction. We don’t get this sort of chance to vote for change often.  Indeed it may not come again. Make sure you grab it, or else regret it. Remember, if you vote to stay in the EU you will have forever lost your right to complain about both the EU and our political lords and masters. You will have chosen to remain in the burning building when you still had the chance to get out. 

A United Kingdom constrained only by itself

Why do people choose to support leaving the EU? Why are others keen to remain? It might be that over the years we’ve all been weighing up the pros and cons. But I suspect this isn’t how most people reason. Rather someone who already supports remaining in the EU looks for all the awful things that would happen if the UK were to leave. Alternatively, someone who already supports leaving discounts all these awful things and seeks instead all the horrible things that will happen if we remain in the EU and all the wonderful things that will happen if we leave. Meanwhile both sides ignore, but also try to undermine each other’s arguments. There’s huge amounts of noise, but no-one much is persuaded, at least not by the arguments.

But how do we get to the stage of supporting either side. I think it’s to do with how we see ourselves and the sort of person we want to be. Whatever faults the EU may have, there’s a part of me that sympathises with the ideal of bringing down borders and bringing people together. I would even go further and say that the idea of one world without countries has quite a lot going for it. Imagine if there were a single world government democratically elected. Imagine if there was free trade and free movement of people? Is this not to imagine the end to poverty, the end to prejudice and the end to all divisions in humanity? This begins to resemble something close to heaven upon earth. I think pro EU people tend to see themselves as internationalist. They feel that the UK is sharing in something larger than our own little country. They support the EU in the same way that they support the United Nations and all other international bodies. It feels virtuous to do so.

I sympathise with this viewpoint. To an extent I even share it. But over the years I’ve become a little cynical. I don’t think the ideal can be fulfilled. However much I like the aims of internationalism, I’ve come to realise that there is a reason that there are sovereign nation states. They fulfil a human need. The stage we are at in Europe just now is such that we are simply not ready for internationalism. We will not be able to create a democratic United States of Europe, though we may be able to create an undemocratic one. We are certainly not ready for a world without countries and without borders. We are perhaps further away from this than we have ever been. Some people may find this view overly pessimistic, but we have to face facts. The attempt to bring down borders and create unity among European countries is failing.

The two main methods by which the EU is supposed to come closer together is Schengen and the Euro. The Euro has exposed the idea that there is a single European people with a common European identity. Germans are unwilling to transfer money to Greeks, because Greeks are not Germans. Contrast this with the situation in the UK. We may squabble in Britain, but it is because we have a shared identity that we are willing to transfer money to our fellow citizens without limit. 

Well over two million EU citizens live in the UK. Rather fewer Brits live in the EU. The arrangement works pretty well. The UK economy benefits from European workers while we get to retire somewhere warmer.  The UK has been able to deal with this migration with little or no difficulty. If the UK, over the next few years, were going to receive another million people from Poland, it’s not entirely clear that we would even notice. Free movement of people within the EU has been almost entirely beneficial both to us and to those who move. Why then is Schengen failing? Why is everyone putting up fences? Schengen is collapsing because Europeans, even internationalists, have discovered the limit to their internationalism.

While most EU countries can accept without much difficulty migration from within the EU, migration from outside the EU is a different matter. If we were all complete internationalists, why should we care where someone comes from? Why do we discriminate against our fellow human beings? Why don’t we just bring down all the fences and let in everyone who wants to come? What would happen if we did?

In the course of a few weeks last year over a million people arrived in Germany. How many would arrive if we removed all restrictions and allowed everyone to come. The EU predicts that in the next couple of years another three million migrants will arrive. What if we were even more welcoming? How many might come then? Where would they live? We don’t know. But in all likelihood they would live in various suburbs of large cities with each other. People tend to want to live with others who are similar to them. They want to be able to speak their native language and to be amongst people who think and act as they do. It is natural for them to want to do this.

Over the next few years and especially if the number of migrants increases greatly, a number of European cities are going to gain suburbs which will be dominated by people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East. Will these cities be safer or less safe than they are now? If you think they will be safer, then by all means tear down all the fences and allow in everyone who wants to come. If on the other hand you think that certain suburbs of Paris or Brussels are not the safest places in Europe, then perhaps you will begin to understand why other Europeans are not quite as internationalist as you are. If you don’t want such a suburb where you live, you might also admit that you too are not quite the internationalist you thought yourself to be.

When something bad happens it is important to blame those who did it and not to blame those who did nothing wrong. I am not to blame for the fact that Britain took part in the slave trade, nor is a modern day Russian to blame for the awful things that happened in the 1930s. Collective guilt and collective punishment means punishing the innocent. It is senseless therefore to blame the group for the actions of an individual. Terrorism is the fault of terrorists, it isn’t the fault of anyone else.

But we are ignoring the lessons of history if we think that Europe can absorb an indefinite amount of people from the Middle East and North Africa. We only have Europe at all because, for example, at the Battle of Tours in 732 the Franks were able to defeat the Umayyad Caliphate. We only have countries like Greece, Bulgaria and Romania because they were able in the 19th century to liberate themselves from the Ottoman Empire. Europe would be very different indeed today if during the siege ofVienna in 1683 someone had chosen to open the gate.

In the process of driving out the Moors from Spain many innocent people were killed. It wasn’t just soldiers, who were defeated, but their wives and their children. People who had been born in Al Andalus and whose family had lived there for centuries were exiled forever. Such experiences must have been commonplace not only in Spain, but throughout Eastern and Southern Europe. Many blameless people must have suffered. They must have found this terribly unjust. But it is on this foundation that the Europe that we know was built. Without it we wouldn’t have the EU, because we wouldn’t have Europe. The Pope may complain about walls, but if it hadn't been for the reversal of the conquest of parts of Italy, we wouldn't have a Pope.    

I want to treat everyone as an equal and not to be unjust or unkind to anyone I meet. The UK has benefited from people coming here from all over the world. But there has to be a limit. No reasonable person can be against all migration. Moreover, we must do what we can to help those who are suffering because of war, poverty and persecution. But we do not have an obligation to harm our own society. If helping an unlimited number of migrants means making our own society less safe, then I’m sorry but there must be a limit to our help.

The EU’s failure to control its borders is the greatest threat to our security in decades. An unarmed army can more easily occupy territory precisely because there is no-one to fight. If the EU is going to allow millions of migrants to become EU citizens, this has the power to change Europe in the short and the long term beyond all recognition. In that case for safety’s sake it may be necessary for the UK to think seriously about whether we wish to continue to allow unlimited migration from the EU. If the EU can’t control its external border, it will be too unsafe for the UK to remain in the EU.

It’s time for us all to be honest with ourselves. Of course we all want to feel virtuous and internationalist, but does being in the EU help or hinder the UK in our task of defending our border? Do EU rules prevent us from deporting those people who we know hate the UK and wish to do us harm? Will the EU force us to accept a share of the migrants that are a consequence of its own failure to defend Europe’s border? Would it be easier for the UK to determine who we want to allow to come here if UK law were not subordinate to EU law? The answer to all these questions is obvious.

There are some people who think that there is nothing to be done and we just have to accept that our cities will be under constant threat and that the danger will continue to grow.  No doubt there were defeatists at each of the key moments of European history when we first halted an enemy who until that point had seemed unstoppable and then gradually turned defeat into victory.  

Don't be pessimistic, don't be defeatist. With a British Government that is not subordinate to anyone else and with a British people confident that it can meet all challenges and win, there is no limit to what we can do. We don't know what dangers the future will bring, but we know that every time we have been victorious in the past it was because we have had a UK Parliament constrained only by itself. Until and unless we restore this, we will always be at risk from the decisions of others over which we have no control. Let us have the confidence to defeat all future dangers in the way that we have always done, by relying most of all on ourselves. After all, we've a pretty good record of doing so. 

Sorting the sheep from the goats

Until relatively recently most Christians in Europe thought that their beliefs could be imposed on others. There were religious wars between Catholics and Protestants in order to do this. At times the law said I had to practice Christianity in this way, at times it said I had to practice it in that way. There were fanatics who were willing to burn at the stake someone who disagreed with them over matters which today seem trivial. What does it really matter if there are bishops or if there are not? What does it matter how you interpret a clause in the Nicene Creed, given that the whole matter is impossible to determine one way or another?

Imagine if there were in the world, once more, Christian fanatics, who wished to impose their religious views on other people. Imagine if they described ordinary Christians like me as being apostates for failing to live up to the true ideals of Christianity. Imagine if they wanted to rule Britain such that everyone had to follow their way of living a Christian life and wished to persecute those they disagreed with. They might, for instance, argue that homosexuals had to be punished. They might consider that adultery should lead to prison or worse. They might think that women should be condemned for dressing immodestly or not having their head covered in church. This is not so very far-fetched. The vast majority of Christians thought like this only a few centuries ago. Most Christians until very recently favoured some form of theocracy. They thought that everyone should more or less be compelled to go to church and that the law should reflect their interpretation of Christianity and this should be imposed on everybody.  

How would I as a Christian respond to such people if they existed today? I would respond in exactly the same way as I respond to the existence of Christian fanatics in the past. I would say that they have misunderstood the Gospels. The Christian Kingdom is not of this world. To try to impose it is simply to misunderstand it. Christianity is not a religion of law. Christ came to this world to break the law. He did so frequently and for this reason he was killed. Christian faith is a matter of choice. It has nothing to do with numbers. It matters not one little bit if only one person believes the truth. Truth, after all, is not democratic.

But imagine if somewhere in the world today there were a country that had a medieval, fanatical view of Christianity. Imagine if that country wished to expand and spread its version of Christianity. Imagine if it were called the Christian State. How would I as a Christian respond?

If this Christian State were willing to remain within its own borders, if it were no threat whatsoever to my way of life, or the life of my friends and allies, I might be inclined to leave it alone. But what if the Christian State used its fanatical version of Christianity in order to take over other countries? What if it used this form of Christianity to do great evil both in its own country and elsewhere? What if it encouraged moderate Christians all around the world to be fanatics? What would I do then?

Imagine if virtually every terrorist act around the world was done in the name of Christianity by people who thought of themselves as Christian to the highest degree possible. Would I as a Christian say that this has nothing to do with Christianity? No, for that would be to deny that a problem exists and that this problem concerns me? If Christianity is not about truth, then what is it about? Instead of living in denial I would instead use Christianity as my weapon of choice to attack those who misrepresent the Gospels. But above all else I would no more deny that these fanatics were Christians than I would deny Tomás de Torquemada was a Christian or that Rodrigo Borgia was a Pope.

How would I respond to this Christian State that exported terrorism.  I would firstly recognise that the Christian State was Christian. I would not try to come up with ways of disguising this fact, because I would recognise that facing up to facts no matter how unpleasant or uncomfortable was the only way to address the problem.  To deny that the Christian State was Christian would mean that I would logically have to deny that Spain, or Britain or France had been Christian during the Middle Ages when they too at times had behaved in barbarous ways. Only by understanding that the Christian State is Christian, could I point out that it is a version of Christianity that I despise. How can I persuade a Christian that he has misunderstood the Gospels if I deny that he is a Christian?

How would I respond if a certain proportion of Christians living in the UK were fanatics who wanted the Christian State to succeed in bringing theocracy to Britain?  Well obviously I would try to find out who they were, I would then try to persuade them of their error and convince, or even compel, them to cease. I would do this precisely because I am a Christian.

What if things became so bad in the Christian State that millions of people living there wanted to escape? I would naturally be concerned for their welfare. I would try to help, but I would also be very careful. The conditions that gave rise to the Christian State were that the people living there were at an historical stage which led to Christian fanaticism. After all, we burned heretics in Britain because that was how people in Britain thought at that point in history.  They thought burning was the correct response to heresy. It took centuries of historical development before we learned not to think in this way. Well imagine if there were a Christian State today where there was burning of heretics. What if millions of people wanted to escape that Christian State and live here? Should we let them all come? This is our problem however. We know that some people in the Christian State support fanaticism.  No doubt most do not, but some do. The people of the Christian State, in general, would be at an historical stage which still saw burning at the stake and theocracy as the way to respond to differences of opinion on religious matters. After all, those Protestants who fled persecution during the reign of Mary Tudor, thought it correct to burn Catholics in response during the reign of Elizabeth the First. It was the intolerance of people in general whether Catholic or Protestant that placed the wood around the stake. 

It would therefore be the historical stage of the people as a whole that gave rise to the Christian State.  It wouldn't just happen accidently. But then how are we supposed to tell who is the fanatic and who is not? What if five or perhaps even ten percent were fanatics and we allowed one million refugees from the Christian State to come here? Would that make our country safer or more dangerous? I think we would quite rightly, very carefully, scrutinise everyone who wanted to come and for our own safety we would set strict limits, even though we felt compassion and also wanted to help. The Christian State would be desperate to export its fanatical version of Christianity around the world. Above all, we would not want to help them to do this.  

If the Christian State became a threat to the way of life of people of all faiths living in Britain how would I respond? Would I decide that it was wrong to fight against other Christians? Well we have in the past been more than willing to fight against other Christians. Germany, after all, was a Christian country and we fought a world war against them twice in one century. If an ideology is wrong or if it does great evil, it matters not one little bit to me that the people who follow that ideology are Christians. What if it became necessary for Britain and other countries to fight the Christian State? This might happen because people were carrying out acts of Christian terrorism in the name of Christianity. If that were to happen I wouldn't try to hide behind words like "militant", nor would I turn Christian into "Christianism" as if that in any way changed either the meaning or the reality. It might also be necessary to fight if ever more Christians in Britain were travelling to the Christian State in order to learn how to kill and maim. Would I as a Christian oppose such military action? No of course not. I would be grateful that something was being done against these fanatics who had so misunderstood the Gospels.

My fight would not, of course, be against ordinary Christians who follow Christianity in the way that I think it ought to be followed. I believe Christianity is a religion of peace, but what to do about those Christians who disagree? What to do about those Christians who think Christianity is about fanaticism, terrorism, intolerance and theocracy. Against those Christians I would fight.  I would not be fighting against Christianity as it ought to be understood. If that were the case I would be fighting against myself.  I would rather be making a clear distinction between the sheep and the goats. In this way I would be very clear with my fellow Christians, that theocracy, persecution and terrorism were wrong. Fanaticism and intolerance puts you amongst the goats. If that’s what you want, then you are my enemy.  I would want to fight against you and your kind everywhere in the name of Christianity. What's more I would do so precisely because I am a Christian. 

ISIS won't check the SNP's voting record

If you could replay May and June 1940, I think, nine times out of ten Britain would emerge defeated. If our armies had been destroyed at Dunkirk, we would have surrendered. It took an unlikely combination of German incompetence and something approaching a miracle that this did not occur. The result of this defeat would have been occupation and our only hope of liberation would have lain with the Red Army. History has the possibility to turn out very differently indeed.

Those few days, when realistically we had no hope at all and yet somehow remained undefeated, are now seventy five years ago. Only some people now in their eighties can even remember that period. Only a very few indeed in their late nineties can have been there. In the time since we have had it relatively easy. If you make a total of UK war deaths since 1945 it comes to comes to around 7500. We lost three times as many on one morning in July 1916. Somehow through this period of relative peace we have forgotten the lessons of war or perhaps rather drawn the wrong conclusions.

In May 1940, what percentage of Scots thought that the war had nothing to do with them? What percentage thought, if only we Scots don’t do anything nasty to the Germans, they will leave us alone? What percentage indeed thought that we were fighting England’s war or that it had been wrong to fight? Only a few Scottish nationalists plotting treason thought this, but their party was a joke and their cause was ridiculed if it was known about at all. At this point in our history virtually every Scot was equally proud of being British as Scottish. We had some of the best regiments in the British army and our soldiers had a reputation that few indeed could better. This reputation stretched back hundreds of years. It was a Scottish regiment which formed the “Thin Red Line” at Balaclava. They came to epitomise the spirit of the whole British Army. If it had been up to the SNP they would not have been there at all.

Even to look briefly at the history of warfare is to see that wars are frequently fought for reasons that look odd, or even trivial. The Crimean War was a dispute about access to churches in Jerusalem. The Franco-Prussian war was a dispute about who would occupy the throne in Spain together with a rather rude telegram from a town called Ems. Wars have been fought for far less sensible reasons than overthrowing dictators or freeing a country from evil.

Always call a thing what it is. We are plagued at the moment by an inability to agree on a name for our enemy.  I call them ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), because that is what they call themselves. It is hard to think of a regime that has behaved more barbarously in history. There would have been a time when the mere existence of such a power was enough reason for us to do all in our power to destroy it. This would be the case even if these people were no threat to us.  But they are. Every week it seems there are people who want to kill in the name of ISIS. What would it take for the SNP to decide that now is the time to do something, rather than what amounts to nothing? What if there were an attack on a Scottish city? The folly however is that if there were such an attack it wouldn’t be ISIS that was blamed. Guess who would be blamed.

We are all equally at risk. We are at risk whether we do something or we do nothing. As long as ISIS exists there will always be that threat. If on the other hand we could defeat ISIS militarily, there would be a chance that the threat would be at least diminished.

Why such reluctance to take military action? We have become weak and decadent and we have forgotten the true lessons of war. War at times is necessary. It is necessary when a problem cannot possibly be solved diplomatically. It is necessary when a threat is growing and when we can predict that it will become ever more dangerous if it is not confronted and destroyed. This is why we went to war in 1939.

The problem is that during the long period of relative peace since 1945 we have had a relentless message of pacifism. Children are almost exclusively taught about the horror and the futility of World War One. This may be part of the story, but it is not the whole story. Every film, every novel about war is described as anti-war.  Moreover, we have got to the stage where in order to walk down the street, primary school children need to wear fluorescent yellow bibs. We are adverse to all risk and go through our lives in fear of the most trivial danger. What became of the people that we once were? Where are the people of May 1940? They are all either dead or else they have been forgotten.

There are some people who are genuinely opposed to all war. There are some who think we should only use our military to defend ourselves and never for attack. Many people in Britain have seen the result of our wars in places like Iraq and Afghanistan and concluded that it’s not worth getting involved.  I disagree with the morality of non-resistance for there are circumstances when it allows evil to triumph. Neutrality frequently depends on collaboration with evil and anyway depends on the enemy respecting that neutrality. Sometimes in order to defend yourself, it’s necessary to attack. Few people however are morally opposed to war in all circumstances. The main reason for opposition to fighting ISIS is recent experience. Our interventions lately have not gone well. But the wrong lesson is being learned.

Due to the long period since 1945 when we have not fought a truly serious war we have forgotten how to win. No-one in Britain after May 1940 could have been mistaken about the seriousness of the threat that we faced. We therefore fought accordingly. Imagine if we had fought against the Nazis as we have recently fought against Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.

Imagine if the BBC had refused to take sides during World War II and had given equal weight to what the Germans said as to what our side said. Imagine if they had interviewed the inhabitants of Hamburg after the fire storm raid of  July 1943. Well here we have little Otto, he has been badly burned and his Mummy and Daddy have been killed. Imagine if every British casualty was paraded through a town in England in a flag draped coffin. Imagine if every girlfriend, wife and mother was interviewed and allowed to complain about each death. Imagine if during the battle for Normandy each of our soldiers knew that if he killed a German soldier when he ought not to have done so, he would go to prison for murder. Imagine if every time more than two or three British soldiers died this was described as heavy casualties. Under these circumstances would we have emerged victorious or would we rather have been defeated?

It is the way we fight wars today that guarantees our defeat. We only fight in this way because we do not feel that we are really threatened. If the Cold War had become hot and a conventional battle had taken place, I assure you we would not have fought with one hand tied behind our back. We would not have had briefings every day where the only issue of consequence was enemy civilian casualties.  Faced with such a threat we would have done what it takes to win.

It is precisely because since 1945 we have felt more or less safe that we have lost the ability to fight. We have gradually lost the ability to accept even moderate causalities. Every military death is a tragedy for friends and family, but today we think that losing one soldier a week in a war amounts to unacceptable losses. If that is the case, we may as well disband the army. It is unrealistic. It is indeed childish to get involved in such conflicts if we cannot respond to them in a more adult way. At one point in the Battle of Stalingrad the life expectancy of a Soviet soldier was twenty minutes. It was frequently less than 24 hours. These are heavy casualties.

The problem with our recent conflicts in places like Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan has not so much been war as peace. We have been able to defeat the forces of our enemies reasonably easily, but we have left these places worse than we found them. Once more we have forgotten the lessons of 1945.

Imagine what would have happened if a town in Germany had continued to resist after the Red Army had conquered it. What would have happened? Imagine if Nazis had continued to fight without uniforms. What would have happened to them? This is how you win.

It is not accidental that there are almost no Nazis left in Germany today. We conquered Germany and we then ruled there until they had learned their lesson. We imposed democracy on our former enemy and turned him into our friend. He didn’t have any choice in this. This is how you win long term.

What is the level of threat today against Britain? I don’t know. No-one does. But I don’t think there is limit to what ISIS will try to do. If they could they would conquer our country and rule it as they do in Syria and Iraq. They couldn’t do so now, but if left unchecked, who knows what they are capable of. It is not May 1940, but it is perhaps 1935 or 1936.

Scotland is threatened simply because we exist. We can no more escape the threat now than we could in May 1940. The idea that ISIS will check the voting record of the SNP is frankly comical. They will however, be delighted that the UK is divided against itself and that so many Scots, even those who consider themselves to be patriots, have forgotten our reputation as the very best of fighters. We have a common enemy, we will need to unite to defeat it and we will have to fight to win.

There are no safe spaces now

When did the SNP last support a war? Was it in 1314 or was it in 1745? They certainly didn’t support “England’s war” in 1939, nor as far as I recall have they supported any war since. Nicola Sturgeon might have pretended that she would listen to the arguments made by David Cameron and the UK Government, but she was listening in the same way as Nelson was seeing when he put a telescope to his blind eye and declared that he could see no ships. There was never any chance that the SNP would support Britain, as once more it looks likely that our forces will go to war. Have the SNP ever supported Britain in anything whatsoever?

The SNP may not be as vocal about it, but with regard to defence they are very similar indeed to Jeremy Corbyn. Whatever side Britain is on, Mr Corbyn appears always to take the opposite. When the IRA were attacking us, he’d have their supporters to lunch. He would have been delighted to hand over the Falkland Islands to Argentina. I’m quite sure he would have preferred being ruled by the Soviet Union as at least that would have brought about socialism. No doubt, he would prefer being ruled by Hamas than the Tory party. In order to make any and all of these things more likely he would have unilaterally given up all of our nuclear weapons without expecting anything in return. It’s the gesture, after all, that counts.

Quite a lot of SNP supporters, especially those who live in the West of Scotland have similar sympathies to Mr Corbyn. They too hate Britain and express sympathy for "militants" whether in Northern Ireland or in parts of the Middle East. This is the trouble with terrorism. Once you go down the route of supporting the cause, whether it’s a united Ireland or the destruction of Israel, you have a tendency to at least in part support the means. Mr Corbyn could never quite bring himself to condemn IRA terrorism without at the same time condemning British terrorism. The UK’s armed forces were always morally equivalent to the people they were fighting. After all Mr Corbyn shared the IRA's aims and objectives, though, of course, he deplored their tactics, or was it that he deplored the British army for provoking these tactics?

Did Mr Corbyn and friends ever condemn terrorism when it was directed against Israel? Or did they rather excuse and explain this terrorism simply by means of the fact that Israel existed. But this is our problem really. The terrorism that has been directed against Israel for the past decades is the same terrorism that is now directed against us.

When all of Israel’s neighbours decided to attack simultaneously in June 1967, they lost in six days. They tried again in 1973 and lost again. It was the failure of these military actions above all that gave rise to terrorism as a tactic. They could not defeat Israel with armies so instead they tried insurgency and terrorism.

Terrorism was rather different in the 1960s and 1970s. There were lots of hijackings. Planes would end up on a runway somewhere and there would be negotiations. This sort of thing doesn’t happen anymore, does it? There were shootings, but those who did the shooting nearly always wanted to get away. That too doesn’t happen anymore.

Terrorism in the 1970s outraged us, but both in Northern Ireland and in the Middle East it wasn’t like today. There were limits. It was almost as if there were rules. But the trouble with terrorism is that if you don’t defeat it, there is the tendency for it to get much worse.

We all remember the hostages who were taken in the 1980s. We were all outraged by the long captivity of people like Terry Waite. But the situation is incomparably worse today. If someone is taken hostage now in Syria or Iraq what are the chances of them surviving?

Terrorists today don’t hijack planes, they blow them up or crash them into buildings. That is precisely why there are no hijackings anymore. Any hijacked plane would immediately be shot down. Terrorists nowadays are not interested in negotiation and they are not interested in survival. This is the fundamental difference.

In the 1970s we were dealing with secular terrorism and for that reason the terrorist wanted to survive. Now we are dealing with religious terrorism and the terrorist doesn’t care if he survives on Earth, for he believes that he will survive and be reward in paradise. If that were not the case, suicide bombing would make no sense whatsoever.

The problem we have though is that someone like Mr Corbyn, understands and sympathises with people who blow themselves up in Israel. He thinks their cause is just and is an understandable reaction to injustice by Israel. There are many people in Britain who agree with him, at least to an extent. But here is our problem, the person who blows himself up fighting against Israel is not in any meaningful sense different from the person who blows himself up flying his plane into the World Trade Centre, who blows himself up on the Tube, or who shoots hundreds of people in Paris and dies in the process. These people will all agree with each other and think each of their causes is just. No doubt, this is because it is the same cause.

Barbarism if left unchecked leads to ever greater levels of barbarism. We know this from the conduct of the German Army in World War II. Once you go down that route there is practically speaking no limit to what men will do to other men. We have now reached a level of barbarity in the Middle East that no-one could have imagined in the 1970s. What will it be like in twenty years’ time if it is not stopped now? What new methods of torture will these people find? What new methods of attacking us will they discover? If they use Kalashnikovs today, who is to say that they will not use chemical weapons tomorrow?

Some people think that pacifism will defend us against terrorism. In this respect both Mr Corbyn and the SNP are in agreement. They think that if we leave the terrorists alone, they won’t attack us. They think that Middle Eastern terrorism is caused by injustice in the Middle East. They think the solution therefore is to address this injustice. They think moreover that it is our fault that there are terrorists. If we had not taken part in prior wars, if we had not been imperialists, then no-one would want to hurt us. They explain terrorism and to an extent therefore justify it.

Pacifism is a nice ideal. It’s easy to admire Gandhi’s passive resistance. It can work too. But what do you think would have been the result if the Soviet Union had responded to Operation Barbarossa with passive resistance? If Gandhi had tried to fight the Imperial Japanese army with pacifism, they would simply have crushed him on the first day. Pacifism only worked because Gandhi was up against a reasonable opponent, the British, who had a conscience. Does anyone seriously think that our opponent today has a conscience?

The SNP’s only response to military threat is to unilaterally get rid of our nuclear weapons and to promise never to attack anyone ever. Pound for pound we get more deterrence out of Trident than out of all of the rest of our armed forces put together. None of this much mattered before when the SNP only had a handful of MPs, but now they actually have influence.  The UK and the West in general is faced with a dangerous threat that is going to get worse if we don’t do something about it. Far too many people on the Left sympathise too much with our enemies and would do all they can to undermine Britain.  Now is not the time for division. We cannot afford weakness and break-up any more than France can.

We will not defeat terrorism in the Middle East by air strikes alone. But the fact that it will not be enough is not a reason for doing nothing. The wars we have taken part in recently have not gone well, but the fault was not so much that we fought, but how we fought. If Iraq were prosperous, democratic, free and peaceful today, no-one would remember anything else about that war. The problem is that we have lost the will to fight like we did during World War II. We have become decadent and unwilling to do what is necessary, above all unwilling to take even light casualties. In our universities some students talk of “safe spaces” where they won’t be able to hear anything they disagree with. They want to be given “trigger warnings” in case they read something unpleasant in Ovid or find prejudice in the plays of Shakespeare. Many people in the West are unable even to think or speak the truth lest it causes offence. We each have a little censor saying don't write that, don't think that someone might call you a nasty name.  

I’m sorry folks, there are no safe spaces after Paris. You won’t be given a warning if someone pulls the trigger. It is time, above all, for us to tell the truth about the threat we face.

Don’t sympathise with terrorism. Don’t try to justify or understand it. Don’t sympathise with the causes of those who hate us. Fight them.

Pacifism will not help us. Our enemies will simply laugh at our weakness. Now is the time rather to do what our enemy least wants and make him cease laughing and thinking of us as weak. It is always difficult to fight against people who don’t care if they live or die. The United States Navy discovered this in 1944. Religious fanaticism is a powerful force that can motivate and boost morale, but we have defeated fanaticism before and we can do so again.  

Scottish politics and the attempt to divide our country appear ludicrously parochial now. What would it take for Scottish nationalists to realise that there are more important things than hating the UK, Westminster and Tories? They are stuck in a 1980s time-warp endlessly debating nuclear disarmament and re-fighting the battles of the Middle Ages rather than those of today. Really what would it take for the SNP to wake up and face up to the threat of 2015 rather than 1314? If Paris isn’t enough, what would be? It's all very well being insular, but there are no safe spaces now.  Not here, nor anywhere else.