Nosemonkey's EUtopia

In search of a European identity

November 19, 2007
by Nosemonkey
Comments Off on links for 2007-11-19

links for 2007-11-19

November 18, 2007
by Nosemonkey
Comments Off on Russian elections: two weeks to go

Russian elections: two weeks to go

And it doesn’t look good so far, the FT noting that

Europe’s main election monitoring group said on Friday it was scrapping plans to deploy observers to Russia’s forthcoming parliamentary elections in a decision that could cast doubt on the integrity of the poll.

The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe claimed Moscow had imposed “unprecedented restrictions” on its activities. Russia had slashed the number of observers it would admit to the December 2 election and then repeatedly delayed issuing visas for OSCE monitors.

…It will highlight concerns over a poll that has already been marred by changes to electoral laws that look likely to ensure no opposition party will pass the 7 per cent barrier required to win a parliamentary seat, especially as opposition parties have faced a clampdown on campaigning.

But the thing is, as Henry points out at Crooked Timber, there isn’t really any need for Putin’s lot to falsify results, stuff ballots or bribe and intimidate voters – because pretty much everyone is likely to vote for the current government anyway. The implications of the move, however, could be major. Back to Henry:

“how are autocrats in other states (e.g. those in Central Asia) going to respond? My best guess is that those countries that see benefits from closer integration with the West (e.g. Georgia, the Ukraine) will continue to invite external election monitors, while those that don’t will follow Russia’s lead. If this prediction bears out, we will see a little bit of Cold War politics beginning to seep back, with an increase in hostility between Russia and its satellites in Central Asia and elsewhere (anomalies such as Belarus and Moldova) on the one hand, and West and Central European democracies on the other, with both sides contending for influence over shaky democracies in between (such as Georgia and the Ukraine). All of which would intersect in complicated ways with energy politics in the region.”

It’s also worth noting that Putin’s already announced post-election intentions:

“President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that an overwhelming victory for United Russia in Dec. 2 elections would give him the “moral right” to maintain a strong influence in the country… ‘If the people vote for United Russia, whose list I lead, it means that they trust me and, in turn, means that I will have the moral right to hold those in the Duma and the Cabinet responsible for the implementation of the objectives that have been identified so far,’ Putin said in televised remarks from Krasnoyarsk.”

So make no mistake – Putin may be leaving the presidency come March, but the next few weeks, especially after the parliamentary elections two weeks today, are going to be when he starts consolidating his position. (Indeed, he may already have started.) What his next move will be is anyone’s guess – but it will be Putin who decides Russia’s direction, of that you can be sure…


—

For a bit of background on why this is all so important when the election results and Putin’s continued hold on power are pretty much foregone conclusions, check out the European Council on Foreign Relations’ Power Audit of EU-Russia Relations (PDF) and/or Siberian Light’s quick summary, have a listen to the recent National Public Radio debate Is Russia Becoming Our Enemy Again? (or read the transcript – PDF), moderated by blogging Economist journo Edward Lucas (who has a book coming out in February, just in time for the Presidential elections, entitled The New Cold War: How the Kremlin Menaces Both Russia and the West)

November 16, 2007
by Nosemonkey
1 Comment

Saudi Arabia

For the record, I despise this regime more than words can express.

What in hell’s name are we doing assorting with such people? This kind of wanton, gleefully unjust barbarity puts them on a par with the Taleban, while the 9/11 terrorists were primarily Saudi. Yet rather than invade to overthrow the bastards, we faun in front of them with full red carpet treatment and sell them billions of pounds’ worth of high-tech (and not so high-tech) weaponry, backed up with bribery and corruption.

Yes, getting oil’s lovely. But it’s not THAT lovely, surely?

(Yet another reason why I don’t write about the middle east – it simply enrages and disgusts me too much…)

November 16, 2007
by Nosemonkey
7 Comments

Brown, Miliband and the EU

Well, he may have ignored it for months, but now it’s finally taking shape – although it hardly seems to be overly well thought-out.

So, was Foreign Secretary David Miliband’s choice of Bruges to deliver his first EU policy speech symbolic? It is, after all, the scene of the moment when Maggie Thatcher allowed her (entirely understandable) irritation with the then EEC to bubble over into hyperbole and hysteria back in 1988, inspiring the formation of the staunchly anti-EU thinktank the Bruges Group in the process.

Well, considering Miliband quoted the Iron Lady at length in a subsection to his speech headed “Twenty Years on from the Bruges Speech”, you can be certain that he was at least aware of the potential symbolism. But how different is his language, his approach?
Continue Reading →

November 15, 2007
by Nosemonkey
4 Comments

On foreign policy speeches, the elephant in the room, and a slight shift in focus

For a largely foreign policy-focussed blog, Gordon Brown’s offered little of any interest since becoming Prime Minister. He simply doesn’t seem to have much interest in the rest of the world, happily ignoring both the EU and the US for weeks on end, and seemingly making little effort to make friends on the international stage.

Sod his speech the other day. It struck me as too full of platitudes to be of any use (“the first duty of government [is] the protection of the British national interest”, “global challenges need global solutions” etc.), with all kinds of oddness piled on top:

“I want to play my part in helping the European Union move away from its past preoccupation with inward looking institutional reform and I will work with others to propose a comprehensive agenda for a Global Europe – a Europe that is outward looking, open, internationalist, able to effectively respond both through internal reform and external action to the economic, security and environmental imperatives of globalisation.”

Does Brown not get that further institutional reform of the EU – including reforms beyond the vague compromises of the reform treaty – is vital for it to continue to function, or is he simply hoping to avoid any more of it, and thus further irritating spats about referenda?

Either way, it matters not a jot – because Gordon Brown is far too weak to have any significant impact on European (let alone global) relations at the moment. It looks like he’s already buggered his chances of getting in with Bush, and with the race to succeed old George still too close to call, he’s got no idea which candidates to start sucking up to for the post-November 2008 period, by which time Brown will, in any case, be gearing up for an election of his own.

Having failed to call an election this autumn, Brown finds himself with two years to make an impact on the international scene at the very worst time, with the US presidency in transition – and, more importantly, an insanely secure and charismatic internationalist French president charging around making friends with everyone. Barely at the start of his first term as president, still hugely popular, with a big parliamentary majority to back him up – he’s secure, will be around for a long time, and seems to have a knack for becoming best buddies with whichever world leader he happens to be with at the time.

With Angela Merkel’s coalition on the verge of collapse in Germany, Prodi again embroiled in the type of controversy that can always end the inevitably short-lived governments of Italy, and Zapatero looking weak in Spain after this year’s tight local elections (and a general election due next year), and Brown rocking backwards and forwards singing to himself with his eyes closed and fingers in his ears whenever anyone mentions the EU, it is again to France – Sarkozy – that Europe must look for leadership.

So, ignore Gordon Brown’s speech, and instead look to Sarkozy’s speech at the European Parliament the other day and speech to the US Congress a week or so ago if you want to get an idea of where foreign policy is really going to be focussed.

Brown can ramble on about Iran as much as he likes, but it’s what happens in Europe, not the middle east, that will have the most impact on Britain in the next few years – if he’s serious about protecting the British national interest (whatever that may be…), he’d do well to get in with Sarkozy sharpish to head off any problematic reforms and foreign policy objectives before France manages to get them so secure on the agenda that they’re impossible to remove. Making friends with Sarkozy is also essential to start shaping the inevitable additional changes within the EU before they really start to form, in the wake of the reform treaty’s bad compromises. All Brown’s done so far is bury his head in the sand and hope all the various EU-related problems somehow go away.

But, of course, what everyone’s really ignoring – and Sarkozy is, at least publicly, as guilty of this as anyone – is Russia. Sod the middle east, sod institutional reform, sod further expansion and sod terrorism – Russia is Europe’s single biggest problem. Be it cyber-warfare against Estonia, cutting off gas supplies to Ukraine, killing people on the streets of London, or threatening countries willing to do a deal with the US on missile defence, Russia is throwing its weight around big style – and something needs to be done to calm the bear.

Sarkozy is in a very good position to do this – capitalising on his nascent friendship with Putin (who is bound to maintain influence even after the presidential elections in the spring) as well as the long friendship between France and Russia. Brown’s government, meanwhile, has merely escalated the post-Litvinenko tensions by chucking out diplomats and rattling sabres – which helps precisely no one, and has got us precisely nowhere.

If one thing is a given, it’s that keeping Russia on board is vital not just for Europe’s energy future but also for the stability of the countries on the European fringe (both new EU member states and those that may become such in a few years). With energy supplies likely to become ever more of a central issue over the next few years as the middle east remains unstable, Russia’s dominance of the Asian oil and gas fields, and ability to control pretty much all supply lines in to Europe from the east (see map – PDF), means that Moscow/Putin has more ability to influence Europe than pretty much anyone else. Until Turkey and Georgia are sufficiently stabilised and, ideally, brought in to the EU (allowing an alternate route, via the Caspian Sea, for the oil and gas of Central Asia without having to pass through Russia or the middle east at all), maintaining friendly relations with Russia is vital.

So, expect more on Sarkozy here over the next few months – as well as rather more on Russia-EU relations in the run-up to the Presidential elections in March, and the Duma elections on 2nd December. Sarkozy is likely to dominate the EU for at least another four years, and Russia’s impact is only going to increase as oil and gas supplies dwindle – it would be foolish for anyone trying to take the broad view of EU affairs to ignore this any longer.

November 12, 2007
by Nosemonkey
2 Comments

Xenophobes – dontcha just love ’em?

To be fair, it’s taken the far right Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty European Parliament group – that delightful organisation that combines everyone from convicted fraudsters to French presidential runners-up and the granddaughters of fascist dictators – far longer to disintegrate than I expected. After all, within a few days of the group forming there were all kinds of little scandals that looked like it would face a premature end.

However, since January there’s been very little cropping up about the strange assortment of racist idiots that makes up the group – my Google News alert, set up eleven months ago on the group’s formation, has sent through a grand total of 28 emails in that time, few of them overly exciting. The last was when the group’s sole British member, ex-UKIPer Ashley Mote, got done for fraud back in August. As with so many eurosceptic MEPs (*cough*Kilroy*cough*), it seemed that most of the ITS lot were more than happy to slag off the EU while still happily rolling in to Brussels to collect their pay cheques and expenses, without actually doing much of anything either to advance their own cause (for which they were, of course, elected) or to add constructively to the various bits of legislation that have been knocking around over the last year, and which could be improved (or have their impact lessened) by a bit of constructive criticism.

Now, however, they’re getting more press again – and hilarious press it is too. Because, as Der Spiegel notes, it’s all due to the fact that western European quasi-fascist xenophobes rather look down on eastern European quasi-fascist xenophobes. And, sadly for the eastern Europeans, the western Europeans also have very little interest in distinguishing between Romanians and Roma, Serbs or Slavs, Slovaks or Slovenians. That’s the thing with holding prejudices, you see – the details don’t really matter, it’s all about the broad group generalisations, even when the group is an entirely artificial one that exists only in your own head.

As I’ve been rather busy recently, I’m late with this, and soMr Eugenides has already summed the situation up nicely:

“It must come as a shock to these delightful people to learn that, as far as their quasi-fascist mates are concerned, they all look the same anyway”

It is rather amusing – but also shows one of the key problems for eurosceptics EU-wide: if you want to fight the EU, you need a broader, cross-boarder coalition with likeminded groups. But when you are campaigning to get rid of the influence foreigners have in your country, and your speeches are packed full of nationalistic rhetoric, it can be very hard to keep such coalitions going, as you’re bound to insult one of your allies at some point.

Plus, of course, the very fact that you need to build coalitions with people from other member states, erm… rather goes to show that cross-border co-operation can sometimes be the only way to get things done…

November 3, 2007
by Nosemonkey
4 Comments

The problems of democratic reform

Ah yes – that’s a nice easy thing to try and summarise, isn’t it? Nonetheless, I gave it pop – trying to wrap up the dLiberation blog I’ve been writing/editing for openDemocracy for the last few weeks. Warning: it’s a bit long, and probably rather confused in places…

Other recent pieces include: European opinion (or the lack thereof), Better the devil you know? (on the impracticalities of constant referenda, and the compromises needed for democracy to function), Scientific representation and democracy (on how no representative system can ever be truly representative).

And, on a different theme, these may be of interest: No one cares about the EU (on the “referendum rally”), A distinct lack of interest (yet more about how no one cares about the EU).

Or, of course, if you’ve missed me that much you could just go and check out the rest of the coverage.

Posting is likely to be light here for another week thanks to insane workloads, but back soon.

October 25, 2007
by Nosemonkey
3 Comments

Ego-trip

As well as discovering that I am top Google result for “EU debate”, this week’s Private Eye has a piece on the sales figures of books shortlisted for this year’s Man Booker Prize. The winner, Anne Enright’s The Gathering, has apparently sold a good few hundred fewer copies (just 3,687) than the first of my own humble efforts (a guide to the films of Tim Burton, sales to date of what I thought was a fairly pathetic 4,500 or so).

October 24, 2007
by Nosemonkey
14 Comments

Labour and Tory EU attitude shifts

It’s hard not to find the idea that the EU could be moving in to the old Tory Smith Square HQ quite amusing, considering the decided shift against Europe in the party during the last thirty years.

The Tories moved in to number 32 Smith Square back in 1958 – the year after the EU was founded – before moving round the corner onto Millbank earlier this year. It was the time of Macmillan, the chap the Tories brought in to sort out the messy legacy of Churchill and Eden. Macmillan, the chap who first attempted to get Britain into the then EEC after Eden singularly failed to take any interest in the new alliance, and Churchill – despite being one of the prime instigators of the idea of European integration – deliberately ignored the new developments. Macmillan, the man who tasked Edward Heath with the job of buttering up our European cousins – a task Heath kept up with dogged determination for more than a decade until he finally managed to usher us in to the union in 1973.

It’s still quite bizarre to think that it used to be the Tories who were the party of Europe. But it was only with the onset of the rebate dispute from 1979 – with Maggie taking the then fair enough position that Britain was contributing too much to the EEC’s coffers – that the Tory love affair with Europe began to sour. Even then, the party remained largely keen on membership right up until the late 1980s (the EEC after all – and unlike the UN or USA – gave Britain its full, official support during the Falklands war), when Maggie set out her stall opposing further integration. It’s been downhill ever since, the Tories seemingly having given up any hope of the EEC/EU returning to the relatively simple customs and trading union they always wanted it to be.

Labour, meanwhile, though now painted as rabidly pro-European by the majority of anti-EU types, were constantly opposed to membership throughout the first 25 years or more of the EEC’s existence – campaigning for a “no” vote in the 1975 referendum, for Britain to leave during the 1983 general election, and for the rejection of Maastricht in 1992.

The Tories’ shift to opposition to the EU is, for me, entirely understandable. Its seemingly ever-expanding powers and swelling budget, not to mention the various aspects of the EU which have stifled free trade over the years, have increasingly begun to make it look like everything conservatives dislike – big, protectionist government.

But why have Labour shifted towards supporting the EU, having been so massively opposed to it for so many years? The rest of the radical policy changes the party’s gone through during the last twenty years make perfect sense – they’ve increased Labour’s electoral viability. But support for the EU is – rightly or wrongly – an electoral liability in the UK.

If you take the usual line that the shift from old to New Labour was designed to bring the party closer in line with the thinking of the country at large, jettisoning unpolpular socialist rhetoric in the process, how to explain the shift to favouring the EU, when the EU is supposedly so unpopular with the public? It’s something I’ve never quite understood.

October 22, 2007
by Nosemonkey
16 Comments

Swiss and Polish elections

Good work, Polish types! The nutty twins have been separated, and a more pro-EU Prime Minister finally in place. About time – as one of the largest of the new EU member states, getting Poland to fully participate in and contribute to EU affairs is essential. For the last two years, however, it’s been far more trouble than it’s worth.

The Beatroot has more – including a live-blog of the results. (And it’s well worth flicking back through the archives for lots of electoral goodness there over the last few weeks.)

Meanwhile, boo Switzerland! We don’t like to see far right parties getting the largest share of the vote, ta very much. Then again, the leftie loons who decided to start fights with the police were hardly much better. I mean, you live in Switzerland, for Christ’s sake… It’s hardly worth getting that het up about things, is it now? (This result does, of course, also mean increased Swiss isolationism, and even less chance of another referendum on EU entry being proposed any time soon. Ho hum…)

October 20, 2007
by Nosemonkey
28 Comments

On the reform treaty and a referendum (again)

The European Parliament last weekend

So, the deal’s been done – and it would be rather amiss of a blog focussing on European politics not to have another quick look, even though we’ve all known this was pretty much inevitable for months now. The only real wildcard was Poland – once they got placated, nothing was going to be allowed to get in the way. So now the only question is will the people of Europe (by which I mean us dear Brits) kick up enough of a fuss before the formal signing to throw a final spanner in the works of a treaty that’s been almost a decade in the making? (The reform treaty, after all, is designed to rectify the self same problems that 2001’s Treaty of Nice was originally supposed to solve…)

Matthew Parris gets it pretty much spot on on the whole issue of a UK referendum. He’s very good indeed on why suggesting a referendum in the first place was a fundamentally silly and unnecessary idea (like many of those from the government over the last decade, in fact), before going on:

“it’s my belief that though you can get some of the British angry about constitutional questions for some of the time, and a few of them angry for most of the time, you will never get many of them angry for much of the time. We are not hugely interested in constitutions. That’s why we don’t have one. We tend to drift away from arguments about abstract reasoning.”

A very vocal minority of EU-sceptics would have us believe that ordinary men and women on the street genuinely care about loss of sovereignty, or about being called “citizens” as well as “subjects”. Yet the vast majority simply don’t care.

What most people care about is how much money they’ve got in the bank, not strange arguments about whether decisions are best taken at a national or European level – because most people have just about as much connection to and understanding of what goes on in Westminster and Whitehall as they do the workings of the EU. (Plus, if you start getting het up about Brussels passing laws without sufficient scrutiny, sooner or later you’re going to have to face the fact that this happens in Westminster far more often than in Brussels. If you start arguing that the EU is too far removed from the people of Britain to take decisions for them, you’ll end up with people in Yorkshire or Cornwall asking why a bunch of people in London should have a say over their lives.)

As Parris notes, you ask people if they want a say, they’ll say yes whether they really care or know about an issue or not. That’s where the support for the referendum has come from. But now that the reform treaty is a done deal, the momentum will fade. If Gordon can last out to the formal signing next year, public interest will have drooped so significantly that everyone will instead be wondering what all the fuss was about. As Mark Mardell points out, Brown “calculates that while the Conservatives’ charge that he doesn’t trust the people may do some short-term damage, it’s unlikely to still be hurting him come the time for an election”.

And so the EU project continues its sluggish reform. Because despite the whoops and yells from the usual suspects, the reform treaty if anything reduces the EU’s ability to further integrate. Yes, qualified majority voting is extended in some areas, but so is the ability of the European Parliament – and national parliaments – to influence legislation, and – for the first time – it brings in ways for member states to actually leave the union. The proverbial six of one, half a dozen of the other.

Because, you see, that’s what happens when you try and get a compromise between 27 different interest groups on a document designed in committee – the end result is bland and uninspiring, with little of any real substance or radicalism about it. Which is precisely why opponents of the EU have had to shift the argument on to the referendum issue – a simpler, easier to understand issue on which everyone thinks they know what they’re talking about, and about which it’s a lot easier to get excited than a massively long legal text that hardly anyone really understands, and that’s deliberately so vague it can be interpreted in any number of ways.

(Apologies for the lack of posts here of late – they’ve all been going up at dliberation, where I’ve spent the last few days trying to do statistical analysis to work out the representativeness of the Tomorrow’s Europe poll, and increasingly coming to the opinion that the EU will never and probably should never be a democracy… On which more, no doubt, later…)

October 15, 2007
by Nosemonkey
2 Comments

Statistical help needed

OK, people, I’m trying to number-crunch the demographics of the participants of this weekend’s Tomorrow’s Europe poll to see whether they really can be seen as “representative” of the EU as a whole. But my statistical knowledge is non-existent – anyone fancy giving me a hand?

Ta!

Update: The questions I need answered can be found here, the stats themselves either as a Google spreadsheet (login as readers (@opendemocracy.net), password: readers), or as a downloadable Excel file. Ta again.

October 12, 2007
by Nosemonkey
1 Comment

Posting from Brussels

If I’ve been a bit quiet recently, it’s because I’ve been insanely busy. This is being written from a hotel alongside the European Parliament buildings in Brussels. I’m slightly tipsy on free wine, and yet rather wishing I was back in Blighty, tucked up in bed with a nice single malt and awaiting tomorrow’s France/England semi-final grudge match with relish, rather than with the vague trepidation that I might miss it.

Anyway, I’ve been covering my escapades today over at dLiberation – and excitement they do make. As such:

Off to Brussels – this morning’s confusion. Random quote: “I’ve still had no confirmation that I’m registered to attend, and have had no confirmation of the schedule, location, or anything”

On not having the foggiest – written on Eurostar on the way over. Random quote: “the events of the coming weekend remain about as clear to me as the view from the train”

Utterly unscientific first impressions – written from the bowels of the European Parliament’s press room. Random quote: “A form of torture by multilingualism.”4

Other than that, there’s been some good stuff on dLiberation over the last few days, if I say so myself (to those who aren’t aware, that’s what I’ve been busy editing for openDemocracy for the last few weeks). To wit:

A real compromise on the EU presidency – the first of a four-part series from the Director of the European Studies Centre at St Antony’s College, Oxford

The cosmopolitan problem – a look at European identity from Our Kingdom editor Jon Bright

The problems of deliberative polls: legitimacy – another critique from Professor Lupia of the University of Michigan

“The Linchpin of democratic consent” – something from me on William Hague’s speech to the Tory Party Conference

The purpose of deliberative democracy, part 2 – legitimacy – more from Professor Thompson of Harvard and Dr Guttmann of the University of Pennsylavnia

The EU and national identity, part 1 – something from me on, well, the EU and national identity…

Democracy for the sake of it? – the first part of a series on how the European Parliament functions, from Paul Davies – a fellow Sharpener type, and formerly of the Electoral Reform Society’s Make My Vote Count blog

Deliberative democracy: pros and cons – a handy overview from Professor John Gastil of the University of Washington, the editor of The Deliberative Democracy Handbook

The European Commission’s communications headache – the Commission’s new communications strategy in brief

Democracy’s risky return – Dr ian O’Flynn, Lecturer in Political Theory at the University of Newcastle, on the deliberative democracy debate

Why the nation state? – a brief piece by me on a pet topic – why are we so obsessed with national boundaries for units of governance?

A discovery about the European public sphere – me again on an interesting statistic that suggests there’s more of a European demos than we’d been led to believe

Deliberative democracy and efficiency – 30-year veteran of the European Commission and Visiting Professor at the Central European University in Budapest Thomas Glaser looks to history for some clues about the chances of deliberative democracy making an impact

The purpose of deliberative democracy, part 3: public spirit – Professor Thompson and Dr Guttmann return with more easy-to-understand political theory

The subsidiarity problem, part 1 – something from me at an idea that’s meant to lie at the heart of the EU, but rarely seems to

Decisions must be taken as closely as possible to the citizen” – more on subsidiarity’s failings

The purpose of deliberative democracy, part 4: respect – Thompson and Guttmann’s penultimate part

“Substantially different” vs. “Substantially equivalent” – who’s right on the Reform Treaty, the government or the European Scrutiny Committee? I have a quick gander

Democracy for the sake of it? Part 2 – Paul Davies returns with more accessible European Parliament goodness

The EU in microcosm? Comparing the Tomorrow’s Europe poll with another recent investigation – which revealed something I reckon’s rather significant

The purpose of deliberative democracy – conclusion – Professor Thompson and Dr Guttmann wrap up

Trying to bridge the gap – Tip-top Poland blogger The Beatroot on the clash between local, national and European concerns

Two days to go – the topics for discussion – some oddness in the Tomorrow’s Europe poll’s focus

Citizens’ consultations or deliberative polls? – The organiser of the British wing of last spring’s UK citizen consultation weighs up the pros and cons

Publicity, apathy and ignorance – Me on the problem of creating effective PR campaigns for EU initiatives

The problems of deliberative polls: effects – Professor Lupia returns

The problems of deliberative polls: Representativeness – Professor Lupia identifies more potential pitfalls

Deliberative polls: the basics – Professors Fishkin and Luskin outline their technique

Deliberative polls: Representativeness – Professors Fishkin and Luskin again

Deliberative polling: Practicalities – Professors Fishkin and Luskin once again, wrapping up their overview

See? I’ve been a busy boy.

October 8, 2007
by Nosemonkey
2 Comments

Iraqi employees

Dan Hardie has the latest, following recent (rather odd) newspaper rumours of a change in government policy on the UK’s attitude to those who have worked for the British army in Iraq, and who now face torture and death as a result.

As David Cameron has (literally) just said in the Commons, “people who have risked their lives for Britain should never be let down by Britain”. The thing to remember, however, is that it’s not just the interpreters who have risked their lives, but every Iraqi who has done any kind of job for the army out there. They should not be let down either.

Oh, and the venue for tomorrow’s meeting’s had to change at the last minute.