English Democrat calls for Nuclear strike on Mecca

I have studied war and all of its incarnations since the age of eight when I first picked up the Ladybird book of "Soldiers" and

started asking questions of my grandfather.

War is undeniably one of the great evils that mankind has unleashed upon the world and sadly the one thing at which we as a species excel at. Aggression breads technology and at the very top of the tree are the nuclear weapons.

Many people argue that Nuclear weapons are necessary.

They have never been necessary.

The excuse of ending World War Two quickly is touted too quickly but the truth of the matter is everyone knew Japan could not physically hold out much longer and that conventional bombing methods would have sufficed. Indeed the RAF and USAAF had proved that over Europe where 25,000 people in three days in Dresden of saturation bombing in 1945 and Hamburg had suffered 42,600 killed in the firestorms of Operation Gomorrah in July 1943. With Germany defeated the bomber fleets were free to relocate to the Pacific.

At the turn of the 20th Century the greatest weapons were Artillery (and Dreadnoughts) by 1915 the horror weapon was poison gas, by the 1930s it was the Bomber especially if carrying gas and by 1945 it was the A-bomb. The only reason to use it in 1945 was to show the Russians that the West had them and was not afraid to use them should they be pushed as Churchill (succeeded by Atlee) and Truman knew that Stalin would not have hesitated to use them if he thought he had the upper hand.

In modern times though there is a small clique of states who have nuclear weapons all eyeing each other suspiciously... However who is the major threat?

A lose alliance of Islamic extremists who have no state and whose ability to use a nuclear device is, for the moment, limited to a dirty bomb for which the only defence is keen Military intelligence.

Should one of these devices go off in central London the effects would be ugly and a lot of people would be irradiated and killed with many dying from the effects for years afterwards.

English Democrat and former Kent Police Commissioner candidate (I think I heard he is running again in 2016) Steve Uncles has an answer to this... A retaliatory Nuclear strike on Mecca after ANY terrorist attack on the West.

Mr Uncles argues in his blog that the heart of Islam, within Saudi Arabia, will be full of Muslim pilgrims. He states:

Massive retaliation works on the same principles as Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), with the important caveat that even a minor conventional attack on a nuclear state could conceivably result in all-out Nuclear retaliation.

and...

This threat to of massive retaliation of 1 million Muslims and the destruction of the most holy Muslim site in the world, if a further "civilised" life is taken on respective sovereign territory, may be the only answer to eliminate Islamic Terrorism.

My first response upon seeing this was... What... the... actual.... F**k?

My more reasoned approach is this;

First off the bat:

In 1914 the Sultan of Turkey decreed a Jihad against Britain and her Allies, for all Muslims to rise up against the West and come to the aid of Germany and her allies. Apart from a few scattered uprisings including some rumblings in Persia and in the Far East the majority was limited to just the Ottoman Empire.

In 2015 the same is true. Despite the call for a universal Jihad the number of Muslims fighting the West is, on the grand scale of things, a small number. Should the Holy shrines of Mecca be destroyed by the West then there will be a massive uprising of Muslims worldwide and who could blame them? Their Holy places destroyed in one blast would cause horrific hatred and rightly so.

As would the slaughter of a million innocents. How can anyone legitimise the murder, and it is murder, of all of these people? How many will be terrorists or support terrorists? These people will have come from around the world and may even be citizens of your state on a religious pilgrimage - how can you kill all these people?

If it happened we would be no better than the terrorists.

Thirdly is the prickly ball of Saudi Arabia. Yes there are sections of their society who probably funding terrorism but they are also pro-West and supply a vast swathe of the much needed crude Oil. Should anyone Nuke Saudi Arabia then that vital line is lost and the West is somewhat dependent on it at the moment. There is also the Saudi investment in the West and its business, their withdrawal could cause absolute chaos in the business world and financial markets.

The terrorists and their strategists know this and know any threat on Mecca is a paper tiger - it would cause more harm than good and is morally and ethically wrong. It is akin to General Amherst reported suggestion that blankets from Smallpox hospitals be distributed to the Ottawa indians to quell Pontiac's Rebellion.

What frightens me the most about all this though is that there will be many who agree with him.

Corbyn ushers in new style of PMQs

Today marked the begining of the Corbyn era of Prime Minister's Questions and I must say that I have been really impressed.

Many of my regular readers will know that I have not a big fan of the Labour party over recent years and am still dubious of many of their policies/MPs etc however I thought Mr Corbyn hit the nail on the head.

Charles Kennedy wrote in his book "The Future of Politics" that the House and indeed PMQs was stuck in a rut of like a Rugby game with two sides vying for supremacy and scoring points. Indeed over recent years it has become about bluster of;

"Thireen years of Labour government.... blah blah."

"More of Flashman... Same old Tory Party."

*knod* *knod* *knod*
Ultimately it did nothing to encourage any support for either party and was generally seen as an out of date process with people who should know better acting like school children on a long bus trip and being paid a large amount of money to do so. There also became a penchant for commentators of stating who had won or lost PMQS and often with a goal line in publications like the Evening Standard which trivialised the whole process

Mr Corbyn had a very different approach and had asked the General Public to submit questions which he and his staff (more likely the latter) had whittled down to a much smaller number of the most numerous.

Siting examples he asked calmly and collectidly about housing policy and benefits caps. The Prime Minister was forced to abandon his usual flashy displays and spouting and had to answer in a similar style.

Although I am always distrustful of siting an individual's experiences and passing them off as fact, something my Historian trained mind rejects as dangerous. One person's experience is not always everyone's nor is it fact. In this case however it does make the point that he has asked the public and real people are speaking through the new Labour leader.

It was a much more refreshing and dare I say it "grown up" approach to actually conducting business and actually holding the Government to account from the electorate rather than Political point scoring.

It is a style of politics that the public (myself included) can get on with and I look forward to more of the same in the future.

Corbyn as leader is definitely a good thing!

A new direction for Labour under Corbyn?

In case you have missed the news Jeremy Corbyn has been elected as leader of the Labour Party and this is something to be celebrated.

Celebrated? Really Chris? Why would a LibDem be celebrating this?

A fine set of questions to which the answers are; Yes, really and it is a long complicated rant so buckle up....

Firstly, I am a big fan of democracy and political theory - it is one of my vices and I'm a HUGE fan of Hobbes "Leviathan". I studied the evolution of Political theory at university for a semester and found this evolution fascinating and for a time I flirted with Marxism. To be fair I worked for MacDonald's at the time and it seemed to be a fair leap.

Anyway - at this point I was ripe to be attracted to a strong Labour movement and the Labour Party there was just one thing in the way.... New Labour.

New Labour has always struck me as a Diet Tory movement which was geared to winning elections and that was it. Throw in my opposition to the Iraq War and other policies such as ID cards etc and I found myself realising that beyond my radical reaction to my employer I had no real socialist beliefs and that liberalism was where my heart truly lay.

However I have always maintained that the Labour party should be a working class party and that for me and many others it had long ceased to be that.

Can I back up this assertion?

Why yes.

The rise of third (and fourth) party politics is a massive clue to this. In 2010 the Liberal Democrats attracted a large amount of votes from people who were looking for something different rather than the two same old parties who seemingly offered us nothing different. In 2015 following the Coalition that saw us being lumped into the same boat as Labour and the Tories the working classes flooded to UKIP seeing Farage as someone new and out of the Westminster bubble. Indeed according to our intel, streets that had been historically Labour were turning to UKIP instead. Why? Because Farage seemed to be voicing the working family's fears and beliefs rather than Westminster protocol and edited press statements.

What has this got to do with Corbyn?

Jeremy Corbyn is of the old school of Labour, a genuine Left winger who will (hopefully) steer the party away from the middle ground and actually represent the working classes again. No more of this abstaining on key votes as they did under Harman recently. The Party membership are obviously vexed with this New Labour fad and want to return to their old core values, the values the party were founded on, the very values and voters who were that much more extreme than the Old Liberal party back in the 1920s that saw the party rise to prominance. This is the same shift again almost a century on.

Finally there will be a gulf between Right and Left which will give the voters something to get behind.

There have been a lot of smug Tory tweets claiming walkover in 2020 and that we are looking at another five year term of Conservative government based on today's Labour leadership result. I wouldn't be so sure... After all if Corbyn can steer the party left and actually start representing the working classes again then they will draw a massive amount of support away from UKIP (always a good thing) and if he stands on anti-austerity (and means it) then he will gain even more votes and we could see the rise of the Labour party.

It also means that dissatisfied centralists in the Labour party may come looking for a centre party and join the LibDems(?).

So what about Medway?

Well on the council level it is too early to say. Many people have predicted the Conservatives losing seats in the last two elections and they've still walked away with a massive majority. I think it is too early to say for 2019.

I will predict that Corbyn's tenure (if done right) coupled with the absence of Mark Reckless, will see the end of Medway UKIP's showing on the council and (hopefully) see a massive fall in their vote share across the wards.

For the LibDems locally it won't make that big a difference with us still campaigning on our strengths and strong work ethic.

As for the 2020 General election - it is way to early to call that... IF the right candidate (and my money is on Naushabah Kahn) is against Rehman Chishti then we could see a swing to Labour. Sadly I fear the same might be true in Chatham & Aylesford IF the right candidate comes along and the voters of Chatham go back to Labour rather than UKIP then not even Tracey's record could save her but that is a pretty BIG IF!!!!

Though these predictions are, as Joey from Friends once said; Moo ("Its like a Cow's opinion - it doesn't matter"). I stand by my belief that Labour will now return to its roots and represent its core supporters - the workers which can only be a good thing for British politics having a clear divide between Red and Blue.