Is Hassan Rouhani the Iranian leader that the West has been waiting for?

Giles Marshall

When Iran last held an election – four years ago, as its constitution demands – protests greeted the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmahdinejad which went on for days and even led to some expectation in the West that a long awaited “green revolution” might be at hand. The U.S., under its relatively new and apparently liberal president, played a careful role, keeping public comments low-key in order not to further inflame a clearly delicate situation. President Obama was clear that there was to be no US intervention, and he faced a predictable round of right-wing criticism for his temperance.

Yet there is a case for seeing Mr.Obama’s earlier restraint as a necessary factor in this year’s victory of a would-be reformer in Iran. Using the voting booth – something western audiences could sometimes be forgiven for thinking that Iran doesn’t possess – the Iranians have now given their presidency to Hassan Rouhani, a reform minded cleric.

Mr. Rouhani may seem an unlikely reformer, and there are those in Iran who certainly consider his new, reform mantle to be as yet untested. Indeed, the clue to his political stance lies more in the pragmatism which he embraces than any ideological commitment to reform. Nevertheless, this is as good as it can get for Iran, and Mr. Rouhani came to power on the strength of many of the voters who saw the 2009 election as a fraudulent steal. With both of his pragmatist predecessors – Rafsanjani and Khatami – weighing in to support him, and the late withdrawal of the only openly reformist candidate, no-one can doubt where Mr. Rouhani has drawn the majority of his astonishing support.

The new president has given much cause for optimism, despite the predictably downbeat comments of Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, hard-line leader of the region’s only nuclear power. What his election now offers, however, is a real challenge to the policy makers of the West, and in particular to Mr. Obama.

The hostility to Iran has always been led by America, and in Mr. Ahmahdinejad they had a suitably clownish opponent, easily subject to caricature. America’s attitude, however, has not been without its faults. In a new and devastating critique of the West’s attitude towards Iran, Peter Oborne and David Morrison charge the United States in particular with an unwonted hypocrisy in its dealings with the Islamic state, which reach back to the CIA-sponsored coup of 1957. 

Oborne and Morrison’s book, A Dangerous Delusion, should be required reading for anyone wanting to understand the alternative view of the threat that Iran poses towards the West. The authors set out, passionately but in convincing detail, the case for Iran. A power that has abided by the nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty despite the provocations and misrepresentations it has been subject to; an essentially peaceful nation which has – rarely for the region – never provoked a war since the end of the Second World War; an intelligent regional power which can justly feel threatened by the lead swinging of its nuclear neighbour, Israel. They point out the baselessness of accusations of nuclear weaponry levelled against Iran, whilst countries who have failed to sign up to the NPT to which Iran is a signatory – Israel, India, Pakistan – have continued to receive substantial US investment. In short, Iran is suffering from a caricature portrayal in the western media that is not born out by its actions.

Iran has entered a new era with the election of Mr. Rouhani. The wrongs of the 2009 election have been righted, and that earlier American caution has paid dividends. However, Iran can only engage practically with the West if there is a similar desire to engage in the West itself. A couple of years ago, Barack Obama might have seemed just the sort of president needed to ensure that such engagement could happen. His international liberalism has taken a few blows recently, but the Iranians have offered him a tremendous opportunity to re-shape the world polity in a positive and less dangerous direction.

With the civil war in Syria showing signs of leaking abroad, the need to have a flexible attitude towards Iran that is based on respect towards an ancient regional power rather than the neuroses of decades of hostile reaction, is as urgent as it has ever been. But it doesn’t just require the pragmatic skills of President Rouhani. It requires realism and a willingness to break out of the Washington box from Mr. Obama, and that is still far from assured.

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Drones are lethal on the battlefield and gentle on the wallet

Crispin Burke

In March of this year, Wired Magazine revealed that an armed drone from the Royal Air Force - controlled from RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire - fired ordnance at enemy forces in Helmand, Afghanistan, in support of British troops. It was the first drone strike controlled from British territory, and represents the latest success in the Britain’s ever-emerging Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) program.

The successful use of armed drones by British forces is a positive development for the UK for three reasons. First, armed drones are an emerging technology which will play a vital role on the 21^st Century battlefield. Second, Britain’s ability to employ armed drones reduces its dependency on the United States to provide the same capability. Third, and most importantly, in an era of dwindling defense spending, drones are an inexpensive - and proven - alternative to manned aircraft and aircraft carriers.   

The United States has long been the global leader in armed Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. UAVs quickly proved their worth in Iraq and Afghanistan, where their sensors, endurance, and laser-guided missiles gave American forces an edge previously unimaginable. America’s drone capabilities have only continued to improve, both in terms of the quantity and quality of the machines themselves, as well as the people who operate them. 

Today, nearly one-third of all US military aircraft are unmanned, with aircraft ranging from the hand-held Raven, to the Global Hawk, whose wingspan rivals that of a C-130 Hercules. The United States even has a handful of drones with stealth capabilities, such as the RQ-170 Sentinel, one of which crashed in Iran. Still, according to recent reports, the accident rates for drones such as the Predator are roughly compatible with those of general aviation aircraft. Perhaps most striking is the US Air Force’s investment in the people who operate these vehicles: in 2011, the US Air Force trained more UAV operators than fighter pilots and bomber pilots combined. 

America’s superiority in unmanned flight—especially with armed, Medium-Altitude, Long Endurance (MALE) platforms—has greatly benefitted NATO. So much so, unfortunately, that NATO has become overly reliant on American drones for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. 

In the aftermath of the bombing campaign in Libya, US officials - including NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, Admiral James Stavridis and former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates - chided NATO for their inability to collect intelligence, and process it into targeting data - a capability provided almost wholly by US forces. This sense of frustration over Europe’s inability to field sufficient UAVs has been echoed throughout the ranks within the US military. In a memorandum sent to the Secretary of the US Army, one brigade commander in Afghanistan expressed frustration when British forces were given priority of support from American-owned and -operated UAVs. Britain could indeed rectify this imbalance by acquiring armed drones and training sufficient operators.

Additionally, though America’s commitment to Britain is strong - both through NATO and the so-called “special relationship” - it has, regrettably, not been the most reliable partner.  In such instances, British forces may have to call upon the unique capabilities provided by drones, operated by their own forces.

In order to do so, the UK must invest not only in the machines themselves, but also the facilities to operate them, as well as the personnel to maintain them, fly them, and process information into targetable intelligence. Like the US military, Britain must continue to assess its policies regarding training, manning, promotion policies, and even organizational culture for those who work with UAVs.

Most importantly, however, is that armed drones perform many of the same functions as fixed-wing fighter-bombers at a fraction of the cost. For instance, though Britain’s planned F-35 fighter is a stealthy, capable dogfighter, most of the combat British forces have seen in the past decade has taken place in uncontested airspace, rendering these features superfluous—calling into question the F-35’s £124 million price tag. Not to mention, the F-35B has been plagued with design problems, and will not enter service until at least 2019, according to some estimates.

General Atomics’ combat-proven MQ-9 Reaper drone, on the other hand, is a proven design, which can carry over 1700 kg of munitions and loiter for up to 14 hours while fully loaded. For less than £35 million, Britain can acquire four Reapers, plus the ground control stations and satellite links to operate them. Furthermore, forward-deployed drones require a much smaller logistical footprint than their manned counterparts. Indeed, fiscal realities make armed drones an attractive military option, considering the cost of manned aircraft and aircraft carriers.

Drones are not a silver-bullet weapon. The Ministry of Defence has noted that UAVs have critical weaknesses. Drones are vulnerable to surface-to-air missiles and are easy targets for enemy fighter aircraft; the data links which control them are susceptible to jamming, hacking, and viruses. Yet, despite these weaknesses, drones have been a game-changing weapon for NATO. A continued investment in armed UAVs and operators will help keep Britain’s Armed Forces relevant on the 21^st Century battlefield, allow them to contribute to multinational operations more effectively, and provide many of the same capabilities as manned aircraft at a fraction of the cost.

Major Crispin Burke is a US Army aviator and Iraq War veteran, who has served in the 82nd Airborne Division and the 10th Mountain Division.  His views are his own, and do not reflect those of the US Department of Defense. Follow him on Twitter.

We cannot both spy on the spies and expect them to keep us safe

Louis Reynolds

Many have been left horrified discovering that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) operates a sophisticated database, called PRISM, where internet and telecommunications data is compiled for analysis. And even more shockingly, GCHQ has had access to this programme since at least 2010.

Of course, none of this should be surprising.

The US and the UK have been coordinating their signals intelligence efforts since 1941. More specifically, PRISM was authorised by the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, established in 1978 to oversee requests for surveillance warrants on foreign targets within the US, and the programme is legislatively sanctioned by the Protect America Act (2007). It is a legal programme, and GCHQ’s use of PRISM information falls well within the ethical principles laid down to guide British cooperation with foreign intelligence agencies, as the Foreign Secretary has said.

Some specific aspects of the PRISM programme have upset individuals appropriately concerned for their civil liberties. The attention suddenly drawn to the cooperation between private international companies such as Microsoft or Google and American intelligence agencies has worried many. Yet the rules allowing this collaboration were established under the FISA Amendment Act (2008), not in a secret government complex or a democratic vacuum.

While it would be excessive to list them, some of the powers granted by Congress to the US government with regards to the surveillance of its citizens are surprisingly extensive. Any person with an interest in the democratic process in the UK or the US has the opportunity to be well informed, generally speaking, as to the legal limitations on intelligence agencies. There can be no scandal there. But how does one know what the intelligence community actually gets up to?

The U.S. Director of National Intelligence has stated that data ‘accidentally’ collected from American citizens is kept to a minimum, in doing so highlighting the difficulty of not overstepping the legal boundaries which protect the privacy of law-abiding individuals. Participatory democratic process defines the limits of surveillance on private citizens, but what stops these secret programmes from exceeding them? Simply put: oversight. We entrust a small group of our politicians with the duty of preventing breaches of the law and restricting the activities of our intelligence community. The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the more pithily named Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) oversee US and UK intelligence efforts respectively.

Therein, however, lies the rub.

In an increasingly hyper-democratic society, where ever greater transparency and direct public scrutiny form an often unchallenged part of the political zeitgeist, the concept of trusting a secretive cabal of second-home switching, speeding-fine avoiding career politicians with our liberty seems outmoded and impossible. The new demands of the modern age are clearly demonstrated by the fact that since 1995, the annual reports of the ISC have been publicly available.

Yet the timeless – and crucial – need the intelligence community has for secrecy is shown by its heavy redaction. Take this informative jewel of information, taken from last year’s annual ISC report: ‘Describing GCHQ’s monitoring capabilities, the Director said: “***”.’

The attention PRISM has garnered in the press is not revelatory, other than as a tantalising, illicit glimpse into a secretive world which is denied to the great majority of us. It relates instead to the fundamental tension between the increasing importance of intelligence to our security and our demands for direct participation in government and full knowledge of the state’s affairs. This dichotomy, though perhaps more acute that it has been previously, is not new, but is a necessary and longstanding problem inherent to the basic operation of a democratic state – in response to which Parliamentary oversight has been prescribed as the most appropriate response.

H.M. Government’s security apparatus – in terms of legal limitations, budgets and overall purpose among other issues – should be (and is) constantly scrutinised by the public. More than anything, the critical eye of the population at large safeguards our liberty. But we cannot and should not expect to peer into the world of secret intelligence.

If people are worried that PRISM and programmes like it go too far, there is a reasonable case to be made for reducing the legal powers of intelligence agencies. Similarly, the often criticised composition of the ISC as a Parliamentary Committee rather than a Committee of Parliamentarians and the influence of the Prime Minister over their appointment and reporting are reasonable points for concern. However, now that PRISM has attained the status of ‘scandal’, modern British popular  political culture demands that we are told all of the details in full, as an assurance that our civil liberties are not being compromised. Yet this cannot be done while fully safeguarding the security of the United Kingdom, a security we too often take for granted.

The people want answers! That is reassuring. But they should wait for the ISC report.

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The education system’s betrayal of bright pupils

Giles Marshall 9.00am

How often is it possible to bemoan the same problem and consistently avoid the obvious solution? Plenty, it would appear, if the problem is how to support bright children in the state education system.

Ofsted have today reported that thousands of bright youngsters are failing to achieve their potential in secondary schools. They have issued some shocking figures. Take English: of the children who achieved Level 5 in English in their primary schools and went on to the standard non-selective secondary school, 62 per cent failed to gain a grade A or A* in the subject at GCSE. Even taking into account the natural decline in learning that some children experience in the secondary school years, that is a lamentable figure.

More than a quarter of previously high attaining pupils failed to gain a grade B or A in Maths or English. The bright, eager primary school pupil with ability to nurture is being betrayed by what Ofsted have described as a “culture of low expectations” in secondary schools.

Of course, it is no easy job to encourage the bright students when you are teaching a class of thirty students whose abilities range right across the spectrum and who contain a fair share of the educationally discontented amongst them. Blaming the schools and their teachers is all very well, but the demands we make by our present system are huge.

The problem of the mixed education system was well identified by a prominent academic in an article in the New York Review of Books in 2010, entitled simply “Meritocrats”.  He furiously denounced what had been happening to secondary education when he wrote:

“For forty years, British education has been subjected to a catastrophic sequence of “reforms” aimed at curbing its elitist inheritance and institutionalizing “equality.”…. Intent upon destroying the selective state schools that afforded my generation a first-rate education at public expense, politicians have foisted upon the state sector a system of enforced downward uniformity.”

He was not the first critic. In the Black Papers of 1975, one author argued:

“Selection must and will take place in education and those who banish rational methods of selection are simply favouring irrational and accidental ones.  The children who will be lost forever are the poor clever children with an illiterate background….Why should socialist policy, of all things, be so grossly unjust to the under-privileged clever child, avid to learn, able to learn, and under non-selective education likely to pass in relaxed idle boredom those precious years when strenuous learning is a joy and the whole intellectual and moral future of the human being is at stake?”

These were strong words, and the interesting thing in both cases is that they came from the pens of bona fide left-wing thinkers: Tony Judt and Iris Murdoch respectively.

They correctly identified where the real victims of the comprehensive reform of state secondary education would lie, and while articulate middle class parents push their way into the catchments of the few remaining grammars, everyone else has to put up with the “culture of low expectations”.  

Oddly, for all his reforming zeal, Michael Gove has steered well clear of the grammar school debate. Happy to push for elitism in the form of exams; presumably happy to maintain the elitism required for the university system to thrive (because yes, they select students based on academic ability), he has made no pronouncement whatsoever on grammar schools. Free Schools and academies are hamstrung in one significant way – they cannot select on the basis of academic ability alone.

Perhaps Conservatives - more likely to be able to use the private selective school system, or ensure residence in a catchment area for a state selective school, or able to take advantage of the free school opportunity – don’t really have any motivation to push for a fully selective system on the state. Maybe their opposition to state control of education stands in the way of advocating a directed system of educational elitism to aid the aspirations of the poor and disadvantaged.  

If so, is it entirely outside the bounds of political credibility for the Labour party to rediscover its commitment to social mobility, and advocate the return of a grammar school system? In one bound, they could pull the rug from under the feet of the wimpy Conservatives who have avoided this toxic issue for so long. They could, indeed, listen to Tony Judt’s closing plea not to accept the disastrous status quo:

“Equality of opportunity and equality of outcome are not the same thing. A society divided by wealth and inheritance cannot redress this injustice by camouflaging it in educational institutions—by denying distinctions of ability or by restricting selective opportunity—while favoring a steadily widening income gap in the name of the free market. This is mere cant and hypocrisy.”

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Intervention is a powerful tool, it must be used wisely

Aaron Ellis

I opposed intervening in Libya, criticised the Mali campaign, and have repeatedly warned against too deep an involvement in Syria. Considering this track record, it would be easy to conclude that I am against interventions anywhere and everywhere – but you would be wrong.

Like diplomacy, intervention is a tool of foreign policy, and it would be absurd to be against either of them on principle. The problem has been that in Libya, Mali, and Syria, intervention has been used to further bad foreign policy. And I am certainly against bad foreign policy on principle.

Intervention can come in many different forms. As Rory Stewart and Gerald Knaus point out, its Latin root roughly translates into ‘to come between’, admitting ‘to nothing more than coming into a new relationship.’ There is much ambiguity about the nature of the relationship and who it is with, how it manifests itself, and how we came into it in the first place. Attempting to offer some clarity, I argued in these pages that we should intervene where it is in our interests to do so and our involvement should be proportionate to those interests. I called this, somewhat pompously, ‘the Ellis Doctrine’.

Yet British involvement in Libya, Mali, and Syria has been disproportionate in my view. Justifying the campaign against Colonel Gaddafi, David Cameron argued that “[j]ust because you can’t do the right thing everywhere doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do the right thing somewhere.” But was it necessary for us to participate in the military intervention in order to “do the right thing”? Could we not have focused on the diplomatic side and left the fighting to others? If the Prime Minister had limited our ownership of the war, he might not have been cheered by the crowds in Benghazi, but he would have decreased Britain’s liability to the Pottery Barn rule: You break it, you buy it.

Almost two years ago, I warned that Libya bears an eerie resemblance to Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban.

In 2001/02, we helped a loose coalition topple a brutal regime that we disliked without knowing too much about them or about what we wanted the postwar environment to look like. As a result of our uncoordinated actions, we created the problems that gradually undermined the illusory peace that followed. The postwar environment was shaped on the ground by the many factions and militias that we had empowered long before Western policymakers met to decide the future of the country. Over a decade and billions of pounds later, we are still trying to catch-up.

The same thing has happened in Libya. We helped a loose coalition of militias overthrow the Gaddafi regime without knowing too much about them or about what we wanted to happen afterwards. Postwar planning was deliberately scant because, like with Afghanistan in 2001/02, we were terrified of the prospect of being drawn into nation-building. The postwar environment was thus shaped by those many militias fighting on the ground and they now dominate the country.

Last month, one militia besieged government buildings, demanding that any old regime officials step down. Parliamentarians were pressured to pass a law banning them from ever holding office again. In September last year, a militia attacked the American consulate in Benghazi, killing Ambassador Chris Stevens. Three months before that, the British ambassador was almost killed in an RPG attack on his convoy.

Two years ago, Mr. Cameron warned that unless Gaddafi was toppled then a “rogue state” would develop on Europe’s doorstep, but Libya now risks becoming a so-called ‘failed state’. In January, a militant Islamist group used the country as a base from which to attack the In Amenas gas complex in Algeria. “The south of Libya is what the north of Mali was like” before France intervened, says one Malian official.

Last month, NATO began looking into whether or not it should train Libya’s nascent security forces in order to rein in the militias and improve the security situation in the country. Of course, this should have been planned during the initial campaign. Thus like in Afghanistan, we are trying to catch-up, and it is in these circumstances that I can see Britain being drawn into another long and costly nation-building mission in a country of only marginal interest to us. And after a decade of fruitless endeavour there, whoever is Prime Minister at the time may boast that he will pursue a more “hard-headed” approach unlike his predecessors – as Mr. Cameron boasted about Afghanistan four months before the Libyan intervention.

In his first Guildhall speech, he told the guests at the prestigious annual dinner that his foreign policy would “focus like a laser on defending and advancing Britain’s national interest.” This “hardheaded” approach was now being applied to Afghanistan. “We are not there to build a perfect democracy,” implying that that was what Tony Blair and Gordon Brown tried to do. Yet it is easy for politicians to be dispassionately realist about a quagmire they’ve inherited from their opponents; it’s much harder for them to work out if they are creating one themselves.

Why should Britain be drawn back into Libya, some may ask. Remember, we went in to get rid of Mad Dog and we got the job done. End of story. This is where we return to the importance of the form and extent of an intervention.

The more involved we are in an intervention, the more implicit responsibility we incur. Colin Powell warned George W. Bush that if he invaded Iraq, then he would “own all their hopes, aspirations, and problems. You’ll own it all.” Apart from the moral obligations this ownership imposes on us, trying to shirk the responsibilities can undermine whatever gains we made initially.

For example, some pundits argue that by arming the Syrian rebels, the West would gain their eternal gratitude after the fall of Bashar al-Assad. Would this gratitude continue, however, if they felt we had abandoned them in the much harder postwar phase? Given how quickly the Libyan rebels accused us of abandoning them even before the intervention started, why would they continue to feel gratitude for our help if we ignored their current problems? The job was only half-done two years ago and we have tried to shirk the responsibilities we incurred ever since.

In a couple of weeks, The Spectator will be hosting a debate about whether or not Britain should intervene in Syria. The question is misleading – we already have intervened in the civil war there. A more relevant debate for us to have is to what extent should we intervene, in what form, and does it actually further our foreign policy? Unfortunately, as my friend and blogeague Adam Elkus has pointed out, ‘tools’ are sexy to talk about, but ‘how they actually advance’ our interests ‘most surely isn’t.’

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Despite the Crash, the culture of borrowing lives on

Ryan Gray

The catastrophe that was the financial crash will live in popular memory for decades to come. After years of blindly borrowing, the Western world suffered an economic downturn that has left Greece, Spain, and many other countries devastated for at least a generation.

We have not suffered as severely as they have, but the collapse was still crushing for all those who lost their jobs, homes, and businesses. Austerity, which is beginning to show some signs of success, has been tough – and even come at a cost in some areas. The culture of borrowing has had disastrous consequences: we will be paying off the debt accumulated by Labour for many years to come.

Despite all this, however, our desire to borrow still continues, so much so that it is almost like an addiction. At the end of April, outstanding personal debt stood at an unbelievable £1.424 trillion, meaning that, individually, the British people owe almost as much as the United Kingdom produced during the whole year of 2012.

The bad news does not stop there. In April, the average amount owed per UK adult was £28.980, around 120% of the average earnings. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) predicted in March that total household debt will reach £1.931 trillion in the first quarter of 2018, meaning that the average household will be £73.284 in debt. These concerning levels of debt are proving to be a persistent source of difficulties for the British public. Debt troubles have rocked so many in Britain that in 2012, Citizens Advice Bureaux in England and Wales dealt with 8192 new debt problems every working day – showing just how many individuals in Britain are struggling financially.

‘Pay day’ loan schemes are also showing how heavily indebted is Britain. Despite the obscenely high interest rates of companies like Wonga, people are still turning to them, even though evidence suggests they only put individuals further in debt in the long run.

Fortunately, there are some statistics to be cautiously optimistic about. At the height of the crash in 2008, someone in Britain declared bankruptcy every five minutes, a figure that has improved slightly to one person every five minutes and fifteen seconds (or 274 people every day). Still, personal debt is increasing at an alarming rate and needs to be addressed.

The solution is changing culture. Young people must be taught that the best way to get out of debt is not more debt. They must be educated on the risks of loans and other financial commitments; on how to budget, save, and what alternative avenues there are to raising revenue. Some households will need support, but if we are to prevent the next generation from borrowing obscenely, then education is the key.

We are on the right road to solving the national debt, but the coalition has yet to tackle the issue of personal debt – a level of debt that could exist long after our national finances are sorted out. Their solution cannot be to allow individuals to just borrow more or to borrow from somebody else.

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MPs must debate arming the Syrian rebels

Aaron Ellis

On Monday, speaking about Syria in the Commons, David Cameron put on a performance that must be described as naïve, simplistic, and shamelessly evasive.

He portrayed the EU arms embargo that was lifted last week as the cause of all that has gone wrong in the civil war there, at least as far as the West is concerned. The embargo is the reason why Bashar al-Assad has stabilised his position, as well as the reason why militant Islamists are taking over the rebellion at the expense of the “official” opposition. Whenever MPs pressed him on the wisdom of sending weapons, the Prime Minister just evaded answering by playing the Bosnian ‘card’. If his performance is characteristic of Britain’s Syria policy, then we all should be worried.

Mr. Cameron clung to a simplistic narrative: The arms embargo has stopped the West from engaging with “the official opposition” and providing them with “technical assistance, help and advice”. As a result, “extremists on both sides” have benefited: al-Assad continues to massacre his own people and the Islamists have gained more power and influence over the fight against his regime. Yet if we supplied weapons to the rebels, then we would both strengthen the “moderates” and force al-Assad to the negotiating table. This would lead to “what I think we all want on both sides of this House: a transition with a political settlement, and a future for Syria that all Syrians can support.”

Bad policy flows from bad assumptions and Mr. Cameron’s are as bad as they come. The embargo has not stopped us from helping the Syrian National Coalition (SNC); we have actually given them a lot of diplomatic support. As a result, Britain has more influence than Qatar and Saudi Arabia, according to a source of mine who advises the Coalition on behalf of the government. King Faisal of Iraq once said that Arabs “can be roused to do anything for honour,” but if you give them cash and weapons, “the whole moral tone of your relations with them is lowered.”

The reason why the “official opposition” has less influence over the rebellion than militant Islamists is that the latter are just better than them. Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qa’ida-aligned faction, is popular within Syria due to both its military success and for providing order to otherwise chaotic places like Aleppo. The SNC (which isn’t even based in the country) has had to recognise it due to its popularity, despite the United States blacklisting the faction as terrorists. As I wrote in these pages in December, internal politics will determine who comes out on top in this civil war, not Western arms.

It is also unlikely that our arms would force al-Assad to the negotiating table because we would not provide the rebels with any of the ‘game-changing’ weapons they need to “tip the balance” against him. Micah Zenko points out that even those American interventionists who advocate arming the rebellion stop short of recommending things like MANPADs, which the United States spent billions of dollars recovering after the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989. Condoleezza Rice, for example, has written that the Syrian opposition should only be given ‘defensive’ weapons.

Whenever he was pressed to justify his assumptions the other day, the Prime Minister evaded many awkward questions by citing Bosnia. In response to one Labour MP warning about the lessons of arming the Afghan mujahideen in the 1980s, Mr. Cameron told him, “[i]f he wants to go through the history lessons, what about the history lesson of Bosnia?” Those who warn against getting involved in Syria “are making some of the same arguments used in the Bosnian conflict 20 years ago”, he replied to another. Yet as I wrote on ConservativeHome recently, arming the rebels can undermine our morality credibility just as much as inaction.

If Britain furnishes them with weapons, we will incur implicit responsibility for their actions, which can be just as horrific as those perpetrated by the regime. Last month, footage emerged of a rebel commander cutting out the heart of a pro-Assad fighter and taking a bite from it. I’d guess that being associated with cannibalism would not strengthen our moral standing in the world…

Arming the Syrian opposition would be such a big decision for the Prime Minister to take that it must be debated thoroughly. When pressed on whether or not Parliament would get to debate the issue and vote on it, the Prime Minister evaded the questions, but he ought to allow it for his own sake. The decision could have as big an impact on British foreign policy as that to go to war in Iraq did ten years ago, and if Mr. Cameron took it unilaterally, the blame would fall solely on him.

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We are still failing to define ‘One Nation’ for the twenty-first century

Giles Marshall 11.20am

We need to define One Nation Conservatism. That is probably the most urgent task facing the Tory Reform Group, because until we do, and until we can also give it some political meat in terms of policy and outlook, we really don’t have much to offer as an alternative to the Conservative right-wing.

The problem of understanding what it should mean came up in Damian Green’s Macmillan Lecture yesterday evening. While he was on firm and fluent ground when discussing the need to articulate a case to remain a member of the EU, in my view he was uneasy in grasping the nettle of One Nation.

It is, he said, an ambiguous phrase beloved of the political classes.  That being said, what is distinctly ‘One Nation’ about the present Government? I’m afraid that I don’t believe ‘limiting immigration’ and ‘cutting welfare abuse’ are sufficient. For a thoughtful man and longstanding devotee to One Nation Conservatism, Mr Green must in his heart of hearts believe this too.

The problem we have is that our thinking remains too defined by the neo-liberal philosophy that parked itself in the Tory Party when Margaret Thatcher became leader. The triumph of individualism saw itself expressed politically through the emphasis on lower taxes, a smaller state and more self-help. There was nothing particularly ‘Conservative’ about any of this, and yet it has become the lodestar of Conservative political discussion today.

In its most traditional expression, Conservatism was defined as a transcendent alliance between the dead, the living and the yet to come.

Conservatism governed not as a form of short-term political self-interest, but as a commitment to the wellbeing of a society that was defined by more than the life-spans of those currently alive.

Within that broad vision was further acceptance that society’s prosperity and stability was best assured by considering the interests of the many.

This was transformed, almost accidentally, by Benjamin Disraeli’s articulation of ‘One Nation Conservatism’. It was a clever political commitment to broaden the Conservative party’s appeal to newly enfranchised voters and it was given brilliant form by the remarkable energies of the Home Secretary Richard Cross, who used the Victorian state to improve the lives of the poor far beyond anything the Liberals could manage. His reforming zeal was later replicated in the activities of politicians such as Neville Chamberlain and Harold Macmillan.

Macmillan in particular saw the virtue of state action to help the poor, inspired as he was by the conditions he witnessed during the Great Depression in his Stockton constituency. The social reforms enacted by Macmillan and his championing of economic planning are a long way removed from anything advocated by the modern Conservative party.  But then Macmillan’s Conservatism was inspired by a commitment to society, and to the enabling power of the state. It had no truck with the notion of an individual self-reliance that was a alien to vast numbers of citizens stuck in an invidious cycle of poverty.

The reason One Nation Conservatism has lost its sharpness is that its few remaining advocates are too willing to surrender much of the ground to an aggressive neo-liberal tendency. We seem happier to discuss social liberalism – admittedly important – than challenging some of the profoundly un-Conservative elements of the dominant ‘New Right’ tendency.

One Nation Conservatism needs to be properly defined for the twenty-first century. It could reap remarkable electoral rewards for a party that has too often in recent years seemed too divorced from the public it seeks to represent. As Damian Green said yesterday evening, “if the Conservative party does not like modern Britain, it is unlikely modern Britain will warm to the Conservative party.”

The Conservative party’s dominance of the twentieth century owed much to its One Nation outlook, in terms of both policy and rhetoric. Sadly, we are still struggling to recover either of them.

Follow Giles on Twitter @gilesmarshall