The West’s half-hearted efforts will not end Syria’s civil war

Dan Trombly 10.23am

The pressure has increased for more forceful intervention in Syria. Despite the presence of international observers, the Assad regime refuses to adhere to a ceasefire demanded by the UN.

Whether it involves arming the rebels or a repeat of the NATO intervention in Bosnia in 1995, the ongoing strife in the country calls for further action, and US Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry recently urged consideration of both options. Yet despite the frustration of diplomatic efforts, military options seem bleak.

Those who argue that past success in Bosnia could be replicated in Syria both ignore the history of the Bosnian war and its differences with the current conflict. The UN’s attempts to create “safe zones” resulted in the horrific massacres of Srebrenica and elsewhere. The Bosnian war was ultimately won when the numerically superior combined force of Croatian and Bosnian troops launched ground offensives, not when NATO began air strikes.

Similar attempts to implement “safe zones” in Iraq following the first Gulf War required the threat of ground assault in the south of the country, and the tactic failed frequently in the north, such as at Irbil in 1996. Even after the Desert Fox bombing campaign, forces withdrew once a Baghdad supporting faction secured that area. Notably, Saddam Hussein’s rule was not ended until troops fought their way to the capital in 2003, despite “safe zones” having been declared alongside frequent US air patrols and strikes.

In Syria, as in Bosnia and Iraq, neither protection of civilians nor regime change can be assured without superiority on the ground. Even air strikes would require a bombing campaign larger than in Iraq in 2003.

And enormous obstacles stand in the way of arming the Syrian rebels. In Bosnia, for instance, it was Croatia’s invasion that brought about a Serb defeat, not Bosnian forces. In Syria, without a ground invasion of tens (or hundreds) of thousands of troops - from Turkey, the Arab states, or the West - Syria’s rebels will remain woefully outmatched in conventional capabilities. Indeed, Turkey rarely conducts cross-border raids against PKK terrorists without several thousand soldiers.

The Syrian rebels need artillery batteries, armour and air support, not just man-portable anti-tank or anti-aircraft weaponry.

Even with Western air support, the rebels would likely continue to use the guerilla tactics befitting the outmatched force that they are, avoiding pitched battles and ceding territory to draw out hostile forces. While these might be effective tactics in a long-term insurgency, they are unlikely to result in regime change or effective protection of civilians in the short-term. Even the maintenance of a safe haven for rebel forces would need to be done outside Syrian territory, rather than in “safe zones”.

Simply arming rebel forces is more likely to cause a protracted civil war than a quick victory. The United States and others learned this is Nicaragua, Angola and Afghanistan during the Cold War. But in those cases, there was thought to be some value in attrition, and supporters of proxy groups were relatively indifferent to civilian casualties and the collateral damage of prolonged conflict. In Syria, such outcomes are unjustifiable on humanitarian grounds, nor on strategic aims (seeing Assad depart quickly).

Moreover, an influx of arms leaves lasting consequences. The behaviour of Libyan militias is a case in point.

An authoritarian regime such as Assad’s can hold on until hostile armoured columns roll on Damascus. Therefore the only strategically feasible option for a quick victory in Syria is a full-scale invasion. Yet no Western state is willing to undertake such a mission and a Turkish or Arab effort seems very unlikely.

Ultimately, Syria’s civil war will drag on. In the meantime, Western powers must work with Syria’s neighbours to prevent WMDs and other arms from leaving the country; they must provide aid to refugees that manage to escape Syria; and continue to exercise diplomatic options to the best of their ability.

Unless Western policymakers can convince their own populations and their Middle Eastern allies that an invasion is justifiable, providing military aid or half-hearted intervention can only worsen the consequences of Syria’s conflict - for both that country’s neighbours, and the interests of the West.

Dan Trombly is a student of International Affairs at George Washington University. He blogs at Slouching Towards Columbia.

As Europe sinks we should look to new horizons

Alexander Pannett 12.30pm

This week it became clear that the procrastinated efforts to save the European single currency have failed.

Greece will leave the single currency when it votes for anti-austerity political parties in a month’s time. Possibly even the European Union too if Greek anti-European sentiment continues to grow.

What must be done now is ensure the contagion does not spread to other peripheral countries: Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy. This may even be too late, as we receive reports of a bank run in Spain. If the markets lose confidence in these countries’ ability to manage their debts it will precipitate a collapse of the entire European banking system as capital flight prompts liquidity to dry up, as in 2008.

David Cameron has called for fiscal and political union as the only way to shore up confidence in the euro and stop it being seen as less a single currency and more a strict exchange rate union ready to be un-raveled.

The Prime Minister echoes calls from other European leaders for more concerted action to save the euro, notably via the use of ‘eurobonds’. I proposed on these pages in November last year that without further political solidarity the euro was doomed.

Political solidarity has not emerged. Instead there is growing acrimony and competing ideas. If anything, the unfolding disaster has exposed the fractious concept of common citizenship behind the entire European project, something Nik alluded to earlier this week.

There is no interest in Europe. There is only a Europe with interests.

It is not too late to salvage the ambition of closer union. But for now this can only be a Franco-German union. Only those nations who will accept being absorbed under the dictates of Paris and Berlin shall join. For the rest, the EU will remain a trading block, and an economically and politically impoverished one at that.

It seems that the great play of world history is about to leave the European stage and transpose itself to the more exciting and economically dynamic scene of Asia. Whether this new Act will be of tragedy or farce is as of yet unknown.

For Britain, we are too old an actor to play outside the limelight. Our pride is too heavy and dress bill too dear. It is time we pursued a new free trade pact with countries in Asia.

We could start with Australia, New Zealand, Korea, Japan, America, Indonesia and Singapore, perhaps with the old Commonwealth as the foundation. This could and should include those European nations that share our interests in global trade.

Such a free trade organization would also be able to promote a more responsible capitalism in global trade that protected the environment, traditional cultures and social values. Far better to promote progressive humanitarian standards by engaging with Asia rather than heckling it behind trade barriers.  

We should mirror America’s re-orientation to Asia by reversing the Suez doctrine and re-establishing naval bases in Asia. Singapore may value such a presence. This does not even have to be a military base but could be a humanitarian crisis response centre, in readiness for when another natural disaster strikes that seismically vulnerable part of the world.

Europe will still remain important to Britain. But it should be seen and supported as a neighbour. Not as our place of work.

For that we will need to travel further afield.

Follow Alexander on Twitter @alpannett

How to thaw the frosty relationship between the political class and the public

Iain Martin 11.07am

A curate’s egg of a Budget?

David Cowan 6.02am

On Wednesday, George Osborne grew in stature as a Tory Chancellor. The Budget was the most definitive account of the Government’s plan for growth. Yet it was mainly framed as a tax reform budget, and it is by this standard it should be judged.

In which case, it was also something of a curate’s egg. In places it was bold and radical, while in others it did not go nearly far enough.

Mr Osborne articulated a clear, long-term vision for tax reform. He began by claiming Adam Smith as his guide, embracing the principle that taxes ought to be “simple, predictable, support work, and they should be fair”.

The establishment of the Office for Tax Simplification (OTS) demonstrated Mr Osborne’s commitment to sustained reform of a tax code that must be “fit for the modern world”. (This already comprises measures such as merging the rates of income tax and National Insurance.)

There is the Personal Tax Statement, first proposed by Ben Gummer MP, which will appear for the first time in 2014. It will tell taxpayers exactly how much they are paying in tax and exactly where that money is being spent. This is particularly important at a time when people do not know how much of their hard-earned cash is consumed by the costs of servicing our £7.9 trillion debt.

At the heart of this Budget is the start of a serious shift in taxation from income to wealth.

The 50p top rate of income tax will be reduced to 45p in April 2013, but Mr Osborne has already reassured Conservative MPs that the new top rate will not be permanent. Following the announcement on Wednesday, Ed Miliband immediately rolled out the tired old rhetoric of faux class warfare. The fact is that the top rate was not raising any meaningful revenue - a mere third of what was promised - and as page 91 of the Red Book proves, it will actually be the millionaires paying more after this Budget.

The group of taxpayers that Mr Osborne ought to be most concerned about are the taxpayers still stuck in the 40p higher rate, between £41,450 and £150,000, especially since he has just shifted 300,000 new taxpayers into that category.

This situation is not helped by the changes to Child Benefit. What the economist Andrew Lilico has persuasively argued is a tax rebate, not a welfare benefit, has effectively been taken away from the important ‘squeezed middle’ at a time when living costs are still rising painfully.

Then there is the so-called ‘Granny Tax’, which was ‘unearthed’ by linguistically creative journalists hours after the Budget. Despite the Brown-esque manner in which it was delivered, the policy remains a sensible one. Mr Osborne has said that the age-related allowances will be frozen from April 2013 onwards. The impact has been exaggerated, as Sara hinted at yesterday, and it will be alleviated by the planned increases in the personal allowance.

This leads on to the Liberal Democrats’ key victory: the acceleration towards a £10,000 income tax personal allowance. As a result of this Budget, no-one will pay income tax on their first £9,205 as of April 2013. Everyone working for the minimum wage will see their income tax bill halved.

This has not stopped Conservative MPs from claiming some credit for the policy, as Nick Boles did during the pre-Budget PMQs, and as Robert Halfon’s fascinating Right Angle campaign web site has done of late.

However, what really matters is how these tax changes are funded. Mr Osborne, under pressure from the Lib Dems and even Tories such as Boris Johnson, unleashed a new set of measures to target wealth, largely through tinkering with Stamp Duty.

A new 7 per cent rate will be levied on £2 million properties and a new 15 per cent charge will be used to crack down on the use of corporate envelopes to avoid tax when purchasing properties.

Capital Gains Tax (CGT) will also be extended to residential properties being held by overseas envelopes. This will be accompanied by a new range of anti-tax avoidance and evasion measures.

Altogether, it means that the richest will pay up to five times more than they would have done with the 50p income tax rate.

This is the correct direction of travel for direct taxation. Wealth should be taxed in a manner that is fair and which encourages wealth creation. Yet it still remains the case that the best way to do this is a Land Value Tax (LVT), within the context of simplified property taxes.

The main rate of corporation tax was reduced by 2 points, which will eventually mean corporation tax of 22 per cent in April 2014 - well below the level of comparable countries like the United States but not as low as Ireland’s 12.5 per cent. Mr Osborne wants the rate to come down to 20 per cent by 2015.

But the method taken to fund the reductions in corporation tax was misguided. The bank levy is one of Mr Osborne’s more harmful gimmicks and has yet again been increased (to 0.105 per cent) at a time when our financial services industry needs to be made more competitive, not less.

Mr Osborne has also taken a leaf out of Sir Geoffrey Howe’s book by increasing indirect taxes on consumption (e.g. 5 per cent hike on tobacco duty) to fund deficit reduction and ever-increasing public expenditure. Albeit to his credit, he has managed to keep fuel and vehicle excise duties lower than they would have been under a Labour government.

George Osborne’s vision is of a tax code that is more transparent, where direct taxation moves away from income towards wealth, in which a more competitive business tax regime can boost growth, and where taxes on consumption help to maintain ‘fiscal stability’. Regrettably, political gimmicks like the bank levy and other tax raids continue to infect Mr Osborne’s agenda.

Earlier this week, I asked whether George Osborne could join Neville Chamberlain and Sir Geoffrey Howe among the pantheon of great Tory Chancellors. Wednesday’s Budget brought him closer to the mark, but not quite the whole hog. His fiscal plans have been blown off course since last November and we are yet to experience the full dangers of the largest experiment in quantitative easing ever embarked upon.

Follow David on Twitter @david_cowan

If Osborne succeeds, he could join Neville Chamberlain and Sir Geoffrey Howe in the pantheon of great Tory chancellors

David Cowan 10.26am

As George Osborne has approached his third Budget as Chancellor, the press has been abuzz with speculation about future taxation.

This has largely been fuelled by the public airings of Liberal Democrat tax demands, such as an accelerated timetable for raising the income tax threshold to £10,000 (itself a policy strongly supported by Conservatives) or Nick Clegg’s nebulous ‘tycoon tax’.

Even Ed Miliband has waded in with a proposal to reverse tax credit cuts. But there has not been any word from the Conservative front bench - as traditional Budget purdah prescribes.

Any meaningful discussion of Mr Osborne’s economic policies cannot be centred on ideology, but on political pragmatism.

Certain commentators, such as Spectator editor Fraser Nelson and the Telegraph’s Peter Oborne, have noted how Mr Osborne is a part-time Chancellor of the Exchequer, and full-time political strategist.

For Mr Osborne, taxes should in the long run be lower and simpler, but fully funded tax cuts can only be made once fiscal stability has been achieved. Above all, tax cuts cannot allow the Conservatives to look like the party of the rich. This ‘fiscal conservative’ approach is very much part of the strategy for a Conservative majority in 2015.

The narrative weaved in the press and driven by Lib Dem leaks has so far described a Budget in which the 50p top rate of tax will be scrapped and the lower threshold raised faster, both policies funded by a new tax raid on pensions. It is all symptomatic of the wider tax debate within and without the Conservative party that says direct taxation should be shifted from income to wealth.

The last two Budgets have been attempts to raise additional revenue by targeting the wealth of the ‘super rich’ but they have tended to result from confused tactics rather than coherent strategy. The arbitrary increases to the bank levy, a £50,000 non-dom charge, a tax raid on North Sea oil and gas, new taxes on private jets - these are all policies motivated by envy, not sound economics.

Other ideas produced by the Lib Dems, such as a mansion tax on £2 million-properties or new council tax bands for high value homes, or Labour’s Bonus Tax, which the party has already claimed will support nine different schemes, are similarly flawed. It wouldn’t be surprising if this sort of misguided thinking infected the Budget tomorrow.

Yet there is a robust case for transferring direct taxation away from income, towards wealth. Nick Boles recently argued at the TRG’s Macmillan Lecture for a Land Value Tax (LVT), and I have previously described on these pages how a LVT could form the basis of a new agenda for tax reform. This is the only fiscally sustainable and fair means by which direct taxation can make the transition from income to wealth but it is unlikely to make an appearance tomorrow.

Mr Osborne must stand by his ‘fiscal conservative’ strategy by not allowing unfunded tax cuts to threaten deficit reduction or to portray unfairly the Conservative party as the party of the rich. The Lib Dems cannot be permitted to imagine themselves as the solely compassionate side of the coalition.

Nor should tax cuts come at the expense of costly gimmicks to ‘bash the rich’ without raising substantial revenues, and merely serving to foster the growing anti-enterprise culture in this country.

Instead, Mr Osborne must outline a ‘middle way’ via a clear, long-term vision for lower and simpler taxes, based on sound public finances and the effective taxation of wealth, rather than income.

If he succeeds, then he could secure his accession to the ranks of Neville Chamberlain and Sir Geoffrey Howe in the pantheon of great Conservative Chancellors.

Follow David on Twitter @david_cowan

Lord Carr’s death marks the passing of a political age

Nik Darlington 11.03am

Lord Carr, the last surviving member of the Conservative party’s talented 1950 intake, has died aged ninety-five.

Robert Carr was one of the founders of the Tory Reform Group in 1975, along with Peter Walker, who also passed away recently in 2010.

Lord Carr was a successful industrialist, Cabinet minister, leader of the Conservative party and a long-serving Wimbledon tennis umpire. But he is perhaps best known for his time as Employment Secretary during Ted Heath’s premiership, when the controversial Industrial Relations Act prompted protests and a “Kill the Bill” campaign (sound familiar?) from the powerful trade unions. The Telegraph’s obituary tells the tumultuous tale well:

The Industrial Relations Bill was Carr’s magnum opus. Labour fought it tooth-and-nail, with Barbara Castle leading the attack — her own proposals [In Place of Strife] forgotten. It was the unions rather than the Labour leadership which opposed reform, but as the unions financed the party and many of its MPs, they held the whip hand. Carr was reasonableness itself in insisting that his reforms would take confrontation out of the workplace, but the Bill both coincided with and fuelled an upsurge in union militancy.

Just after its publication in December 1970, a bomb damaged the basement of Carr’s department in St James’s Square. Then two more exploded at his Georgian home at Hadley Green, Barnet. The first of these — which Carr spotted as it “flared” — blew in the front door; the second wrecked the kitchen. (A third device failed to detonate.) Carr, his wife and their younger daughter were shaken but unhurt. The bombings were the work of the anarchist and largely middle-class Angry Brigade, five of whom were eventually imprisoned for 10 to 15 years.

By the time the Bill became law in August 1971, a poisonous atmosphere ensured that it would largely be a dead letter. Few dared apply it, and when it was invoked the results were catastrophic.

A commonplace ignorance is that Ted Heath was soft on industrial relations and only the ferrous fortitude of Mrs Thatcher could break the unions. In reality, Heath was if anything too radical and tried to do too much at once (sometimes this seems a good lesson for the coalition); Thatcher learned from Heath’s mistake and held back from hitting the unions with a sledgehammer, preferring instead to chip away with a chisel. Sometimes, ennui trumps enthusiasm.

In 1972, Carr became Home Secretary, where he became convinced that prison was “the most expensive and least effective way of deterring or reforming”, a way of thinking that even today, with the prison population at record levels, Britain is still struggling to come round to.

And in 1975, he loyally stuck with Heath during the party leadership contest. When Heath lost the first ballot, he appointed Carr as the acting party leader until the second vote, which was won by Mrs Thatcher. At only one week, Robert Carr’s was perhaps the shortest tenure as leader of the Conservative party, but it was by no means the least deserving.

Tim Crockford, the TRG chairman, said this morning:

“We are all saddened to hear of the passing of Lord Carr. Robert Carr was a founding member of the modern TRG in 1975 and a long standing supporter of the group. Lord Carr had many great achievements in business and politics and remained throughout his life a true ‘one nation’ conservative. He believed passionately that politics was about service. He will be much missed.”

He is survived by his wife and two daughters, to whom we give our thoughts and prayers. Lord Carr’s death means not just the passing of fond memories, but the passing of a political age.

Why stop at Mr Fred? The time has come for revenge for Darien.

Nik Darlington 9.08am

The Queen has annulled the knighthood of the former boss of the Royal Bank of Scotland, Fred Goodwin, following the advice of the Honours Forfeiture Committee.

This committee of senior Whitehall mandarins determines their verdicts according to whether an individual has broken the law and been imprisoned for three months or more, or if they have been censured or struck off by a relevant professional or other regulatory authority. Other “compelling evidence” can be considered if the honours system has been brought into disrepute.

Mr Goodwin has not been convicted of any crime. Nor has he, as far as I can see, been censured or struck off. He is a qualified chartered accountant, though the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland has not taken away his CA. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Scotland (FCIBS), the oldest professional banking institute in the world, and that accolade still stands.

So Mr Goodwin must return his ribbons for ulterior and “compelling” reasons. Here’s what the Forfeiture Committee had to say yesterday:

“The scale and the severity of the impact of his actions as chief executive officer of RBS made this an exceptional case.

In 2008 the Government had to provide £20bn of new equity to recapitalise RBS and ensure its survival and prevent the collapse of confidence in the British banking system. Subsequent increases in government capital have brought the total necessary injection of taxpayers’ money in RBS to £45.5bn.

Both the FSA and the Treasury select committee have investigated the reasons for this failure and its consequences.

They are clear that the failure of RBS played an important role in the financial crisis of 2008-09, which together with macroeconomic factors triggered the worst recession in the UK since the second world war and imposed significant direct costs on British taxpayers and businesses. Fred Goodwin was the dominant decision maker at RBS at the time.

In reaching this decision it was recognised that widespread concerns about Fred Goodwin’s decision meant that the retention of a knighthood for services to banking could not be sustained.”

In short, Mr Goodwin has had his knighthood stripped from him because he turned out to be catastrophically bad at his job.

Once upon a time, everyone thought he was fantastically good at his job. It’s why the previous Labour government gave him the gong in the first place.

What has since happened opens up the most magnificent realm of possibilities. I imagine that the perspicacious Forfeiture Committee will today have on their desks the compelling case of a former England rugby footballer who led his national side to an unprecedented World Cup victory in 2003, but who only two years later masterminded one of the greatest humiliations in the history of the British Lions.

Alas, you may think me frivolous to compare the Mr Goodwin’s ‘crimes’ with those of a mere rugby coach. And you might be right. So here’s a much better idea: a mad grievance I and perhaps many others have harboured for far longer than people have despised Fred the Shred.

You remember that old chestnut from Mark Twain, that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes?

In the 1690s, there was a Scottish banker called William Paterson who, aside from founding the Bank of England in 1694, came up with the swish money-spinning ruse of establishing a Scottish colony in Central America.

Paterson compiled a vast personal fortune from foreign trade, particularly with the West Indies. After giving the English government a ready creditor, he turned his sights on giving the Scottish government an empire - and lucrative American trade routes.

Paterson and his fellow financial adventurers settled upon Darien, on the Isthmus of Panama, as the site of the brave new Scottish colony. The Darien Company elicited great excitement in Scotland and, as many people ploughed savings into RBS at its height, so many Scots invested their savings in Darien. Indeed, Scots chucked approximately one-fifth of the nation’s wealth at the venture.

To cut a miserable tale short, the failure of the Darien scheme bankrupted Scotland. Though rightly debated as to the extent, it can’t be denied that this contributed to the loss of Scottish independence and Scots’ financial and political bail-out by the English in 1706 and 1707.

Sir William Paterson, now a knight of the realm, likely saw Union as a chance to resurrect his fortunes following Darien, and he was instrumental in the events leading up to 1707.

The careers of Fred Goodwin and Sir William Paterson are closely aligned. Both Scots, both bankers, both brought their countries to their knees because of inept financial decision making.

Except disgracefully one of those men still has his knighthood. Remove that false bauble, and let justice be done.

And in the absence of a living figure to immolate, we should publicly flog Paterson’s descendants through the streets of Edinburgh.

Iran might be many things, but it is not the Soviet Union

Aaron Ellis 9.30am

Some of the worst decisions in history have been influenced by bad historical analogies. In an essay on the part played by such analogies in American foreign policy, Robert Dallek dubbed their malign influence “the tyranny of metaphor”.

“For all their pretensions to shaping history, U.S. presidents are more often its prisoners.”

The tyranny of metaphor is especially strong in this perennial debate over the Iran Problem. Those who want to attack the country often justify their position by comparing its regime to the Nazis.

One commentator noted recently:

“No other historical episode gets mentioned as often by pundits and policy makers in arguing that some menace or supposed menace needs to be confronted firmly. What is drawn from the Nazi analogy is an adage that a threat must be stopped forcefully now to avoid a bigger and costlier fight later.”

The comparison is ridiculous for any number of reasons, but it serves an important purpose: it is an easy-to-grasp analogy that helps coax those unsure about the use of force.

Yesterday in the House of Commons, in an urgent question to William Hague (video), Robert Halfon boldly described Iran as “the new Soviet Union of the Middle East”. Though his subsequent description of Iranian behaviour did not explain the comparison, there are two ways one can interpret it.

A generous interpretation would be that Mr Halfon believes the regime in Tehran is so crooked, contradictory, and such an aberration of Persian history that its eventual collapse is inevitable. It was this prophetic insight about Communism that led to George F Kennan devising the idea of containment, which won the Cold War. If we just applied continuous but restrained pressure, the Soviet regime would either yield to the West or be overthrown by the Russians and other subjected populations themselves. Going to war with the Soviet Union would not only be disastrous, but also unnecessary.

The more likely interpretation is that Mr Halfon genuinely believes that Iran poses the same degree of threat as the Soviet Union did, which is as absurd as thinking it poses the same threat as Nazi Germany.

Both Israel and the United States dwarf Iran militarily, whereas the Soviet Union’s conventional forces dwarfed those of the West years before the Russians successfully tested an atomic bomb in 1949.

Iran has only one friend in the Middle East - Syria - and it is unlikely that friendship will continue if the Assad regime falls. Until the final years of the Cold War, Moscow had almost all of Eastern Europe under its thumb and, until the 1960s, the important support of Mao’s China.

If Iran is like the Soviet Union in any way, it is the Soviet Union of 1991, a basket case. The influential commentator Fareed Zakaria wrote earlier this month:

“The real story on the ground is that Iran is weak and getting weaker. Sanctions have pushed the economy into a nose-dive. The political system is fractured and fragmenting.”

I wrote yesterday that the only way we can come to an informed decision about Iran is by raising the standard of the debate. Nik also wrote that a debate of such direct import must take place in the House of Commons before any substantive military move. Thankfully, Parliament was granted a preliminary murmur later yesterday afternoon.

Those who claim to have a solution to the problems posed by Tehran and its nuclear programme should furnish us with a coherent strategy, as well as explaining how to offset the trade-offs and indirect consequences of their preferred policies.

And yesterday highlighted another problem, which perhaps we shall never escape: the use and abuse of history.

Follow Aaron on Twitter @AaronHEllis