As we approach Remembrance Sunday, we are reminded daily of the horrors of war by the newscasts on our television screens, they are shocking and dreadful to watch.
In World war II the scenes that would have accompanied civilian distress throughout Europe would have been as equally horrible and shocking had instant close-up television coverage been available.
Perhaps the absence of mass demonstrations demanding a ceasefire back then, can be put down to the unavailability of that television coverage.
Alternatively, we might put it down to a clearer national consciousness that our Kingdom, for all its faults and short-comings, was in an existential struggle for survival against an ideology that would extinguish our liberties, our values and our way of life. Therefore, in those circumstances, whatever the misery and the innocent civilian casualties, there was no prospect for ceasefire, for compromise, we just had to prevail at whatever cost, or face oblivion.

Constituents email me daily drawing my attention to the horrors on their TV screens, demanding my support for a ceasefire. There is no ceasefire to be had. Israel, whatever its faults and shortcomings, is locked into an existential conflict with Hamas, whose aim it to obliterate it and replace it with an Islamic republic of the most repressive sort. There is no compromise that can be had. A ceasefire merely provides the opportunity to rearm and resume
We must do all we can to provide humanitarian relief but the horror, unless a leopard can change its spots, will continue

When the pressure is on to answer awkward questions at a time when there are many other pressing concerns to be dealt with, the temptation for a hard-pressed Prime Minister is to take the pressure off by putting the whole issue into a box which can be opened at leisure later -by announcing an official independent inquiry.
But it is, more often than not, a dreadful mistake. The short-term relief is bought at the expense of a prolonged nightmare. The government loses any control of the agenda as the inquiry meanders wherever it chooses, clocking-up ever greater expense.
The Covid Enquiry is doing exactly that. So far it has cost £100 million. The lawyers are laughing all the way to the bank. The rest of us can enjoy mild titillation, or despair, depending on our predisposition, as we are treated to what often appears as an episode of In The Thick of It, revealing who despised whom, and the fruity language they used to express it.

None of this addresses the they key issue that is of interest: why did the Government abandon the pandemic plan, previously war-gamed and rehearsed, and instead follow the herd of other nations  by locking-down the entire country both socially and economically?
The Inquiry would, ideally, come up with a cost/benefit analysis and conclude that either the Government got it right or that it imposed a cure that was, in its unforeseen consequences, worse than the disease.

The Inquiry has already revealed a prejudice in favour of lock-downs and I doubt that anything of value is now going to emerge from its further deliberations. And it’s going to cost a bomb. Its time to pull the plug and close down this farrago nonsense with immediate effect.

I’ve received a large number of representations demanding a ceasefire in Gaza. Or, to be more precise, demanding that the UK Government join international calls for a ceasefire.
I do not see that there is any possibility of a ceasefire in the foreseeable future, so I can’t see the point in calling for one.
What I do believe is a possibility, and for which we must work strenuously is a ‘pause’ for the purpose of delivering humanitarian aid to civilians. Even this will be difficult because Israel is acutely aware that Hamas has a history of appropriating humanitarian aid for its own purposes. Screening the aid and ensuring that it is not stolen will be a complex operation.
Equally, using civilians as a ‘human shield’ is central to the standard operating procedure of Hamas.

I do not believe that either side sees a ceasefire as being in their interests.
The ferocity and ‘in your face’ barbarity of the Hamas attack on Israeli settlements was clearly designed to provoke an overwhelming response from Israel. Hamas has been building its network of underground tunnels and arsenal for years. It has chosen its moment to draw Israel into a very costly urban warfare for which Hamas is well prepared. It is not in the interests of Hamas to hold a ceasefire now, when it is on the brink of achieving the very objective which its attack was designed to provoke.

Israel, on the other hand, has been attacked by an organisation whose only purpose is to completely obliterate it and replace it with an Islamic state. There is no settlement that can be negotiated with such an adversary. One side can only prevail by annihilating the other.
To survive this existential threat Israel must take this opportunity to destroy Hamas, or face prolonging the bloodshed of further attacks by Hamas in the future. I see no reason why Israel would accommodate a ceasefire now.

We have to confine ourselves to what is possible, namely pauses in which relief can be delivered and as many lives saved as possible.

But the nightly vision of Hell will continue to unfold on out TV screens.

 

I’m uneasy with the outcry over demonstrations and the chanting of ‘jihad’.
I believe in the right to demonstrate -however strongly I might actually disagree with the cause about which the demonstrators are protesting.
The line that I draw is when a protest prevents everyone else going about their lawful business: I’d sooner someone was arrested for blocking a road than chanting ‘jihad’.

Of Course, some chanting could contravene the laws that we have passed to prevent incitement to violence and hatred and, no doubt, that threshold has been reached on occasion in recent days.
But does chanting ‘jihad’ reach that threshold?
 The difficulty in any court will be the question whether ‘jihad’, beyond any reasonable doubt, constitutes incitement or a ‘hate crime’. Surely the defence would simply plead that the proper and true meaning of ‘jihad’ is purity and spiritual renewal, rather than violent holy war.

The statement the Lord Chancellor to Parliament last Monday clearly indicated that he believed that sentences were too lenient or inappropriate.
He indicated that space for the longer prison sentences for more serious offences will be made available by no longer imprisoning minor offenders for short sentences.
I am not opposed to reform and I acknowledge the fact that short sentences have proved unsuccessful, and often make for a higher rate of reoffending.   I hope however,  that when more space is delivered by our largest prison building programme since Victorian times, he will consider that part of the answer to the problem of short sentences is to make them longer.
Because prison works – do not underestimate the relief to a whole neighbourhood had by removing persistent minor offenders can have.

They say fish Rots from the head down, so let’s start with the head – the capital crime: murder. The law shows its contempt for the sanctity of life by the leniency with which it treats those who take life.
On three occasions in Parliament I’ve taken the opportunity to vote for the restoration of the death penalty. My demand for justice would have been assuaged however, if the mandatory life sentence meant life -or at least some greater approximation to it- but of over 7000 murderers currently in prison, less than 1% have a whole life tariff. Typically, they only serve between only 11 and 16 years.

Moving on to Rape, the requirement that rapists serve at least two thirds of their sentences was reduced to only a half in 2003 – needless to say, I voted against the measure. Of the tiny proportion of reported rapes that finally make it through to a conviction, in 2022 twenty rapists received sentences of less than 5 years, some less than 2 years.
The scandal is that nearly a fifth of all sex offenders reoffend within one year of their release.

We are living through an epidemic of Knife Crime, and despite bill after bill in Parliament giving the courts greater sentencing powers, repeat offenders for possession continue to avoid custodial sentences. Taking violent crime as a whole, in the year to 2021 sentences fell by a quarter – down by 19 months.

Moving on to burglary, unbelievably the average Burglar will have been convicted for up to 27 offences before being jailed.
And when any custodial sentence actually is handed down, however rare, we go through the charade of the judge specifying a  term, and everyone else in court calculating on the back of a fag packet how long it will actually be, because they all know that most prisoners serve less than half their term.

So Let’s jump down to the tail, to  those crimes that make the lives of neighbours and neighbourhoods a misery: the anti-social louts, the vandals, the shop-lifters, the benefits cheats, the fly-tippers, the fraudsters: none of whom will see the inside of a prison cell, for them it’s ‘community punishments’
The Lord Chancellor said that he was going to ensure public confidence with a robust regime for community punishments. Well he would need to, because last year I asked in Parliament

“It is reported that community punishments can be discharged by working from home. Please tell me that isn’t true. “

The policing minister replied that although they would reduce the proportion of sentences that could be worked from home, they would retain them for ‘those unable to manage a brush and shovel’.

Leniency is measured by the public frustration that justice is not being seen to be done.
Let’s bring back penal servitude with hard labour!