My rather bleak conclusion in this column last week Tens of Thousands May Have To Die (desmondswaynemp.com) has prompted some robust emails from both the supporters of a ‘free Palestine’ and those of a ‘greater Israel’.  Which rather re-enforces my prejudice that neither side is ready for the level of compromise required to reach a peaceful settlement.
It strikes me that there are four possible scenarios:
First, a continuation of the status quo with occupied territories, the absence of a Palestinian state, together with the consequential economic disadvantages,  intermittent terrorist outrages, intifadas and bouts of open warfare.
Second, The rather unlikely triumph of Israel’s sworn enemies, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran, resulting in genocide and the complete replacement of Israel by ‘Palestine’.
Third, the equally unlikely possibility of a single secular state embracing both Palestinians and Israelis, as well as the Arab Israelis.
Or fourth, a two state solution, which is the objective of UK, European, and US policy, with Palestine and Israel both enjoying full statehood and living side by side.
These last two possibilities would require historic concessions of enormous magnitude on both sides. Compromises would have to be territorial and economic. They would be painful and neither side could be wholly satisfied. It would require leadership of enormous courage and vision, neither of which has been in evidence for many years.
Hence my bleak conclusion that killing will continue until there is a willingness to compromise and the leadership on both sides to embrace it.

I recall Maggie’s magnificent and dogged determination to secure our annual rebate from the European Union when Brexit wasn’t even a distant dream. Equally, I recall Tony Blair’s gullibility in giving half of it back again in return for what turned out to be …absolutely nothing.
I consider the ceding our sovereignty over the Chagos Islands by this present Labour Government to be a much greater error of enormous magnitude.
We have given away something that we owned and controlled, in return for a promise that we can continue to use it as before, but from now on, we’ll have to pay handsomely to do so.
Furthermore, we have done so by handing a vitally important strategic asset to a country which is in a growing partnership with one of our principal adversaries, to the consternation of our greatest ally.
What on Earth were they thinking of?
The scent of weakness rapidly spreads: Argentina is now salivating at the prospects for the Falklands, as is Spain over Gibraltar.

My email inbox has registered another spike in correspondence over the situation in the Middle East.
If largely falls into two categories. First, those for whom Israel can do no wrong. Including some evangelical Christians who share a bizarre (and quite unscriptural) belief that Jesus will not return until ancient boundaries of Israel are fully restored.
Second, those who believe that Palestinian violence is entirely justified by Israeli intransigence, and many of whom come dangerously close to suggesting that the very existence of Israel is the source of the problem.
Though my correspondence does not reflect it, my prejudice is that a majority of my constituents  share my own ability to see it from both sides.
When, as the UK minister responsible for our Palestinian outreach, I challenged the Government of Israel on what I considered to be their disastrous stewardship of Occupied Territories (which included the bulldozing of schools paid for by UK taxpayers), I believed their policy to be a calculated effort to prevent the two-state solution which was the very objective of our own policy. When I put this to Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister and Chief Negotiator, our meeting ended abruptly.
Equally, over the years, we have seen the rare opportunities for a long-term settlement squandered by aspects the Palestinian leadership. The resort to terrorism has only reaped greater suffering on their own people and set back negotiation further.
When Hamas launched their pogrom last October they could have been in no doubt about the whirlwind that they would reap. Hamas now claims that their objective was to re-energize the prospect of negotiations. I believe they knew exactly the destruction that would follow and that their real purpose was to radicalise a new generation. Something in which Israel appears to be obliging them.

Tens of thousands may have to die before either side is ready to make the level of compromise necessary for peace.

After hearing reports on Radio 4’s early morning Farming Today programme, about the difficulties farmers have been having registering poultry in accordance with new regulations. I decided that I’d better get on with it, rather than end up being fined.
I didn’t experience the frightful computer problems that I had heard reported. Nevertheless, I resent the absurdity of having to register my one surviving hen (alas, nature is red in tooth and claw).
I can understand that government might need regulate large commercial undertakings, but there is something rather Orwellian  about a state that wants to keep tabs on those of us who keep a few chickens in the garden as a hobby, or for eggs at our own breakfast table.

It is reported that the PM wants to accelerate parliamentary legislation on medically assisted dying by affording government time to a private member’s bill. The are two from which the Government may choose, Lord Falconer’s bill in the Lords and Jake Richard MP’s bill in the Commons.
I am concerned that there should be any haste in the parliamentary process and the time for consideration.

Nobody, should have to fear a grizzly death. The proper answer is to invest in palliative care and end of life services. For the present however, that fear remains significant, but to alleviate it with medically assisted death would, in my estimate, be the greater of the two evils.
 The provision of such a choice, I believe would, more swiftly than we might expect, become an expectation. The process may be subtle, but the elderly and infirm, together with the handicapped and others, can perceive that they might be considered a ‘burden’.
And who would wish to be a burden?
Oregon has released its data for 2023. Of those who applied for an assisted death, 51% did so because they felt that they were a burden rather than because the feared a painful death.
(as an aside, let us not imagine that an assisted death is always straightforward. Oregon reports that in 2023 at least 10% of assisted deaths involved complications including regurgitations or seizures, and one established a new record: 5 days and 17 hours from the time of ingestion).

It is difficult to stand out against overwhelming support reported by pollsters and campaigning by celebrities like Dame Esther Rantzen. Nevertheless, altering the law will fundamentally change the nature of medicine and the purpose of the medical profession.
Whatever safeguards we insert into the legislation, we will have accepted the principle that clinicians can lawfully use their skill to hasten death, and we cannot know how the application of that principle will evolve subsequently.  The examples we have of jurisdictions that have adopted this principle, are that once a line has been crossed, the new service is very rapidly extended well beyond what was originally envisaged.

When I debated against Baroness Meacher, who had her own bill in the Lords at that time, she was emphatic about her safeguards, namely the requirement for a confirmed diagnosis of a terminal condition that would result in death within six months. In that debate at Durham University however, she was undermined by her seconder, a psychiatrist, who demanded that assisted death be available to anyone who wanted it.
Let’s be honest, there is demand for it. Of the 5000 or so suicides in England annually, only 400 have a terminal medical condition.

Dr Lehmens, Professor of Health & Law at University of Toronto visited Parliament in April to tell us that he regrets having been an enthusiast to change the law in Canada because expensive provision and adaptions for the elderly and handicapped are increasingly unavailable and patients are informed that instead they might consider applying for the assisted death.

In 2022 a 23-year-old woman had a medically assisted death in Belgium. In 2016, as a teenager, she had witnessed a bombing at Brussels Airport. She was physically unharmed but suffered PTSD.
Whilst the original intention of medical assistance in dying was to relieve suffering in death, it has become a means of avoiding suffering during life.

My argument is no more than one of the existence of a ‘slippery slope’. I make no apology for that, because I believe that it is a very steep slope  and very slippery indeed.

In 2018 the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims came up with this definition of ‘Islamophobia’ with the intention that it should be officially adopted and used for the purpose of identifying ‘hate crimes’:
“Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.”

Mercifully, the previous government rejected this definition out of hand. They were also lobbied by police chiefs not to adopt it. Unfortunately, hot on the heels of its announced revocation of regulations to safeguard freedom of expression in our universities, the new government is indicating that it will adopt and implement the All-Party Parliamentary Group’s definition

I should point that the designation of ‘All-Party Parliamentary Group’ does not convey any more authoritative status than that there are at least twenty self-selected parliamentarians (of both Lords & Commons) that share a ‘bee in their bonnet’ on the subject about which they’ve chosen to form their group.

The central weakness about this group’s definition is that it is manifestly absolute nonsense: Islam is a religion and not a race. It is comprised of adherents from many different races, in exactly the same way as is Christianity.
The central danger of defining a religion as a race is that any robust criticism of dogma or practice, then becomes a form of ‘racism’. In our free society where we have had a long tradition of, biblical criticism, it would be outrageous to exempt Islam, or any other religion, from the sort of critique to which Christianity has been, and remains subject.

As a Christian, I’m entitled to say that there are aspects of religion are a bit ‘wacky’ (though, surely, Mormonism has to be wackiest of all) and that people of any religion or none, have every right to say so, without receiving a visit from the thought police.

Thus far, the charge in defence of freedom has been led by the Sikhs who have written to the Government lobbying against adoption of the definition. They argue that they would no longer be free to teach the history of their own religious struggle and the martyrdom of their gurus at the hands of the Mughal empire as it expanded Islamic hegemony in the Indian sub-continent by military conquest.
I’m not convinced that they are correct, I very much doubt that their history lessons could fall within the scope and I think there are much more pressing dangers that might shield aspects of Islam from quite proper scrutiny. Nevertheless, the very fact that Sikhs are alarmed at the proposals is itself significant. Indeed, police chiefs lobbied against the definition because they were concerned about the impact it would have on community harmony.
It is a very bad Idea