THERE ARE TWO ACTIONS that David Cameron will never take:
the first is leaving the EU, and the second is pressing the nuclear button.
Both actions are inconceivable, and the European Commission, Angela Merkle,
President Hollande, and Vladimir Putin also know this to be true – dam it,
Cameron himself knows it to be true. On Sunday's Andrew Marr programme Cameron
said as much on the question of him being prepared to leave the EU: asked the
question by Marr whether he was prepared to leave the EU, Marr received this circuitous
answer, '[in the negotiations] I leave nothing out.' Not Yes or NO, but the
more vacuous and cowardly obfuscation – no wonder politicians are held in such
contempt, and the public are turning to Nigel Farage and Jeremy Corbyn rather
than put up with this state of affairs.
Cameron
is a Europhile; fully committed to the EU, who was forced into renegotiating
our relationship with Europe because of the rise of Ukip – his heart is not
really in it. He is the last person to be renegotiating reform of the EU on
behave of the Eurosceptic people of England (I will not say the UK). This man
has a record for dissembling. He told us he would never sign the Lisbon Treaty [1]
if (that is) we were not signed up to it when and if he came to power. This was
a nod and a wink to Gordon Brown, who took him at his word, and signed the
Treaty in Lisbon on 13 December 2007: three years before Cameron was elected to
office as prime minister. Cameron knew that he could promise his Eurosceptics
never to sign it knowing that the Labour Party under Gordon Brown (if for no
other reason than his personal hatred of the Tories) would sign-up to the Treaty
before the Tories ever came to power.
Without
the pressure from Ukip, Cameron would have freely signed the Lisbon Treaty.
Cameron was leading his somewhat Eurosceptic party by their nose[2];
and those who became wise to his dissembling went over to Ukip who, at the time,
Cameron had nothing but a haughty contempt for; and presented a distasteful
caricature of them to the media. But as Ukip made advances in local and
European elections, Cameron had to take Nigel Farage and his party seriously:
he had to eventually promise a referendum on EU membership, but only after
pressing for reform of the EU on the commissioners which he thought, in the
tradition of European solidarity, would try to accommodate him in his
suggestions for keeping England if not the whole of the UK within the EU.
We have
to wait and see what Cameron achieves, but any concordant that leaves in place
the Schengen agreement on the free movements of peoples; or the gradual
strangulation of our national sovereignty, by continuing to elevate EU law
above the sovereign laws of our nation state, and its ability to debate and
create them in our own parliament with little or no reference to the European
Court of Human Rights or Justice; or any other infernal body of the EU - will
not do.
NOW WE COME TO Trident and Cameron's readiness to press the
button and Jeremy Corbyn's unwillingness under any circumstance to do so. I
loathe Corbyn deeply; not as an individual (although his naivety upsets me and
makes me angry; but never to the point of wishing to be the receptacle for any
kind of physical violence to him), but I loathe him for the damage his
loathsome nostrums will do to the country if he were ever to become prime
minister.
Where I
do however have certain sympathy for him is in his admission that he would
never, under any circumstances, press the nuclear button. This is the genuine
honesty of the type Corbyn proselytises. He says what no other of this
country's current leaders have ever been prepared to do – to be honest with
people regarding pressing the nuclear button. During the Cold War political
leaders were fully but unhappily prepared to respond to any nuclear assault by
the Soviet Union on the West.
Today
when nuclear deterrence is still, unfortunately, needed; no one in this country
believes Cameron when he says he is fully prepared to press the button in
extenuating circumstances. He is no more prepared to order the deaths of
hundreds of thousands of people, than he has been to bomb civilians in his
fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan, or ISIS if civilians were being used
as human shields. In fact he and the West condemned Israel for ignoring the human
shields deployed by Hamas in Gaza when they were forced by Hamas rockets
showering Israel, to intervene in Gaza.
Corbyn
is at least honest enough to admit he could never press the nuclear button.
Cameron lacks such honesty. He is fully prepared to press the button if needs
must; or so he says. But like everything else he says, it is for the moment;
the only function of his rhetoric is to delude the British people and score
another point or two over Corbyn.
A
Republican president would be prepared to use it; Putin would be prepared to
use it; Kim Jong-un would be prepared to use it; Netanyahu would be prepared to
use it: and Iran when they get a button to press will be prepared to do so – or
at least in all of these cases the public throughout the world genuinely
believe them when they say they would press it. But Cameron and Hollande
representing the only two European nuclear powers would not be prepared to
press the button.
Our
leaders lack the ruthlessness of their enemies to fight a conventional war; let
alone a nuclear one. In fact, as a supporter of possessing a nuclear
capability; it is only worth the billions of tax payer's pounds to pay for it,
and keep it functioning, if this country's leaders are prepared to use it –
which they are not; in which case why pour billions of tax payers money into
such a deterrent if it is only a symbolic deterrent. This is why Putin is
outmanoeuvring the West; he knows we are weak; he knows we lack the
ruthlessness to stop him, and we will eventually pay the price for our
feebleness and lack of any kind of response other than the limp rhetoric and
fatuous warnings which go ignored.
David
Cameron is becoming unconvincing by the day to his public, when it comes to the
EU and our nuclear deterrent. Jeremy Corbyn is like the child who shouts out
'the king has no clothes'; and indeed it is the case when it comes to the EU
and our nuclear deterrent.
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