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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Corporeal asks: Was this the best possible political result
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Corporeal asks: Was this the best possible political result for David Cameron?
Government defeats in House of Commons vote are usually a blow to the sitting Prime Minister, leaving a scar of weakness, and requiring a scramble to reformulate policy to account for the set-back and fill the gap left by the defeated motion. A coalition government adds another level of questions about what this means in terms of unity.
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The person who really seems to have got off lightly is Nick Clegg. The coalition situation was awkward and his party was horribly divided, but he seems to have got through it without anybody noticing. But again, we'll have to see some polling to know for sure.
It is wrong to assume that Russia is opposing all attempts by the western powers to resolve the Syrian Civil War.
Russia has co-operated by persuading and assisting the Assad regime reduce its chemical weapons facilities from five locations to two more easily guarded and safer locations. Russia has also held back from delivering upgraded weapons and military hardware.
So all sides are trying to de-escalate the war and to diminish the risk of chemical weapons falling into the the wrong hands and of leaking outside the country and warzone to become used in international terrorism.
Assad may well be prepared, in exchange for being bombed by the US, for Russia to 'assist' his regime decommission chemical weapons.
My fear is that Obama is solely interested in a 'punish and deter' strike which gets him off the hook of Assad crossing his 'red line' rather than pursuing a more complex strategy aimed at a negotiated solution.
To be fair to Obama though, Putin is not prepared to go the extra distance which would accelerate a negotiated settlement.
Obama may feel that the whole issue needs the shock of a military strike to release the diplomacy deadlock.
I actually wonder if, in the long run, he might not end up rather grateful to those who screwed up his party management on Thursday night.
It is a shame that such approaches were not tried near the start of the civil war. However, I'm not sure the existential crisis facing Assad and his regime would allow such an approach now.
If he does not voluntarily get rid of the special weapons, then Assad needs to know that the risks of using chemical weapons are greater than the tactical advantages he gets from using them.
Reputational loss or gain to the two political leaders is relatively insignificant compared to the real loss from Thursday's vote which is to the momentum of diplomatic efforts to resolve the Syrian Civil War.
The problem with global superpowers is that they tend rely only only their ability to 'negotiate from strength'. The European powers are far more nuanced in their approach to diplomacy and put as much faith in an ability to persuade as they do in the power to coerce.
What the international community lost on Thursday was the UK's proactive role as a skillful broker: shown at its best in the Libyan intervention.
In light of that outcome, the fallout on domestic politics seems rather irrelevant.
Are we allowed to choose both?
I am much happier that we are now having to consider persuasion rather than coercion if only for the reason that coercion would have seen us killing a lot of innocent people without achieving any significant resolution. We have tried this before and the world is full of countries trying to build themselves after one of our western moral crusades. It is time to recognise that, as David posted in his previous thread, sometimes doing nothing (militarily at least) is the least worst option.
It is not I, dear Perdix, but the father of a rebel fighter who was poisoned by the gas.
Nice to see Mr. Tapestry back on.
It may be the best result for Cameron, but only time will tell.
It is the primary job of a Prime Minister to lead the country and persuade the country that what he is proposing is the correct course of action . If a PM does not do this we may as well have an incompetent such as Farage as PM governing by Opinion Poll and following no principles of wither himself or his party .
Unfortunately , last week , Cameron failed to persuade the vast majority of the country and a significant number of his own MP's that his policy on Syria was the correct one .
For myself , I start from a negative view of Britain taking part in military action against Assad ( primarily because the internal opposition in Syria is just as repulsive ) but I am open to persuasion .
For these reasons I disagree with Corporeal that there is some sort of silver lining to Cameron's defeat on Thursday . The debate and defeat exposed him as a weak leader with insufficient strength to put forward a strong enough case to even persuade his own MP's that it was the correct policy .
It seems you only make one sensible post a year and, as you did it yesterday, we are going to have to wait another 364 days for your next.
There was no failure of Cameron's argument. His argument had been accepted by a majority of the house probably long before he ever made it.
The failure was in the management of proceedings.
A failure by Cameron to whip his MPs effectively.
A failure by Miliband to make up his mind, keep his word and to subordinate the interests of his party to those of his country.
I can't think why you are not praising your own Leader, who came out of last week smelling discretely sweet. To get all but nine of his MPs to vote for military intervention was a triumph unprecedented in the annals of his party.
None of the leaders got what they wanted but at least Clegg didn't make a mess of his own role.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/currency/10277392/India-pushes-shock-and-awe-currency-plan-to-save-BRICS.html
It is too easy to compare every stage of this with Blair's unhappy sojourn into Iraq.
For all the failure of that expedition no one can criticize his attempts to persuade a skeptical public
He put himself through every wringer in order to persuade. It was even called his 'masochist strategy'
He did the same in parliament and secured a healthy majority.
Cameron by contrast has been arrogant and cavalier.
He hasn't bothered to persuade the public and as for MPs =he failed to persuade even with his own.
3/10. Time to pull his socks up
The Conservatives need a new chief whip and improved party discipline.
Labour needs a new Leader whom the country can trust.
The Lib Dems need its activists to speak up for its Leader.
The power of the press.
The French might have to go in alone.
However both amendments did not rule out intervention.
Cameron did not have to throw the towel in so quick if he believed his case.
The same for Miliband and Clegg.
I think this may be being too kind to Obama. To be fair, how to respond to the CW attack is a very difficult conundrum. But as some wag has noted on twitter, what message does saying you are using military action to send a message send?
Anthony Cordesman has written an excellent series of articles on the options (and missed opportunities along the way), one of which I link below. In one, which I cannot find, he suggests that the CW issue is the wrong 'red line'. While this scale of use of CW should be a come to Jesus moment for the international community in defence of international law (why sign treaties if there is no punishment for those who blatantly breach them and who gain a military advantage by having others disarm and do not do so themselves), there is a genuine question to be asked as to why these 1000+ deaths are more deserving of punishment than the preceding 100,000+.
http://csis.org/publication/choosing-right-options-syria
Your unique expertise is much needed by PB in its current deliberations.
The world would be a safer place by far if PB were to make up its collective mind on the basis of expert advice and sound reasoning.
Nothing seems to have changed since the G8 in June .
One EU member diplomatic source said the prime minister looked like he’d been trying, along with President Hollande, to get President Obama to sign up to arms for Syria, only to discover he couldn’t deliver anything himself – it all sounded a bit like a man who drags his friend to the bar only to discover he’s got no money himself to buy a round. - See more at: http://blogs.channel4.com/gary-gibbon-on-politics/g8syria-obama-silent-and-cameron-light-on-support/23326#sthash.QZlexQsH.dpuf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Syria_Ethno-religious_composition..jpg
The pro-interventionists completely ignoring this simple fact shows they are not interested in the moral case. They can't even admit this aspect of the problem exists because they know if they do it blows their moral case out of the water.
This includes the BBC who - surprisingly to me - seem to have decided on full-on war propaganda.
Quite a committee has turned up at the White House this morning. Everyone you'd expect in fact. Calls with Congress due shortly.
For the record, Night time arrives in Damascus about 7.30-8pm local time, we are a couple hours behind.
"I wonder if dancing to the US tune is the real principle to have evaporated in the last few days.
Maybe people don;t mind intervening. They don;t want to intervene on America's terms.
And they don;t want to intervene with weak armed services."
I'm a bit like that at least as far as Britain's role goes. I think being close to the US makes sense normally, even when they're wrong, but not when they're wildly wrong and they've gone increasingly mental since 9/11.
On the second point i think the best defense is having armed forces with recent war-fighting experience so i'm generally in favour of any military intervention simply as a training exercise on the conditions
1) fairly small
2) fairly short
3) chance of making it better at least as high as chance of making it worse
4) armed forces equipped and funded on that basis i.e. home defense plus intervention force
None of that applies at the moment so all that's left is do we put on a little skirt and cheer-lead for the Yanks or not and given what the entirely foreseeable consequences of helping our glorious cannibal allies win there's no good reason to cheer-lead either.
Well actually it's quite obvious why they might do that.
I remember reading-though I can't remember where- that the provenance of chemical weapons is relatively easy to establish. If as you suggests the chemicals were supplied to rebel factions from the Saudi Arabians it shouldn't be too difficult to discover.
Beam me aboard Scotty
@ Moderator: I have tried intermittently posting over the past 6 months under my old sign in, but it kept on telling me I had the wrong password. When i clicked on the link to change the password, it told me an email had been sent to my email address, but the email never turned up. Also, it would not let me re-register with my old email address. Eventually, I created a new account under a different email address.
Has anyone else had this problem?
What could be a better example of 'trolling' than never posting yourself but attaching a 'troll' sign to various posters you don't agree with. Why don't you announce what username you used to post under? Or better still post yourself
Friday chez Brooke consisted of three females shouting at the TV to stop wittering on about stupid Syria and show the real news on William and Kate.
Anthony Cordesman has written an excellent series of articles on the options (and missed opportunities along the way), one of which I link below.
A very informative and well reasoned article.
A few points which might appear negative but only because I am singling out what I disagreed with.
1. Your argument that treaties have to be enforced to be useful, and that intervention should follow breach of treaty, rather than extent of suffering, is stronger than Cordesman's attempt to justify intervention on the extent of suffering caused and to compare it to the extent of suffering caused by conventional weapons.
2. Cordesman suffers from being very US centric. The opportunities available to the US to leverage the diplomatic strengths of its allies is underplayed.
Compare:
Finally, the U.S. should make it clear that it does not reject negotiations that could lead to some form of agreed solution that would protect Syria’s Alawites and Kurds, offer Russia a role in Syria and move towards a UN solution, and give Assad a secure way to leave or even lead to some form of ceasefire that temporarily divides Syria without leaving it without a future.
to Rory Stewart's:
[Syria] desperately needs a political settlement between the more moderate parts of the regime and the more moderate parts of the opposition, to balance the very different components of Syrian society. But that would require, not just extraordinary political imagination, but the active support of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Russia.
3. The list of 'actions' makes a lot of tactical sense but presupposes a political goal of intervening to resolve the civil war rather than just to punish and deter on CW. That would require a massive leap of intent by Obama and stretch the whole legality argument well beyond its current bounds.
That said, the Cordesman paper is a very useful addition to PB's briefing resources.
'He did the same in parliament and secured a healthy majority.'
Yes,and the then leader of the opposition kept his word unlike the current weasel.
Bit too cryptic for me. Which cannibal allies to the west? Turkey, Lebanon, Israel?
If you mean Israel, I have to disagree. They have shown remarkable restraint in keeping out of the US' military ventures in the Middle East and I would assume they would be under similarly strong orders to do so this time around. For all the tail wagging the dog in US-Israeli relations, Israel ultimately knows which side its bread is buttered on and does as it is told when it knows the US is in deadly earnest.
Do I recall correctly that you had good experience of the ins and outs of weapons proliferation issues?
On the US-centric viewpoint, I sometimes think the US is bipolar, fighting between the desires to always do what it wants on its terms and alone if necessary on the one hand (damn the canons) and wanting to be loved by everyone on the other. This results sometimes in hubris and overestimation of its strengths, and sometimes in blindspots as to how strong it actually is. Whatever, the vacillation between these two opposed approaches undermines overall effectiveness, IMO.
I think Man_On_A_Pallet, following a fit of pique at being upstaged, may have murdered HortenceWithering.
In the circumstances, you might consider filing a report with the Police.
IIRC, it lies in the chemical analysis of the impurities, leaving a signature.
I find it interesting that if rumoured, 7 Shadow Ministers threatened to resign if their Leader backed the Government motion, thus forcing Miliband to renege on his cross party agreement with Cameron despite his demands being met. That says a lot about Miliband the politician, and also those who surround him in the Labour party. To then rush out an almost identical amendment to the originally agreed Government proposals before they had been put to the House while briefing that Miliband had played a political blinder seems to have been to clever by half. The issue was Syria and the framing of a UK response to the use of chemical weapons by the Assad Regime.
Miliband's spinners were not even subtle in their early attempts to play party politics in an effort to try and shore up his position, Miliband is now even weaker and more diminished as a LotO as a result. And now we the UK have neither a strong response to the use of chemical weapons by the Assad Regime, or a strong position at the UN Security Council. I genuinely believe that Miliband gambled that he and his party could vote against the Government motion while others would carry the day and the vote on this issue. I am now beginning to believe that Miliband would make an even worse PM than Gordon Brown, surely some Labour supporters must be beginning to wonder if that he is too risky a gamble for the country right now.
Welcome back! As for the issue of the missing email, it is possible that it might have been caught in any spam-trap you might have on your email system? That's the only thing that comes to mind at the moment.
"One man blamed his “evil twin”, another was adamant that his wife was his sister, and a black claimant using a white woman’s ID told her trial for benefit fraud that her skin colour had changed after a road accident...
*A Glasgow claimant tried to explain excessive income: “Any wages under £200 are mine but any over £200 must belong to someone else.”
*A Bilston claimant questioned about a living together fraud: “I don’t know why you’re interviewing me, I’m bisexual!”
*A man interviewed in Folkestone regarding failing to declare his night-watchman job said: “I only claim benefits during the day - what I do at night is my own business...”
Weak, Weak, Weak
will need to become:
Weak, Weak, Weak, Weak, Weak, Weak, Weak, Weak, Weak, Weak.
If images of Syrian babies and children dying from chemical warfare appear on TV it will be very, very painful for Ed as there will be a lot of questions asked over whether he was right to take a partisan position on Syria to defeat the government and his opportunism could finally catch up with him. Dave on the other had will look pretty good having argued for intervention, gone to Parliament but done the democratic thing and respected its wishes, all the while not being required to commit to what may turn into a very unpopular 5-7 year jaunt in the Middle East.
Why don't you threaten to resign from PB?.
*feints*
....subject to Congressional approval!
or did you mean swoon
Edwina Currie @Edwina_Currie 40s
#obama will seek authorisation of Congress - debate and vote. Well, Big Dave, you've started a new fashion
PATHETIC
PATHETIC
Your spinning is getting tedious
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erYpXzE9Pxs
It probably also means the UN report is not ironclad so he can't pre-empt it and get the missile campaign started in advance of its release.
There are prices to be paid but once again, thanks Ed, those prices are being at least shared. Ed is taking responsibility for fracturing our relationship with the Americans and may even volunteer to take the blame the next time a group of children are chucked on the barbie.
I really wish Cameron was smart enough to have engineered this deliberately but luck is a good commodity too.