I also differ on the question of a British Bill of Rights. Leaving aside the fact that we already have the 1689 declaration of rights and liberties (why haven’t more people heard of this document?) as well as Magna Carta, it seems a bit late to start worrying about “constitutional legalism” encroaching on our system of parliamentary sovereignty. What is the already dense web of European “human rights” law, if not constitutional legalism, and an encroachment on British parliamentary sovereignty? Come to that, what is the 1972 European Communities Act if not a license for continually diminishing parliamentary sovereignty? Today most of parliament’s time is consumed passing into law legislative decisions already taken by the unelected European Commission.

Furthermore, in some ways constitutional legalism is no bad thing. I have no problem with constitutional legalism that restrains the power of government and empowers the citizen: for example, guaranteeing his right to free speech, self-defence and a fair trial if charged with a crime. My problem is with the kind of constitutional legalism that the new European political system embodies, which at seemingly every step seeks to promote social democratic governance. Under this Euro-law, we all have the rights to paid maternity leave, 35 hour working weeks, and sex-change operations free of charge on the NHS, but not to absolute freedom of speech, self-defence, or trial by jury. In a modification to the US Constitution’s preamble, the government’s right to regulate, tax, nanny and patronise shall not be infringed.

Why such a change? Have his styles of management and leadership changed, or have the issues he is dealing with changed? Is his a cautious and conciliatory style in fact good for the country, if bad for his career?

The ‘theory’ goes that basically once the middle classes are established thats when the democratic rights will be demanded…but one could strike similarities towards Russia where the Political Culture apparantly leans towards some kind of Centralised Autocratic power..these are obviously just arguments and theories of course…

One would probably lean towards the Chinese evoloutionary path towards democracy rather than the Russian path attempted in the 90’s-the failure of Shock therapy+instant capitalization(if there exists such a word) of the economy…now it is estimated thar Organized Crime runs up to 40 per cent of the economy.

Just a few thoughts…(feel free to comment on my article ‘The New Cold War’, Im trying to stir up some comments and dicussion of the articles on this site

You cite Ireland as an example of the benefits of negotiation, without any mention of the fact that many Northern Irish towns are effectively under gangland IRA rule. Was this a good deal for the people living in those areas? Is it ever a good thing to allow a revolutionary paramilitary organisation safe haven in your country, free to raise money and procure arms from abroad in defiance of the law? Our appeasement of the IRA also makes it much harder for us to convincingly combat and deter other terrorists, and is a positive incitement to future acts of terrorism against us. If the most violent and committed of terrorists know that if they pressure Britain via terrorist acts, eventually the British government will give them something via talks, then don’t be surprised if other zealots seek to blackmail us in this manner. We here a lot about “root causes of terrorism” - usually from the sorts of people who favour negotiation and appeasement of terrorists. They never seem to consider that the very act of negotiation and appeasement on the part of democracies like Britain is one of the surest root causes of terrorism.

This applies in spades to Israel. The idea that Palestinian groups like Hamas would be willing to set aside their long-term goal of the establishment of a Palestinian state in the entire area that Israel currently occupies is fanciful in the extreme. By the very nature of their violent acts and religious beliefs, Hamas and others are zealous people who do not take kindly to splitting bread half and half and calling it quits. Many Palestinians and Israelis are no doubt tired of the daily grind of rocket attacks, but the members of Hamas aren’t, nor will they ever be until they have accomplished their goal. No amount of naive wishful thinking will change this.

As to whether or not talking to Pakistan in the Autumn of 2001 prevented that country from siding with bin Laden, yes, talking played a part, but it was for the most part the U.S. talking and Pakistan listening. If some reports are to be believed, the U.S. envoy to Pakistan during this period threatened the Pakistanis with being “bombed back to the stone age” unless they sided with America, and Musharraf was in any event pro-western by inclination. To compare these sorts of negotiations to talks with Iran is to draw a parallel where no parallel exits - unless of course, you favour threatening the Iranian government with being bombed back to the stone age unless it abandons its nuclear weapons program, which is one form of talking I suppose, but not the type I’d guess you have in mind.

Then we get the quote: “Whilst the terrorists do seek to impose their way of life on us, the solution is not to kill them all, because that only encourages younger men to take their place.” I’d hazard that the prospect of being killed is less a spur to terrorist acts than the prospect that you can commit terrorist acts and get away with it. For over two decades prior to 9/11, successive U.S. presidents elected to ignore the provocations of various Arab and or Islamic extremists; if “not killing them” was any kind of solution, then the very fact 9/11 happened shows it’s no kind of solution at all. I also know that pumping Disneyfied, pro-western propaganda into Middle Eastern schools is no plausible deterrent to terrorist acts. Aside from the fact that it’s doubtful that the governments of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan et al would consent to their schools being turned into mini western embassies, the types who are drawn to terrorism are often very well acquainted with the West. The 9/11 plotters lived in Europe before and during their conversion to the Islamist cause, and despite our own 7/7 bombers apparent love of cricket and fish & chips, that didn’t stop them killing in the name of Allah.

As a final point, I find it telling that you use presumably sarcastic quotation marks when mentioning ‘the west’ at the beginning of your piece, but comment at the end that combatting terrorism “is not all down to the United States, it is down to the entire international community”. Ah yes, that much ballyhooed “international community”. The same international community who just a few weeks ago via the UN voted against sanctions on Zimbabwe, on the basis that the policies of the Mugabe government were Zimbabwean “internal affairs”, of no concern to the rest of the world. The same international community who has thus far done nothing to stop genocide in Darfur, and who did nothing to prevent bloodshed in Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Congo, or countless other countries. In reality, to the extent that there is an international community of nations who can be expected to share any kind of coherent vision with regards fighting terrorism, it is the Anglophone nations plus Israel, with one or two others thrown in. Assuming anything else is just naive, and runs counter to myriad examples where people have suffered owing to the myth of action via the “international community”.

‘… if we were to start a war with everyone in the world who disagrees with our way of life, the world would be a substantially less populated.’

It seems to me that the ‘terroists’ belong to two broad groups: 1) those with genuine political grievances. 2) those with a hateful ideology — products of the Islamist movement, its principal architect being Sayyid Quadr, architect of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The latter group do certainly, I will go ahead and say it, ‘hate our way of life’ but they’re small in number (if we could somehow pick them off, I don’t think it’d so anything ’substantial’ to the population and, as for the former, and as for the vast majority of ”global citizens’, I don’t think they’re too bothered one way or the other about our way of life. I think many in the Middle East, Africa are problem rather curious about our way of life; they may not know much about it but certainly many would like, if they could, to come and live in a Western country.

I am not sure how much any of post-9.11 actually has to do with hatred of social liberalism, it is more to do with certain foreign policy ventures dating back to a long time ago (Tomhall points this out himself). As the American comedian David Cross puts it: ‘if the terrorists hated freedom Netherlands would be f*****g dust and so would all the other countires who are truly freer than us”.

We certainly are a nation who cares more about flat-screen LCD HD-ready TVs and Blu-Ray recordable DVD players than investing in our health, or more of us would have private insurance. A similar phenomenon is prevalent in the U.S., where a significant chunk of uninsured people are fairly comfortably off, it’s just that they’d rather spend the money on dvd players instead of health insurance. I’d say it was human nature rather than anything specific to us as a nation.

p.s. If you will allow me to play “armchair quarterback”, I think the emphasis ‘highest since records began’ takes away from your main point, as the cost of living rarely if ever goes down.

Does it really?

I’d say it indicates only that 40% chose for whatever reason not to vote, not that 75% opposed a Labour administration.