Winseer:
If we are only now going to start hammering the Tories for “dropping the ball as the party of law & order” - then those making that argument - need to support some change of leadership in the actual Tory party, rather than voting for Diane Abbot to become our next head of police, secret, and other security services in this country. Perish the thought!
The fact is that the Tories haven’t “dropped the ball on law and order”. They have quite intentionally cut police numbers dramatically - because cutting public services to provide tax cuts to the wealthy is the name of their game.
There are a lot of Tory policies that I would criticise but also see as par for the course they play - like the Windrush scandal, shocking but hardly surprising - but the attacks on the police even raised my eyebrows.
I disagree. It is “right wing leaders” that have created the very problem with Islamic fundamentalism - often by supporting it militarily, as the US did with Osama Bin Laden.
I agree that we shouldn’t be supporting Saudi Arabia, if that’s what your arguing here.
The reality is that we should be supporting, or at least tolerating, progressive regimes in the Middle East, and avoid supporting regressive regimes and forces (like Bin Laden) even when it would be in our short-term interests to do so, because in the long-term the entire place is the product of Western policy, not of malign religious ideologies. In the long-term, it could well be a benefit to have Russia moving back into the Middle East, because like with Syria it will act as a brake on Western excesses and further destruction of states, thereby maintaining rule of law and functioning economies and civil societies.