Conservatism: Ideas in Profile - review

In Roger Scruton’s view, “conservatism is what its name says it is: the attempt to conserve the community that we have…. in all matters that ensure our community’s long-term survival”. In a new book about the topic, the philosopher explores how modern conservative ideas have developed and describes a rich tradition that should help Tories examine the current state of their party critically, as well as inspiring unionists who wish to preserve Northern Ireland’s place within the United KIngdom.

Sir Roger Scruton is one of the Right’s leading contemporary thinkers and he has a rare gift for explaining complicated concepts in clear, elegant language. That talent is particularly useful in Conservatism, which is part of the ‘Ideas in Profile’ series that aims to provide ‘small introductions to big topics’.

From the ‘pre-history’ of conservative thought and its origins in the philosophy of Aristotle, the author traces a modern way of thinking that develops and qualifies theories outlined by Hobbes, Locke and Hume, which underpin the modern, democratic state. Modern conservatism emerged as a means of checking the individualism that characterised classical liberal ideas and identified a vital extra component - ‘responsibility’ - that binds together functioning societies.

Scruton says that liberals believe the state should protect personal freedoms, socialists think it ought to command the economy and redistribute wealth, while conservatives add that it should enforce responsibilities that allow communities to flourish and enable people to enjoy their liberties. Conservatism sees intrinsic virtue in institutions and traditions, which accrue over time a store of combined wisdom that would be impossible for governments or individuals to replicate by other methods.

And rather than focus exclusively on political and economic themes, Scruton examines cultural and literary ideas, because they are what “unite human beings in mutual attachment”. He describes the impact that writers like Coleridge, Matthew Arnold and T.S. Eliot had on the development of conservative thought, as well as movements that sought to preserve important traditions, like the Gothic Revival and the National Trust. 

In his closing chapter, Scruton looks at the state of conservative thought now. In the United Kingdom, he maintains that conservatives are a beleaguered and maligned group, particularly in academia. He detects hostility to conservatism in, “a world where free speech and free opinion are comprehensively threatened, where laughter is dangerous and where the fundamental assumptions of secular government are no longer shared by all those who enjoy its benefits”.

Yet, for that reason, conservative thought can make a vital contribution to modern politics. "In the battle with socialism", Scruton says, and he implies that the struggle is also now with a virulent form of Islam that is hostile to democratic values, "the classical liberal and the conservative stand side by side". 

In contrast to socialism and liberalism, it can be difficult to define the core tenets of conservatism precisely because conservatives are often suspicious of ideologies and dogma. Scruton’s service to conservatism is that he takes it seriously as a tradition of thought and a philosophy. His book will be helpful to anyone who wants to form clearer ideas about conserving the worthwhile things we enjoy as a society.

In Northern Ireland unionist parties value the benefits that flow from maintaining the UK - stability, prosperity and democratic liberties - more highly than the theoretical assets of a united Ireland. Irrespective of the different views on economics it encompasses, the core priorities of unionism are conservative in nature.            

To clarify their aims, and pursue them more coherently, unionists, like conservatives everywhere, would do well to start with Scruton’s new book and then read everything else that he has written.

A version of this article was printed first in the News Letter, 15 September 2017.

Unionism's reasons to be cheerful

We don’t yet know how Brexit will affect Northern Ireland exactly, but the referendum result certainly revived the nationalist trope that Irish unity is ‘inevitable’.

The Republic’s national parliament recently published plans for a forum “to achieve the peaceful reunification of Ireland”, Sinn Fein blithely assure unionists that the “British identity” will be protected in a thirty-two county state and newspaper columnists rush to tell readers that the fourth green field will soon “bloom again”. One particularly excitable author, Kevin Meagher, a former special adviser to Shaun Woodward, (remind me again why unionists didn’t trust that former secretary of state), even called his book “A United Ireland: Why unification is inevitable”.

  

In response, unionists have challenged nationalism’s “self-regarding, single certainty” in a series of astute articles.

At the dissenter blog, a leading academic took apart the question of a “United Ireland, inevitability and Brexit” in a comprehensive essay. The economist, Dr Esmond Birnie, frisked nationalists’ economic arguments thoroughly at Think Scotland. And the website This Union published a review that tried gamely (but in vain) to find any persuasive evidence in Mr Meagher’s book that backed up his claims.

The arguments that a united Ireland is not inevitable are clear and varied. They range from the philosophical point that the path of history is not pre-determined, to more practical considerations around the economy and proof of continued public support for Northern Ireland’s membership of the United Kingdom.

Nationalists have been excited by the idea that Brexit may shift public opinion in favour of Irish unity and that has strengthened their predisposition to assume that a thirty-two county state is ‘inevitable’. They’ve received encouragement from disgruntled ‘remainers’, like the Alliance Party, who are willing to support a special status for Northern Ireland within the EU, which prioritises closer links with the Republic at the risk of distancing the province constitutionally from the rest of the UK.  

Yet opinion polling shows that there has not been a significant increase in support for a united Ireland in the aftermath of the EU referendum. In addition, the largest Northern Irish unionist party recovered from an underwhelming Assembly election result earlier in the year to deliver a decisive victory at the 2017 general election and the DUP now holds the balance of power in the UK parliament, with all the opportunities and dangers that that entails.

If Brexit has added ‘uncertainty’ to Northern Ireland’s politics, it’s not necessarily uncertainty that will benefit nationalism and disadvantage unionism.

Opportunities and threats for unionism

For thoughtful unionists, it’s easy to poke fun at people who believe in the ‘destiny’ of their perceived nation to achieve ‘independence’ or unite with another state. Karl Popper’s The Poverty of Historicism is often quoted to add intellectual weight when we remind nationalists that one cannot predict the course of human history. It’s also a useful retort to the gloom-mongers within unionism who sometimes seem resigned to the breakup of the UK.                  

Still, if it is not inevitable that nationalists will prise apart our state successfully, neither can it be taken for granted that the Union will survive in perpetuity. Economic circumstances can change and, in any case, voters have other motivations besides the economy.

It’s important for unionists, in Northern Ireland and beyond, to think always about how the Union can be strengthened and, at the very least, to ensure that they do it no harm. I’m thinking in particular of the DUP and the Conservative government, with which it is now working in partnership.

Democratic Unionists will certainly be tempted to use their position to secure short-term benefits for Northern Ireland and demonstrate an influence on social issues to potential voters back home. The party has a grave responsibility to balance its electoral interests with a broader commitment to preserve the Union and protect the UK.

It might seem obvious to say so, but unionists have an advantage over nationalists in Northern Ireland, because the constitutional arrangements they wish to maintain are already in place. Unionism values the benefits that flow from maintaining the United Kingdom - stability, prosperity and democratic liberties - more highly than the theoretical assets of a united Ireland.

In his new book about the subject, Roger Scruton says that conservatism is “what its name says it is: the attempt to conserve the community that we have”. Though he adds “not in every particular, since, as Edmund Burke  put it, ‘we must reform in order to conserve’”. And that is an important point for the DUP, whose conservatism can sometimes look like an instinctive, visceral aversion to the modern world.

Know what you want and when you’re winning

If unionism in Northern Ireland were to articulate its priorities, what would they be?

While different types of unionist emphasise different goals and tactics, most would at least profess to wish to 1) protect the Union and Northern Ireland’s place within it 2) improve the social and material wellbeing of people in the province and 3) amplify Northern Ireland’s voice in the political affairs of the United Kingdom.

Sometimes the debate between parties on the pro-Union side obscures the fact that they share these broad aims, rhetorically at least, even if they disagree on how success should be measured.  Remember how the DUP attacked their Ulster Unionist rivals repeatedly when the UUP formed an electoral pact with the Conservatives.

Now that the Democratic Unionists are closely linked to the Tories, some figures within the party admit that they were worried by UCUNF precisely because they recognised its potential to resonate with voters. That potential was a consequence of the pact’s promise to deliver a voice for Northern Ireland in national politics.   

The DUP is much less susceptible than the UUP to attacks on its association with the Conservatives by critics from the unionist side, but it has an influence on the Westminster government that did not materialise for the Ulster Unionists. It also has the capacity to provoke enormous anger and resentment toward Northern Ireland, if it is portrayed as oblivious to the welfare of people in England, Scotland and Wales, or is seen to oppose changing attitudes that have generally been accepted across British society.  

The party could get snarled up with resisting same-sex marriage and defending “bonfire unionism” or it could put Northern Ireland at the centre of national debates that will define the future of the UK state.

While you can agree or disagree with the themes of its arguments, the DUP undeniably took part in the EU referendum at a level that was not purely parochial. Now that the Irish border is a major aspect of negotiations between the government and the European Commission, its most urgent priority should be to kill dead the idea that new trade barriers with the rest of Britain are less potentially damaging than customs posts at Newry or Londonderry.  

And rather than viewing its relationship with the Conservatives mainly as a means to bring extra money to Northern Ireland’s public sector, the DUP should be looking at its potential to rebalance our economy and make it viable. Otherwise the Tory deal could actually damage the Union (and Northern Ireland) in the longer term.

There are significant reasons for unionists to feel positive and secure at the current time. If Brexit has added an element of uncertainty, it is nothing to the potential social and economic chaos that would follow any substantive move toward a united Ireland. And if Ulster unionism’s current political representatives are sincere about wishing to have a constructive role in the political life of the nation, then there’s rarely been a better opportunity.   

A version of this article appeared first at This Union website.

Transgender debate shows dangers of identity encroaching further into politics and law

If you’re interested in politics, particularly in Northern Ireland, it’s almost impossible to avoid grappling with that slippery concept, ‘identity’. Ordinarily, the word is used to describe how we see ourselves but, increasingly, it also specifies how we expect to be seen by the rest of the world.

I’ve written frequently about national identity, with all the complications that entails, and I’ve argued many times that national identities are not necessarily exclusive, simple categories. We’ve become used to the idea that some people call themselves British while others say they’re Irish. Many of us prefer to think that we’re both, and although that isn’t always accepted by nationalists, it’s not a difficult idea to understand.

You may view national identity as a legal fact, defined by citizenship of an existing state, or you may believe it’s decided by belonging to a cultural or political ‘nation’ that makes claims on its people’s allegiance. Either way, nationality is an abstract, invented notion and difficult to quantify or test by experiment.

Until recently we thought very differently about sex and gender. Sex generally described the biological differences between male and female, while gender referred to the sociological and cultural consequences that arose from this biology.

Scientists explained that different types of chromosomes, containing genetic information, combined and determined whether a baby would be born male or female. A tiny number of ‘intersex’ infants fell outside these two categories for complicated anatomical or hormonal reasons, but for most people sex (and gender) was a factual matter of XX or XY, one set of reproductive organs or the other.

A highly politicised campaign has challenged that view quite successfully, to the extent that the Conservative government is threatening to legislate in line with its orthodoxy.

The fashionable theory is that every individual has the right to choose his or her gender, determining whether the law and the rest of society should treat him or her as male, female or any one of a bewildering array of neologisms that supposedly describe something ‘in between’.   

The government proposes to allow people to alter the sex recorded on their birth certificates at will, without producing any medical evidence supporting the change. They may also designate their gender as ‘X’, which covers the entire smorgasbord of other alleged orientations.   

It’s true that, in the confines of university departments, sociologists frequently describe gender as a social ‘construct’ that differs from biological sex. That’s an academic distinction, but it has become a deeply political one. The new legislation threatens to sacrifice a matter of legal and scientific record to the modern cult of identity and the articulation of every grievance in the language of human rights.

A birth certificate is not a document of self-expression. The absurdities of the proposal and the disdain it shows for facts have been ridiculed highly effectively by columnists like the cantankerous Brendan O’Neill. Other commentators have examined the deeper political motivations of ‘trans’ activists, who they allege want to destroy a perceived male elite they call the ‘patriarchy’, by destroying distinctions of sex and gender entirely.

By this interpretation, the small number of intersex people and those with gender dysphoria - who feel they were born in the wrong body - are being exploited by ‘neo-Marxists’ whose ‘postmodern agenda’ is to break down ‘crucial pillars of society’. I don’t wish to speculate on whether this is a wild conspiracy theory but, read about the topic a little, particularly around the debate in universities or the US tech industry, and you will quickly fall down rabbit-holes of the densest, most nonsensical political jargon.

The transgender lobby is certainly deeply postmodern, in the sense that it attacks the idea that the medical profession can determine a person’s sex and claims that gender is purely a function of an individual’s experience. And although if focuses ostensibly on the individual’s feelings, it’s purpose is to create an ever greater number of classifications of people, all of which can claim ‘rights’ as a group.

It also runs counter to many of the themes normally thought to characterise the modern world and in particular, the modern western world. Our ability to distinguish clearly between nature and culture, the separation of public and private life and the idea that theories need to be tested against observable facts. Then there are the challenges to freedoms of conscience and expression, from a movement that, for example, wants to enforce the common courtesy of using ‘preferred pronouns’, through the law.

There are countless practical difficulties around allowing individuals to legally change their sex or gender at a whim and they’ve been discussed elsewhere. There’s also an important debate about how to assist those with genuine issues around gender and make them feel included and equal. On a broader principle, it’s dangerous to tell confused young people that society always has to bend to accommodate their idiosyncrasies, rather than helping them find a role in society.

Some parts of identity - language, job, pastimes, appearance, even name, sexuality and nationality - are fluid and personal. Other aspects of who we are - like sex at birth, species, ethnicity- are biological facts that we should have to live with, whether they make us feel uncomfortable or not.

Identity is an endlessly fascinating subject when it comes to understanding the human condition, but it is potentially damaging when it encroaches ever further into politics and the law. The idea that individuals should be able to regulate precisely how they are seen by the rest of society as well as how they see themselves, down to changing matters of fact on their birth certificate, is sinister and ultimately it won’t help anyone who currently struggles to feel included.   

'Shinner speak' hides where the hatred truly lies

This column appeared first in the News Letter, Friday 21st July 2017.

It’s a pungent irony that, in Northern Ireland, the political movement that tried to murder its way out of the UK uses words like ‘equality’, ‘rights’ and ‘respect’ incessantly. It’s even more ironic that Sinn Fein has been allowed to subvert these terms relatively unchallenged, while so many people, particularly the young and naive, have been taken in by its trickery.

When republicans talk about ‘equality’, they’re not demanding equal treatment under the law, or an equal opportunity to work, or equal access to benefits and a home, or even freedom from discrimination, because all those things are guaranteed already by some of the most stringent legislation in the western world.

Instead, Sinn Fein’s idea of equality is a pretext to attack Northern Ireland’s place in the UK.

In Shinner-speak, any outward symbol of the province’s Britishness becomes a sign of inequality and the institutions and emblems of a nationalist Irish state deserve ‘parity of esteem’. This manoeuvre is designed to sidestep the ‘principle of consent’, which underpins the Belfast Agreement and establishes that our constitutional position will be determined by a majority of people here.

Similarly, when it refers to ‘rights’ Sinn Fein does not mean the type of universal entitlements to life, liberty and a fair trial that usually meet that description. The UK is a signatory to the European Convention, so Northern Ireland falls under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights and the freedoms it protects were incorporated directly into British law by the Human Rights Act, in 1998.

For republicans though, ‘rights’ are endlessly versatile and cover just about any aspiration - cultural, economic or political - that their movement proposes at a particular time. Just now, they include diverse aims like positive discrimination for Northern Ireland’s tiny population of Irish speakers, membership of the European single market and legal recognition for same-sex marriage. However, the list of ‘rights’ Sinn Fein espouses can change suddenly and without warning.  When its spokespeople talk about a ‘rights based society’, it's another way of saying that they want their demands to be accommodated constantly, without recourse to tiresome formalities like debate and democracy.

Meanwhile, ‘respect’ is something Sinn Fein demands repeatedly, but refuses to extend to its rivals. The party perceives a lack of ‘respect’ in situations that range from perfectly legitimate opposition to republican policies through to bringing up inconveniently the provisional movement’s violent past.

The word is a particular favourite of Mairtin O Muilleoir, who now styles himself an advocate of a diverse ‘new Belfast’, but previously sat on the city council while his more practically inclined colleagues blew its streets and citizens into smithereens.

Sinn Fein has been allowed without serious challenge to abuse language habitually and portray unionists as the only disrespectful, hate-filled bigots in our community. Its success highlights not only the party’s extreme chicanery, but also the extent to which ‘parochial stupidities’ have prevented unionism from modernising and articulating its own case effectively.

At the last election almost 30% of voters supported a movement that, just a generation ago, was engaged in a brutal campaign to murder their neighbours into a united Ireland. Rather than flags, or bonfires, or contentious music, that is the clearest symbol of hatred, tribalism and disrespect in Northern Ireland, and it is also, by some distance, the most damning indictment of our divided society.

Demonising the DUP risks demonising NI voters

There are many less than admirable aspects to Northern Ireland’s largest political party - the DUP - and I’ve written about them extensively.  The Democratic Unionists have a history of sectarian intolerance and rabble-rousing populism.  

Over the years, they’ve changed dramatically, attracting support from mainstream unionists and establishing a wider membership profile, but they’ve never quite ditched their hardline, fundamentalist Protestant image.  

The DUP’s social attitudes are often strikingly traditional, its ideas about Britishness can seem foreign to people in the rest of the UK and it is sometimes criticised justifiably for an ambivalent, contradictory attitude to loyalist paramilitary groups..  

Therefore there are plenty of legitimate reasons to criticise the Tories’ decision to seek Democratic Unionist support to form a government, without resorting to the deluge of nonsense that some journalists, commentators and Tweeters directed at the party when news of a possible ‘confidence and supply’ arrangement emerged.  

The DUP is not a ‘white nationalist’ party’, nor is it  equivalent to the KKK, though its representatives have occasionally made rather ignorant remarks about other nationalities and races.  

It is not a ‘theocratic’ party - its leadership spans various christian denominations and non church-goers - though its membership does contain a high proportion of evangelical protestants.  

The Democratic Unionists certainly cannot be characterised as ‘terrorist sympathisers’, having never endorsed political violence, though they work in loyalist communities where the influence of paramilitaries is strong and a tangle of social links makes dealing with ‘ex-combatants’ difficult to avoid.

Undoubtedly, the DUP’s origins are deeply unpleasant.  Its founder, Ian Paisley, made no effort to separate his early political involvement from viscerally sectarian religious beliefs.  In ‘From Demagogue to Democrat?’, Ed Moloney describes attacks on Catholic property that followed vicious, provocative speeches on the Shankill Road.              

The party was accused of flirting with loyalist paramilitaries, for instance during the Ulster Workers’ Strike.  Later, after the Anglo-Irish Agreement, Paisley wore a beret for the gun-running ‘Ulster Resistance’ movement and spoke about the need for a ‘Third Force’ militia to defend Northern Ireland against republicans.        

Ironically, the former First Minister is now usually depicted as a peace-maker, who led his party into power-sharing with Republicans and his transformation into one half of the ‘Chuckle Brothers’ is a topic for cinema.  Yet the DUP’s current leader, Arlene Foster, a woman who worships at the moderate, Anglican Church of Ireland, and whose political biography is unblemished by extremism, is demonised as a danger to British democracy.   

The DUP still has its quotient of cranks and backwoodsmen, but clearly it has changed in a way that the post-election commentary has not generally recognised.  After the Good Friday Agreement, the party benefited from an influx of disillusioned Ulster Unionists, many of whom are now in senior leadership positions, who were not connected to Ian Paisley’s hard-line Free Presbyterian church.

The DUP is socially conservative, to say the least, but its membership is not monolithic and attitudes are changing.  UUP councillor, Jeffrey Dudgeon, who has every right to call himself Northern Ireland’s “best known gay rights campaigner”, recently refuted the idea that Democratic Unionists are uniquely hostile to homosexuality.  He acknowledges that many “draw the line” at equal marriage, but doesn’t agree that is a reason to vilify them.   

The DUP has its disreputable side, which includes allegations of cronyism and corruption, but it also has a substantial mandate in Northern Ireland (almost 300,000 voters in a population of 1.8million).  Some of the hyperbolic, inaccurate criticism it received shows ill-disguised contempt for Northern Irish voters, and deep incomprehension of a sizeable, complicated political movement that cannot be reduced merely to cliches about evangelical Protestantism and hard-line loyalism.  

The DUP attracts support from unionists for a range of reasons, including the perception that it is best equipped to check the demands of Sinn Fein, which is still led by some of the former terrorists who waged a campaign of murder against their neighbours.  Despite their uncompromising reputation, Democratic Unionists have repeatedly shown that they can be hard-headed, pragmatic negotiators, both in their dealings with the British government and Irish republicans.

Even long-standing opponents of the party are uncomfortable with some of the nonsense currently being written by people who should no better.  From hysteria at the principle of the DUP gaining influence in the next administration, it is only a short hop to argue that the uncivilised, backward voters of Northern Ireland should be denied a say in who forms their government.  That would be to deprive them of the most basic rights guaranteed by any functioning democracy.              

UK foreign policy did contribute to terror, but not in the way Corbyn implies.

After both the Manchester and London Bridge terror attacks, party political campaigning was briefly suspended.  However, Islamic terrorism has inevitably become an important issue in this general election and, rather ironically, Jeremy Corbyn is on the offensive, criticising Theresa May and the Conservatives for imposing cuts on the police that put public safety at risk.

This is not a subject on which the Labour leader has much credibility.  Not only has he a long record of sympathising with terrorist causes, he and his associates have also actively opposed many of the security agencies that are charged with keeping us safe.  The blogger Guido Fawkes points out that, just three years ago, Corbyn defended the idea that young British people who had fought for ISIS in Syria should be allowed to return to the UK without “legal obstacles”.

The Labour leader also argues that British foreign policy, including military involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, has helped fuel Islamist terror.  That is a more complicated point that can’t be dismissed by reference to Corbyn’s character and should be broken down a little.

Clearly Islamic extremism in the UK or elsewhere is not simply a reaction to western countries’ role in wars abroad.  The history of Islamism as an ideology is long and complicated.  Its modern prevalence has been explained with reference to Saudi money and the export of ‘Wahhabism’ or the more nakedly political doctrines of ‘Salafism’.

Acts of Islamist terror are not restricted to countries whose military has become involved in Muslim countries.  While some attackers have listed among their motivations perceived ‘wars on Islam’ by the west, Islamic terrorism seems to draw at least as much on religious hatred for western society and a kind of nihilistic youth cult that glorifies extreme violence.

Yet British foreign policy has undeniably contributed to creating chaos in parts of the Middle East and North Africa, where a political vacuum has allowed Islamists to carve out territory, from which they can spread their propaganda and train recruits.  In Iraq, Libya and Syria, the UK has been among the most enthusiastic proponents of ‘regime change’, demanding that admittedly unpleasant, but secular and stable, governments should be dislodged.  

It was always foreseeable that the alternative to authoritarian regimes was increased influence for Islamists.  That was clear even as western leaders urged on protesters during the “Arab Spring”.  In 2011, I wrote about the situation in Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood was soon to take control. The army later reasserted its power, but the country remains restive and dangerous.

“Nobody would describe President Mubarak as a democrat, but he has kept a sprawling and potentially volatile country stable and shown diplomacy dealing with some fairly touchy neighbours in the wider region.  The people of Egypt are entitled to challenge his regime - they certainly aren’t at liberty to vote it out of office - but we can’t be blind to the fact that a virulent strain of populist Islamism is eager to fill any political vacuum.

 

That pattern is replicated across much of North Africa and the Middle East, which is not to say that protesters shouldn’t press for democracy where it is denied.

It’s right to be wary about the outcome of events though.  For governments in the west and their allies in the Arab world, there is some truth in the maxim ‘better the devil you know’.  They can’t afford to disregard broader geo-political issues or throw caution to the wind by cheerleading revolution.”     

Subsequently, the UK was involved in toppling Colonel Gaddafi in Libya, with the result that there is still a civil war in the country.  Reportedly, the Manchester bomber, Salman Abedi, would visit in the school holidays to take part in the fighting.  It’s difficult to envisage how these formative experiences cannot have played some role in his decision to kill concert-goers in his adopted city.                

The conflict in Syria has become the greatest geopolitical quagmire in the Middle East.  While the UK military’s involvement has been limited, Britain provided political backing to the US and ‘aid’ to rebel groups that oppose the government of President Bashar al-Assad.  

Some of the support that western countries have provided rebels in Syria has assisted directly various types of Islamists, including affiliates of Al-Qaeda, while there is evidence that ISIS has been an indirect beneficiary of attacks on al-Assad, as well as ‘lethal’ and ‘non-lethal’ aid.

These circumstances mean that Corbyn is right to draw a link between UK foreign policy and the conditions that allow terrorism to flourish, but the tone and content of his arguments are flawed.

Rather than insinuating that western leaders made young Muslim people justifiably angry, with the result that terrorist atrocities were perpetrated in Britain, we should be asking why our leaders didn’t much earlier identify Islamism as the primary threat to people’s safety at home and in the Middle East.

Why, long after barbarism like 9/11 and 7/7, did the US, the UK and others still pursue policies that benefited people like the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda and then ISIS?