Do Not Be Blinded On The Road To Damascus

The United Kingdom is now embarked upon its most disastrous course of action since the First World War. The outside world does not know what happened at Douma, and the investigation by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons had been due to start today.

Concern at the effects of chemical weapons is not obviously expressed by bombing chemical weapons facilities, nor is concern at civilian deaths and injuries obviously expressed by bombing centres of population. If, as we are expected to believe, the Russians have nerve agents, then going to war with them can only serve to increase the likelihood of chemical weapons attacks. (How, by the way, does one "stockpile small amounts" of Novichok or of anything else?)

The Russians do not really believe that Britain organised the attack at Douma. But by making that suggestion, they are highlighting the fact that, whereas their own military presence in Syria is at the invitation of that country's lawfully constituted and internationally recognised Government, the British military presence in the rebel-held areas is not. The recent death of an SAS sergeant there confirmed beyond doubt that British Special Forces were indeed present behind Syrian rebel lines.

The White Helmets, funded by Western governments and working exclusively in those Islamist-controlled areas, were founded by the British Army Officer turned mercenary, James Le Mesurier, who had been the intelligence co-ordinator for Pristina City during the NATO war crimes that created the nightmare Islamist and neo-Nazi statelet of Kosovo, that centre of people-trafficking and of heroin trafficking, and that source of countless illegally held firearms on the streets of Britain.

British Officers are in the control room of the Saudi bombing of Yemen, the biggest humanitarian catastrophe in the world today. They have been, and they are, training the Saudis in and for the war in Yemen. And of course, the Saudis are the power behind Jaysh al-Islam, the Army of Islam, "our" side in Syria. The Syrian Arab Army, it should be added, reflects the Syrian population in being 80 per cent Sunni Muslim. This is not a sectarian war. This is a war between those who value the immemorially pluralist Syria, and those, organised and funded from outside, who want to destroy it in favour of something else entirely.

None of this proves that Britain staged the attack in Douma. But, since in itself it is all true, it does provide enough soil in which that seed might germinate if planted. So the Russians have planted that seed. They do that kind of thing very well indeed.

Our problem is that our Special Forces really are fighting with and for Syria's Islamist insurrectionists and invaders, that an obvious member of our intelligence community really did found the White Helmets, that we really do fund them, that they are clearly an arm of the Islamist insurrection and invasion, that our Officers really are up to their necks in the Saudi assault on Yemen, that that really does cross over very considerably with Jaysh al-Islam, and that we have now launched an air war in support of Jaysh al-Islam. So much for Jeremy Corbyn the "terrorist sympathiser". It is Theresa May who has now taken us to war in order to establish an al-Qaeda Emirate at Damascus.

And a war alongside whom? Jaysh al-Islam, Saudi Arabia (one of the two worst dictatorships on earth), Qatar (not much better), Benjamin Netanyahu, Donald Trump and Emmanuel Macron. Ah, yes, Emmanuel Macron. The President of the French Republic by default, because all that he had to do was beat Marine Le Pen, whose party is not really a party at all, but a separate country, more than 200 years old, calling itself "France", believing itself to be France, and these days more or less accepting the borders of France as most people understand the term, but having little or nothing in common with it, and certainly standing no chance of ever winning a national election within it.

The Lib Dems have made this about whether or not there ought to have been a parliamentary vote, and Labour is in danger of following suit. But that is now irrelevant. This war is morally and strategically wrong, and it would have been wrong with or without a parliamentary vote. There was a vote on Iraq, but the war was still wrong. There was a vote on Libya, but the war was still wrong. There could have been a vote on this, but the war would still have been wrong.

The present and the coming hung Parliaments are crying out for Peter Oborne and Peter Hitchens, for Craig Murray and John Wight, for Neil Clark and George Galloway, for Bill Stewardson and Marcus Papadopoulos, to name but a few. Bill and Marcus, to my certain knowledge, are Labour Party members. Over to the Labour Party, then, to put them in. For the rest, there are other means.

And here in the constituency where I have lived since I was four, where I went to school right the way through, where I served for many years as a Parish Councillor and as a school governor, where I am currently a public governor of the NHS Foundation Trust, and where my Campaign Patrons are a legendary local trade union leader and the most distinguished figure in local government, you know what you have to do, brothers and sisters. You know what you have to do.