Cameron pledges the UK to a war without end and without meaning

A comment made by the Prime Minister recently left me feeling poleaxed, and upon reading it I felt like rubbing my eyes and dousing myself in cold water to ensure that I was awake. Surely he could not have uttered the following sentence and believed in the substance of the words that he was enunciating with respect to the recent hostage crisis in Algeria:

What we face is an extremist, Islamist, al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group. Just as we had to deal with that in Pakistan and in Afghanistan so the world needs to come together to deal with this threat in north Africa.

What does he mean by stating “had to deal with”? By using these words he seems to imply that the problem there has been solved. Has it? What has been achieved in Afghanistan? How has the problem been dealt with in Pakistan? Has the Islamist problem been solved in either country, or even here in the UK? Quite clearly, the answer must be no. Our intervention in Afghanistan may have eliminated al-Qaeda training camps, but what in reality has it achieved? When our forces leave that country after well over a decade of death, mutilation, psychological trauma and the expenditure of billions of pounds, what will we see? A prosperous Afghanistan friendly to the UK advocating freedom of opinion and expression for its citizens, together with respect and equal rights for its women, or a jubilant Taliban-dominated theocracy celebrating victory over the infidel, just as antipathetical to the UK and the West in general as it was in 2001 and imbued with a spirit of vengeance? It would seem that the second scenario would be far closer to what emerges than the former one.

A decade on from invasion and its subsequent occupation Iraq remains a religiously and ethnically cleft violent wreck. The Arab Spring, encouraged by the UK Government, has led to increased instability across North Africa and the Middle East, with Islamists playing a major role in the popular uprisings and in the new administrations that have emerged following the toppling of the old regimes. Cameron and Hague were keen to intervene in Libya, and have been chomping at the bit to do the same in Syria, irrespective of the chaos and geopolitical blowback that such meddling can produce. It has been widely claimed that the post-Qaddhafi instability in Libya has helped to flood parts of North Africa with weaponry, assisting an upsurge in violent Islamist militancy that has manifested itself both in the ongoing attempt to overthrow the Malian government as well as in the recent Algerian hostage crisis.

The Prime Minister’s call for a “global response” to what he dubs the “al-Qaeda” threat is thoroughly wrongheaded. Islamism existed before Bin Laden and it will exist long after his passing. Islamism, in one form or another, is as old as Islam itself, and until that ideology dies we will always have a problem with its violent fanatics wishing to impose their crude, vicious and misanthropic ideology upon everyone else: non-literalist Muslims and non-Muslims alike. What, after all, does Cameron mean when he states that:

It requires a response that is patient and painstaking, that is tough but also intelligent, but above all has an absolutely iron resolve and that is what we will deliver over these coming years.

Perhaps the Prime Minister should steer clear of reference to “iron” to denote resolve, for we all now how brittle his “cast iron” guarantee proved to be with respect to an EU membership referendum. Is he committing us to an endless series of wars in which we fight with our hands tied behind our backs, bereft of either a clear goal or modus operandi? If so, who will die and who will pay for this policy? What benefit will it bring and to whom?

It would appear that the immense corrupting wealth of the Saudis and the other Arab petrodollar states of the Gulf has effectively muzzled politicians such as Cameron. The fountainhead of Islamism today, in both its violent and political variants, is Saudi Arabia. Find an effective alternative to oil, and the Saudis’ malign and growing influence would collapse. Thus, to find such an alternative should be one of our key political and economic tasks. The Saudis produce nothing of value other than what they pump out of the ground, with the rest of their wealth being derived from parasitic investment around the globe. If Cameron truly wished to wage war to destroy Islamism he would call for the subjugation and occupation of the Arabian Peninsula, but to be ‘successful’, that sort of war would call forth the logic of total war witnessed in the horrific brutality displayed by both sides on the Eastern Front with its associated exterminist logic. Who wants such a war? Not me. I would prefer the option of the peaceful development of viable alternative energy sources and the concomitant undermining and collapse of the economic, political and cultural influence of the Arab petrodollar states. Only then will we stand a chance of defeating Islamism.

Cameron and Hague are intellectual lightweights, and if they truly wished to root out Islamism they could make no better start than by rooting it out at home, for after all, they and their political predecessors in the Labour Party have allowed it to flourish in Britain. They may as well launch drone strikes on Tower Hamlets and Bradford as upon Pakistan, for there is not a great deal to differentiate the two environments other than an increasingly nominal sovereignty. As it is, the two men seem intent upon poking their noses into as many Islamist hornets’ nests as possible, with Syria and Mali looking like our most probable forthcoming entanglements.

Such interventions will be pointless, bloody, expensive and ineffectual. Moreover, they will generate ever-greater resentment against us, no matter how ill founded, by Muslims around the globe. At the same time, Cameron, Hague and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office will continue to push for the economic and eventual political integration of the countries of the Middle East and North Africa into an expanded EU, arguing that this is ‘necessary’ to disseminate economic prosperity throughout the Arab world and thereby undermine support for Islamism. This is the eventual goal of Euromed, but in reality what it would achieve, if its logic were to be fully enacted, would be for every state in the EU to be flooded by a massive demographic wave from the Muslim states of the eastern and southern Mediterranean littoral, bringing economic and cultural decline to Europe, as well as the demographic eclipse and eventual disappearance of the European peoples. Alas, a twin combination of cack-handed interventionism and half-baked policies on economic integration are likely to be the favoured response of the current Government. It is a grim prospect, but we can expect only support for such a policy from an intellectually bankrupt Labour Party. Where is the effective opposition? Who will articulate the much-needed alternative?

Incomes fall whilst Population rises

In a rare moment of candour, an article on the BBC website today finally acknowledged through quoting the Office for National Statistics (ONS) that population growth (fuelled predominantly by historically unprecedented mass immigration) had contributed to a significant decline in disposable income in the UK. The average figure fell by 1% during the first three months of 2012 compared to the preceding months, with the amount of disposable income reaching its lowest since 2003.

The protracted structural economic crisis doubtless underpins this decline, but this negative economic situation is heavily exacerbated by rapid and unhelpful population growth. On a per capita basis, the report reveals that pre-tax income declined during the period in question by 0.6%. The ONS stated: 

sustained population growth led to incomes being spread across a greater number of people, and therefore further reduced the growth of actual income per head.

To describe a decline in both pre-tax and disposable incomes as “growth” is one of those peculiar particularities of conventional economics, but the wider notion of “growth” as being an essentially good thing, irrespective of what that “growth” actually consists of, is a dogma that needs to be laid to rest if we are to effect true improvements in our standard of living and quality of life in this country. The focus upon an increase in aggregate rather than per capita GDP is, in general, something that can actually lead to a concrete deterioration in both our daily lived experience and indeed in our individual incomes.

Retailers for example, are enthusiastic about a growing population, for this implies more prospective consumers to shop in their outlets; builders too, for this necessitates the construction of ever more homes (the rooms of which seem to grow smaller as average girths grow wider); an increase in the number of passengers on already overcrowded rail services may be seen as positive by various rail companies, but do we as commuters appreciate the consequences of such “growth”: nowhere to sit and often scarcely space to breathe? As the population grows the infrastructure – particularly in densely populated England possessing an average of 407 people per square kilometre according to the 2011 Census – creaks: traffic jams grow longer and more frequent; drought orders are issued sooner and take longer to lift, and we are urged to adopt water meters to conserve a precious “scarce” resource; pressure upon our housing stock grows, as do voices calling for the lifting of planning restrictions designed to protect our countryside.

For the conventional economist, population growth is therefore seen to be a “good thing”, whereas for the mortals who have to live with its consequences, the negative impact of such a demographic surge far outweighs any superficial nominal benefits that may be said to have been accrued. Yet, despite such pressures brought about by the negligent policies of the current government and the wilful design of its predecessor, few are willing to take a critical stance on this issue and call for a solution that would readily improve our lives: a rational demographic policy aimed in the long run (i.e. over the coming century or two) at reducing our national population to sustainable limits of circa 25 to 30 million. However, those who support Population Matters - such as David Attenborough and James Lovelock - are notable exceptions.

The example of the widespread failure of India’s electricity grids over the past two days should serve as a warning as to what could happen to us if we do not constrain our population at a level commensurate with the power and resources that we can practically make available. As our government is also signed up to treaties that insist upon a considerable cut in our aggregate energy consumption, the addition of millions of new citizens implies that we must all make do with far less, in other words, experience a sustained cut in our standard of living for the sake of immigrants from countries which fail to cater to the needs of their citizens. Such a reckless demographic policy must be curtailed, for otherwise, we consign ourselves to an increasingly immiserated and insecure future, in a grossly overpopulated world where demands for food, territory, energy and water become ever more intense. We need to produce more food and energy domestically, so as to enhance our national security, and to improve the lot of our people. Other nations need to turn to the needs of their citizens too, and to institute sensible demographic policies, instead of exporting their population problems to Britain and the other countries of the West.

Africa, and significant swathes of Asia, need to learn how to use the condom and the pill. It is still, just, within their gift, to choose to solve their population crises humanely and rationally, yet if they do not - which currently appears to be the greater likelihood - then the bitter Malthusian lessons of unrestrained reproduction will doubtless have to be learned through great hardship and unnecessary death on a mass scale. We have no reason to be dragged down by such folly, yet our current crop of politicians appear intent upon letting just such an eventuality unfold. Our incomes may be falling now, but if a radical change in the existing political landscape and general approach to policy is not brought about within the next decade, then the risk will be that our current economic woes will seem utterly insignificant. 

Time for a sensible demographic policy: long-term population reduction