Jihadis, passportss and piffle.....

Cameron should be dubbed ‘Taurus’, he is that full of bull.

 

From the beginning, he has spread it around like a farmer in spring. We had the promise of a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. More recently we have had his grandstanding on the €2 billion increase in the membership fees to the Euroclub – ‘No way will I pay this by December 1^st’.. Meaning ‘I’ll pay up after the Rochester by-election’.

 

Nobody believes for a moment that he is going to win the argument over EU immigration. Or that he will get concessions from Brussels that will provide a respectable platform for staying in the club, or, indeed, that a plausible, genuine referendum will be held at all. People still have bitter memories about how they were bamboozled by Heath.

 

Now we are told that he is going to prevent British-born jihadi recruits from returning from Syria and Iraq by issuing ‘temporary exclusion orders’ which will cancel their passports and put them on a ‘no-fly’ list.

 

In other words, he will make sure that they are kept in the bosom of ISIS so that they can become fully-trained explosives experts instead of mere cannon-fodder. They can then return to Britain on forged passports, and the security services will have thereby lost track of them.

 

The obvious alternative is to detain them on their return to the UK for prosecution, or restriction on movements, or sent for deradicalisation.  Not beyond the capability of the immigration authority, now that the disastrous Border Agency has been dumped and  Mrs May put in charge? Stopping them from going in the first place when there are good prospects that we will be relieved of the problem by them getting killed is not necessarily the perfect answer.

 

The ban will last for two years. During this time suspect jihadists may be interviewed by police. This might necessarily be in Syria or Iraq, since they will not be able to travel to somewhere a tad safer. Any volunteers?

 

As for confiscating passports, Cameron’s ‘smack of firm government’ is further bull. There is no right to be issued with a passport; it is the Home Secretary’s prerogative to issue, refuse, or withdraw a passport. The government also has power to prevent people from travelling abroad in certain circumstances, and the police have been given extra powers to seize passports. This power is used quite frequently; the demented Islamist Anjem Choudary has just expressed a fervent wish to go and live in the Islamic State. He can’t because Mrs May has confiscated his passport, when she should be paying his air fare. Business class.

 

Then there is the tricky problem of dual passports. Lose one, use one!

 

And the three Canadians recently murdered in the name of Mohammed died at the hands of jihadis who had been refused passports.

 

Lefty lawyers such as Michael Manley have said that this would make people stateless, contrary to international law. Complete nonsense. A passport is not a certificate of citizenship. The main criteria are birth or blood, except when citizenship is acquired by e.g. naturalisation. Loss of a passport is not loss of citizenship.

 

The problem that Dave ought to be addressing is what to do with returnees.

 

If they come back secretly, under the new Counter Terrorism Act they will face 5 years in jail solely because of that.

 

It is estimated that 500 young Muslims have travelled to Syria, 30 have been killed, and 250 have returned home, most of them probably chastened and disillusioned. The Danish, German, and Swedish answer is to ‘deradicalise’ them – reverse brain-washing. In the UK there is a programme, Channel, that runs rehabilitation programmes. There were around 1300 referrals last year. In contrast, there have been only five successful prosecutions.

 

Returnees might not be the main problem. ISIS has called for domestic jihadis to spread terror such as the fouled Remembrance Day plot. There has been no obvious Government response to this.

 

The Government is all bark and no dog.