Boris Johnson's Blog, page 13

Blair’s Iraq invasion was a tragic error, and he’s mad to deny it

That is the truth, and it is time Tony Blair accepted it. When we voted for that war – and I did, too – we did so with what now looks like the hopelessly naive assumption that the British and American governments had a plan for the aftermath; that there was a government waiting in the wings; that civic institutions would be preserved and carried on in the post-Saddam era.

In other words, I wanted to get rid of Saddam, and I fondly imagined that there would be a plan for the transition – as there was, say, with Germany in 1945, where the basic and essential machinery of government was continued, despite the programme of de-Nazification. I felt so nervous (and so guilty) about this assumption, that I went to Baghdad in the week after the fall of Saddam, to see if I was right. I was not.

I remember vividly the mystification on the face of a tall, grey-haired CIA man in his fifties, wearing a helmet and body armour, whom I found in one of the government ministries. He and I were alone among a thousand empty offices. The entire civil service had fled; the army was disintegrated.

He was hoping to find someone to carry on the business of government – law and order, infrastructure, tax collection, that kind of thing. The days were passing; the city was being looted; no one was showing up for work. We had utterly blitzed the power centres of Iraq with no credible plan for the next stage – and frankly, yes, I do blame Bush and Blair for their unbelievable arrogance in thinking it would work.

As time has gone by, I am afraid I have become more and more cynical about the venture. It looks to me as though the Americans were motivated by a general strategic desire to control one of the biggest oil exporters in the world, as well as to remove Saddam, an unpleasant pest who had earlier attempted to murder the elder Bush. Blair went in fundamentally because he (rightly) thought it was in Britain’s long-term interest to be closely allied with America, and also, alas, because he instinctively understood how war helps to magnify a politician. War gives leaders a grandeur that they might not otherwise possess. If you hanker after Churchillian or Thatcherian charisma, there is nothing like a victorious war.

The Iraq war was a tragic mistake; and by refusing to accept this, Blair is now undermining the very cause he advocates – the possibility of serious and effective intervention. Blair’s argument (if that is the word for his chain of bonkers assertions) is that we were right in 2003, and that we would be right to intervene again.

Many rightly recoil from that logic. It is surely obvious that the 2003 invasion was a misbegotten folly. But that does not necessarily mean – as many are now concluding – that all intervention is always and everywhere wrong in principle, and that we should avoid foreign entanglements of all kinds.

Yes, we helped cause the disaster in Iraq; but that does not mean we are incapable of trying to make some amends. It might be that there are specific and targeted things we could do – and, morally, perhaps should do – to help protect the people of Iraq from terrorism (to say nothing of Syria, where 100,000 people have died in the past three years).

Britain is still a power on the UN security council. We spend £34 billion a year on defence. We have fantastic Armed Services full of young, optimistic and confident men and women who are doing a lot of good – in spite of the cotton-wool legislation that now surrounds them – in dangerous places across the world.

It would be wrong and self-defeating to conclude that because we were wrong over Iraq, we must always be wrong to try to make the world a better place. But we cannot make this case – for an active Britain that is engaged with the world – unless we are at least honest about our failures.

Somebody needs to get on to Tony Blair and tell him to put a sock in it – or at least to accept the reality of the disaster he helped to engender. Then he might be worth hearing. The truth shall set you free, Tony.

Charity condemns use of anti-homeless spikes

Mr Sinclair described the addition of spikes to the pavement outside a building in Southwark to deter people from sleeping rough as a "rather brutal approach", saying "the aim should be to help people move in, not just to move people on".

The building's developers have received complaints from the public, and Mayor of London Boris Johnson has called them "ugly, self-defeating and stupid".

Mr Johnson called on the developer of the building on Southwark Bridge Road, Southwark, to remove the spikes, pictures of which have gone viral on Twitter and other social media in recent days.

Writing through his @MayorofLondon Twitter account Mr Johnson also defended his record on tackling homelessness.

He tweeted: "Spikes outside Southwark housing development to deter rough sleeping are ugly, self defeating & stupid. Developer should remove them ASAP.

"We've spent £34 million on the likes of 'no 2nd night out, reaching 3/4s of rough sleepers, but must do more. Spikes are simply not the answer."(sic)

Junking Juncker’s pointless. It doesn’t matter who gets the job

Today, alas, he is apparently crestfallen. Downing Street has let it be known in no uncertain terms that he is not the man for the job, and Downing Street is, as usual, absolutely right. The reason given is that Juncker is a representative of all that is wrong with the EU – and that is certainly true. He believes in doing deals in darkened rooms, away from public scrutiny; indeed he has had the honesty to say so. He believes that the European “project” must be advanced at all costs, and that all public unease is the product of ignorance and the bamboozling effect of Euro-sceptic propaganda, notably in the British media.

As far as I can remember, the whole lot of them resigned in confusion and disgrace. This time we might, I suppose, get someone who looked more promising and up-to-date – a Scandinavian female from the cast of Borgen, perhaps. But then again, we might not. One name being canvassed is that of Pascal Lamy, who used to run the World Trade Organisation. If what you want is efficiency and dynamism in the Brussels bureaucracy, then Pascal is your man. He is certainly brilliant. He used to be the chef de cabinet of Jacques Delors, and he made the whole thing run like a parade ground of the French Foreign Legion.

But in what sense would a Lamy commission be an improvement on a Juncker commission? From the point of view of a British Euro-sceptic, you could argue that he would be even worse: more formidable, more effective in pushing forward the whole federalist agenda. The deep and awful truth is that it doesn’t make much difference who is installed at the top of the Berlaymont. It doesn’t matter whether you have a Bofferding-quaffing Luxembourger or a dynamic French énarque or a Borgen-esque Scandiwegian or a statue of the Mannekin Pis as president of the EU commission.

It wouldn’t even make much difference if we could get Bill Cash or Norman Tebbit to run the place. No European Commission president has any real democratic legitimacy, contrary to what Juncker believes – and it is inconceivable that any one functionary could change the direction or the culture. The European Commission has a single aim, role, point, remit, charter, mission, purpose, function, ethic and ambition – and that is to uphold the treaties on European Union, as successively amended, and to bring forward legislation designed to promote ever closer union among the peoples of Europe.

This involves creating an ever more intricate system of government and ever more regulation of our lives. The only way to change the activities of the European Commission is to change the treaties; and as I never tire of pointing out, there is only one way to get that renegotiation followed by an in/out referendum, and that is to give David Cameron and the Conservatives the mandate they need at the next election. We either need a reform of the EU that boils it down to the single market, or we need to get out. We need to stop subcontracting our democracy to the EU.

Can you name the entire Cabinet? Can you name the shadow cabinet? Twenty or 30 years ago I think it would have been easier. British politics is visibly dwindling, as decisions are anaesthetically taken in Brussels. In the end we will pay a terrible price for this moral weakness. As we have seen in the immigration debate, the British people are suddenly furious to find that fundamental questions are no longer controlled by the people they elect. In the meantime I suppose we can gratify our irritation by vetoing poor old Juncker – who always struck me as rather a nice chap. But it is the quintessence of turd-polishing pointlessness.

It is like trying to swat a fly on the leg of the rhino that is standing on your chest. You can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a cochon.

If we can’t do it on our own, then let’s lose weight together

If people were too fat, I said, then that was because they were too darn greedy; and if they wanted to get thinner then they should eat less. Simple, I said. The more we “medicalised” the problem, the less people would take responsibility – and the fatter we would all become.

Well, I am afraid that in the past two button-busting decades, I have been proved right at least about the last point. We are now the second fattest nation in the world, and I am alarmed to discover that Londoners are now even fatter than New Yorkers. We have obesity levels of 67 per cent among men and 57 per cent among women. We are the official lard-arses of Europe.

Every year we have to widen our cinema seats and reinforce the floors of our ambulances. As this paper reports, more and more soldiers are made to leave the army for being, frankly, too fat to charge at the enemy. Our charter jets puff and groan and spew out unconscionable quantities of fossil fuels as they lug our biomass to the Mediterranean – and the fatter we get, the greater the risk to our health. The more overweight we are, the more likely we are to have cancer, heart disease, stroke: the big causers of early and preventable death. The national fatness problem costs the NHS at least £16 billion a year in extra and unnecessary expense.

If you are technically obese – as most of us now are – you are statistically reducing your life expectancy by three or four years. If you are morbidly obese, you are probably forsaking 10 years of life – 10 years of fun watching your children and grandchildren grow up.

Nothing seems to stop us eating too much – neither my savage libertarian sermons in the Telegraph, nor the bossing and nannying of the state. We are akratic. We know what we should do, but we can’t seem to make ourselves do it. We know what is in our interests – cut out chips, cake, bread, cheese, crisps etc and eat more fruit – but we can’t summon up the consistent willpower to follow the rules.

Brooding on this problem, I wondered if we could construct a different psychological framework. What if it wasn’t just about us: our selfishness, our weakness of will, our own abusive relationships with food. Perhaps people might be more willing to exercise discipline – to make a sacrifice – if it could be seen to be for everybody’s sake, for everybody’s health.

People are generally capable of amazing acts of kindness and altruism. Seldom are people happier and more energetic than when doing things for others. So at City Hall we have all embarked – about 150 of us, I think – on a plan to lose weight together.

We all stood on a some giant commercial scales; not individually, so that no one felt any personal embarrassment or pressure, and we didn’t have the anxiety of other people seeing how much we weighed. We did it in groups of about 12 at a time. We recorded who was in the groups, and the total weight, and we agreed that in a few months we would try to lose 5 per cent.

There is no coercion, no bullying, and it goes without saying that the whole thing is entirely voluntary. It is a joint effort and a bit of a laugh. But the key thing is that I now know that unless I keep it up – and refuse the lascivious winks of the cheese and the cake – then I will not just be failing to do the right thing by myself. I will be failing to do the right thing by the group.

I need to lose weight or I’ll let the side down. In a few months’ time we will all get back on the scales and see how we have done. Will it work? Every psychological text book will probably say that you only get results by appealing to people’s naked self-interest. Well, we have tried that, and it’s going nowhere. Let’s try team spirit. It’s worth a shot.

European elections 2014: This is one peasants’ revolt that Brussels can’t just brush aside

The mood across the 28-nation bloc is more Eurosceptic than ever before; and perhaps the most significant development is in France itself. Whatever the crisis, it was always the mantra of the French establishment that we needed “more Europe”, not less. Fall of Berlin Wall? More Europe! Rise of China and other Asian economies? More Europe! Persistent youth unemployment? More Europe! Disaster of the euro? More Europe! The very launch of the Common Market – by men such as Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman – was French in its construction and inspiration. The assumption in Paris was always that we needed a Europe ever more politically and economically united – to restrain Germany and to allow France to continue to express herself on the world stage.

The former French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, used to be one of those members of the European Council who could be counted on to call for more integration, whatever happened in the world. And now listen to him. Last week he said that the free movement of the Schengen system should be suspended, so that borders were no longer completely porous to those who were benefit tourists – and for good measure, he added that it was time for Brussels to hand back half of its decision-making to national authorities. Way to go, Sarko! He is speaking for huge numbers of people across the EU, and for the first time in his political career I expect he would get a standing ovation at a Tory party conference.

He is also reflecting the obvious: that there is a revolt going on – and we know how Brussels generally reacts to such vulgar expressions of democratic feeling. When people have voted against the federalist impulse in the past – like the populations of Denmark, or France – they have been asked to have another go; to vote again until they get the right answer. This time, I expect the Eurocracy will try to ignore the election results; they will try to brush them aside. Men like Jean-Claude Juncker, the ex-prime minister of Luxembourg (pop. the same as Wolverhampton) will appear on global media to denounce the European electorate for being so tasteless and irrelevant as to ask for change.

Well, he and his colleagues in the Euro-establishment are wrong; and so are those high-minded and snooty Euro-enthusiasts in Britain, who like to tell us that there is no way that the UK can embark on a renegotiation of the treaties – because there is no “support” for any such move in any other European capital. I am thinking of people like Ed Miliband, and Nick Clegg, and all the so-called experts and think tanks who say we have to accept the EU warts and all because that is all there is on offer.

They are wrong, wrong, wrong. This European election is an expression of revulsion and discontent and it is a mandate for reform. Across the EU, mainstream politicians like Nicolas Sarkozy are now saying what we Conservatives have been saying for years: that the EU needs to do less, to cost less, and to be less intrusive in the way it does it. There is only one government in Europe that has been campaigning solidly for the renegotiation that is needed, and that is David Cameron and the Conservative-led Coalition.

Now is the time for France, Germany and others to listen to Mr Sarkozy, and recognise that he is right. It isn’t good enough just to circle the wagons and tell the people of Europe to get stuffed, because next time the frustration of the electorate may be uncontainable. The message of the people to the Euro-nomenklatura is simple: changer ou mourir!

You kip if you want to – but only one party can offer real change

Ours is a country that prides itself on being the home of democracy and the mother of parliaments. It is incredible that our leaders have never once had the guts to put these changes to the people – despite the many opportunities to do so. We have had the treaties of Maastricht, Nice, Amsterdam, Lisbon – and while plenty of other European countries have invited their electorates to ratify these pacts, the British people have been deemed to be somehow too rude and undisciplined to have a say.

So I find it utterly amazing that we are now approaching the climax of this so-called Euro-election campaign, yet there has been hardly a mention of this central question: the democratic question, the only question worth asking. After almost four decades as members of this club, do you want to stay in? Do you want reform? Or do you want to come out?

There is only one party that is seriously offering you any options at all. The Labour party makes no mention of a referendum in its leaflets, because it would only allow the British people to speak if there were to be “further transfers” of sovereignty – as if there had not been enough already. That means there will be no referendum under Labour.

The Lib Dems are total federalists, and think that everything emanating from Brussels is basically terrific. There will be no referendum if the Lib Dems have anything to do with it. I am not sure of the Green position, but I think it is roughly the same and is in any case irrelevant. Then there is Ukip, and their general demand that we leave the EU yesterday – a stipulation that they have absolutely no hope of turning into reality.

There is only one party with any hope of both forming the government of this country and giving the people the debate and the vote we are crying out for – and that is David Cameron’s Conservative Party. There is a chance now for the British Government to lead the reform of the EU, and to capture the support of millions of people around the entire continent.

Why is it that we are seeing this upsurge of anti-European parties across the EU? Because the euro has been a disaster, of course; but the problem is not only a function of the euro. Growth and employment in Europe is now consistently lower than in the US and in Asia; and indeed, growth in the heart of the EU is consistently lower than in Britain. Over the years 1980 to 2012, the six original signatories of the Treaty of Rome grew at a mere 1.6 per cent, while even the UK grew at 2 per cent.

We should go into those renegotiations with a clear agenda: to root out the nonsense of the social chapter – the working time directive and the atypical work directive and other job-destroying regulations. We should kill the remainder of the Common Agricultural Policy and the external tariffs. We should insist on a proper free market in services of the kind in which this country excels, not just in our own interests, but in the interests of the whole EU. If we fail to get what we want, then we should recognise that the cost of leaving – political and economic – is much lower now than it was 40 years ago.

It is only the Conservatives who are offering this real prospect of change; and so I say to all those toying with another self-styled Euro-sceptic party, whose MEPs notoriously slumber and snore through Strasbourg debates: You kip if you want to – the Tories are giving us the first chance to vote on Europe in my adult lifetime. That matters a great deal, and it would be an utter disaster if we were to miss this chance by inadvertently ushering Miliband into power.

Say no to no say!

Margaret Thatcher was ‘tricksy about EU’, says Boris Johnson

Polls suggest the UK Independence Party is on course for major gains in those elections, leaving mainstream political parties struggling to explain its popularity.

Some Ukip voters say they back the party because older political parties have persistently ignored public opinion on issues like Europe.

Mr Johnson echoed that conclusion in his remarks about the behaviour of earlier governments.

His time in Brussels, in the first years after the fall of the Berlin wall, saw significant moves to increase political integration between members of the EU.

In 1993, the European single market was formally completed, guaranteeing freedom of movement for goods and labour throughout the EU.

The same year saw the signing of the Maastricht Treaty, which laid the foundations of the single European currency.

Through many of those events, British ministers repeatedly gave a false impression to voters about their European negotiations, Mr Johnson said.

“They were continually pretending to the people of this country that they were standing firm against the Commission and the other countries attempting to harmonise and regulate everything,” he said.

“Whereas in reality they would always go out there and do deals and capitulate.”

Mr Johnson, an admirer of many of Lady Thatcher’s achievements, said that she was one of the Conservatives who had been guilty of misleading accounts of European deals.

The former prime minister is remembered by many supporters as a staunch opponent of European integration who frequently clashed with other European leaders.

Mr Johnson said that the reality was more complex, suggesting that Lady Thatcher’s rhetoric often masked a more conciliatory approach.

“Even Margaret Thatcher, famously rebarbative about the EU, even she and some of her immediate advisers could be quite tricksy about what was really going on.”

David Cameron has faced accusations of feeding public scepticism over Europe, by promising a referendum on the EU’s Lisbon Treaty then abandoning the plan when the treaty was incorporated into European law.

To address that scepticism, the Prime Minister has said that a Conservative government would offer voters an In/Out referendum on the EU.

Gary Barlow should ‘cough up’ but keep OBE, says Boris Johnson

"But I don't think he's done anything illegal. I think he should cough up but on the OBE question, I don't see any need for him to hand back the OBE."

Gary Barlow holding his OBE (EPA)

Mr Johnson's intervention came after the Prime Minister said that Mr Barlow should not be made to hand back his honour.

“Aggressive” tax avoidance is “wrong” but Mr Barlow can keep his OBE because it was given in recognition of his charity work, the Mr Cameron said.

Mr Barlow, his band-mates Howard Donald, Mark Owen, and their manager Jonathan Wild invested £66 million into schemes that appeared to be music industry investment schemes but a judge ruled were artificial tax shelters for millionaires.

Robbie Williams and Jason Orange are not involved.

The band is now considering a new world tour to foot the £30 million tax bill.

Mr Barlow was appointed OBE in 2012 for his work for music and charity. He is a prominent Conservative Party supporter, appearing Mr Cameron on the campaign trail in 2010.

Margaret Hodge, the chair of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, said he should “show a bit of contribution” by giving the honour back.

Charlie Elphicke, a Conservative MP who has campaigned against tax avoidance, said: “People who have seriously abused the tax system should be stripped of their honours.”

Mr Cameron told ITV’s Good Morning Britain the findings of the court in the case against Mr Barlow and the Icebreaker scheme were “very clear”.

He said: “This Government has taken a huge amount of steps to legislate and toughen the laws and go after aggressive tax avoidance schemes for the very simple reason that if people aggressively avoid tax, everyone else has to pay higher taxes as a result.”

But he said Mr Barlow should not be stripped of his OBE because he has done “a huge amount for the country.”

“I don’t think that’s necessary frankly,” he said. “He’s raised money for charity. He’s done very well for Children in Need. The OBE was in respect of that work. Clearly this scheme was wrong and it’s right that they’re going to pay back the money,” he said.

Mr Cameron previously chose to single out Jimmy Carr, the comedian, for criticism after it emerged he sheltered £3.3 million in a scheme called K2.

Mr Cameron said the case was a “particularly egregious example of an avoidance scheme that seemed to me to be wrong.”

In our own modest way, we’re living in a Boko Haram world

It seems that over the weekend, the BBC forced a well-regarded 67-year-old DJ on Radio Devon to resign because he had been so careless as to play a 1932 recording of The Sun Has Got His Hat On. This contained a word that is now unmentionable. It is rude, offensive, and I would never use it; but this word has become so intensely haram that a miasma attaches to anyone using it, even inadvertently; and the prohibition is now enforced with a semi-religious fervour.

When Jeremy Clarkson used it – or rather mumbled it, in an out-take never intended for broadcast – the drama went on for days. A clerisy of self-appointed internet witch-doctors went completely loco – or perhaps boko is the word.

Clarkson apologised – entirely correctly. But that was not enough for the internet mob. Clarkson Haram! Clarkson Haram! The politicians piled in.

Harriet Harman called for him to be sacked. The new BBC head of television decided to grant Hattie her wish, and it seems that Clarkson’s job was only saved by the intervention of Tony Hall, the Director-General himself.

So when the BBC hierarchs heard about the latest goof, by a relatively unimportant DJ on Radio Devon, you can imagine that they were fit to be tied. It didn’t matter that he was a popular and veteran local broadcaster: they could see it all happening again. The tweets, the twitstorms, all that endless hashtag BBC racist nightmare.

So they forced him out. I suppose David Lowe was less valuable to the Corporation than Clarkson, which only makes it worse.

Their treatment of this man is utterly disgraceful. There is a film that has been broadcast several times on the BBC, by the name of Pulp Fiction, directed by Quentin Tarantino.

You may have seen it. It is very funny. Towards the end John Travolta accidentally shoots another character in the back of a car, so causing a mess. Travolta and his accomplice, played by Samuel L Jackson, are in a panic about their car, and the dead man in the back. So they take refuge at the house of a distant associate, played by Tarantino himself. They arrive at breakfast time, and try to persuade Tarantino, still in his dressing gown, to help them dispose of the corpse.

Tarantino takes violent exception to this, and in the course of the conversation he refers to the corpse several times by using the aforementioned unmentionable word. “Did you notice a sign in front of my house that says dead [unmentionable word] storage? Did you?” he asks Travolta and Jackson.

Now can someone tell me, in the name of all that is holy, why David Lowe of Radio Devon was made to resign for mistakenly playing an old recording of the Sun Has Got His Hat On – and yet the BBC schedulers see nothing wrong with broadcasting Pulp Fiction?

Don’t give me any of your tripe, you clever-clever BBC folk. Don’t tell me that it is somehow “ironic” or “artistic” in the mouth of Quentin Tarantino, and yet sinister on the turntable of a Radio Devon DJ.

If there were any logic or consistency in the world, the entire cadre of BBC schedulers would be asked to commit harakiri. They should all be sacked, from Tony Hall downwards – every man and woman in the place.

Their crime is far worse than the offence of David Lowe of Radio Devon. They did it KNOWINGLY. They put Pulp Fiction on air, in the full knowledge that the director of the movie – who is white – gives currency and legitimation, out of his own mouth, to a term that they forbid to their own presenters, even accidentally and off the air.

Will they go? I doubt it. Will they all be sacked? Not a chance. Will they be forced to apologise for repeatedly scheduling Pulp Fiction? Of course not. So where is the consistency, the fairness? Where does sanity lie?

The answer is that there is no answer. In our own modest way, we live in a Boko Haram world, where it all depends on the swirling rage of the internet mob, and where terrified bureaucrats and politicians are borne along on a torrent of confected outrage. There is no consistency in the outlook of the Nigerian maniacs: they use weapons produced by the very capitalist system they claim to deplore, for instance.

There is certainly no logic at the BBC. They should restore Mr Lowe to his job – if he will take it – and the entire BBC Board should go down to Devon to apologise in person, and at their own expense.

Boris Johnson plays wheelchair rugby

The Mayor of London launched the World Wheelchair Rugby Challenge by having a go at the sport nicknamed "murderball" for its highly competitive atmosphere.


The event will be held in October 2015 at the Copper Box arena in the Olypmic Park in east L...