Brian Binley MP: Iran's President Rouhani is anything but a moderate

Brian Binley is the Member of Parliament for Northampton South and President of International Parliamentary Campaign in Defence of Ashraf

Many in the western press and beyond have praised the recently-elected Iranian President Hassan Rouhani as a moderate, suggesting he will make life better for his people and extend an olive branch to the rest of the world. So let’s look at his record.

Rouhani has been a high-ranking official of the regime throughout the last three decades, mainly working in the realms of intelligence and national security. Consequently, he has been involved in, and has supported, the regime’s policies and actions, including the murderous suppression of the opposition and the regime’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.

He was the national security advisor to the then president when the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) blew up Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia and murdered 19 American servicemen in 1996. In the medieval theocracy that is modern day Iran, anyone who even wishes to seek high office must first be cleared by those who really run the country, namely the Mullahs and in particular their Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Hassan Rouhani was vetted and approved by Khamenei’s Guardian Council for June's election as one who has proven his complete allegiance to the absolute rule of the Supreme Leader both in theory and practice. We know that he was the supervisor and defender of the Iranian atomic energy weapons programme, and was actively engaged in buying time to develop it whilst keeping it hidden from the prying eyes of Western surveillance.

As the Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council (SNCSC), he was intimately familiar with the secret construction of Iran's illicit nuclear facilities in Arak, Natanz and Shian Lavizan in Tehran, which remained clandestine until exposed by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) in 2002. In 2003, Rouhani became Iran's lead nuclear negotiator and he has boasted of duping the West whilst continuing the drive to obtain nuclear weapons as expeditiously as possible.

Brian Binley MP: Whose self-interest was it that led to this Euro mess?

Brian Binley is Conservative MP for Northampton South.

On the occasion when the German polity decided to turn nasty in their desperate attempts to paper over the cracks of the rapidly dis-integrating European project, it is worth remembering a few truths about the whole dastardly story.

Volker Kauder’s intemperate outburst at the CDU conference reveals an unpleasantness whose novelty conceals a revisionist approach to recent European history. It was the Maastricht Treaty which made the single currency an inevitability, but, from the outset, Britain determined – through John Major’s negotiating skills and superior judgement – that her interests did not lie in participating in the effort. Those European Union Member States who proceeded chose to manipulate the rules to ensure that those whose economic policies did not justify their involvement were part of the ‘big tent’: as one of the Eurozone’s strongest economic players, it is the Germans that have benefited the most from the strait-jacket which has prevented the Eurozone’s relatively weaker players from adjusting their currencies to achieve greater competitiveness.

Britain has been an important player in her own continent: but the concept of flexible geometry articulated by John Major in the 1990s – exemplified by the opt-outs which were negotiated at Maastricht (some of which were lightly surrendered by Tony Blair) – is still not understood amongst German politicians. They are not to be blamed for trying to optimise the interests of their own population – but they should not resent those others who seek to do the same. And, given the over-domination and reliance of the Eurozone on Germany for its very survival, serious questions must be asked across the entire continent about what the real cost of this failed grand political vision will end up being. That would be a much more productive subject for Herr Kauder to contemplate as his party wrestles with the horrors of the mess that the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis delivers on a daily basis.

Brian Binley MP: Rehearsal for a Bloodbath: Concrete actions are now essential to safeguard the residents of Camp Ashraf

Brian Binley is Conservative MP for Northampton South.

It was at 11 p.m. on Halloween, Oct. 31, that Iraqi security forces made their latest menacing incursion into Camp Ashraf. Thirty military vehicles accompanied by 10 police cars entered the camp northeast of Baghdad where 3,400 Iranian dissidents live, intimidating residents with glaring lights and deafening noise and conducting exercises around their homes. Simultaneously, the 300 loudspeakers placed around Ashraf to pile on the psychological pressure stepped up their barrage of threats and insults.

This bullying show of force followed a press conference in Baghdad earlier in the day at which Hoshyar Zebari, Iraq’s foreign minister, promised his visiting Iranian counterpart, Ali Akbar Salehi, that Iraq would keep its promise of closing Camp Ashraf by Dec. 31, which is also the date that the last U.S. soldier is due to leave Iraq. The world now has less than two months in which to stop this closure turning into a possible massacre. After two armed assaults by the Iraqi Army on the camp in 2009 and last April -- when 36 people, including eight women, were killed and 300 were injured by soldiers carrying U.S.-made weapons -- there are no grounds for believing that the December closure will be carried out peacefully and humanely. The Ashraf residents, protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention, are members of the principal Iranian opposition movement, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK).

The Iranian Resistance says it fears the clerical regime in Iran and the Iraqi government are setting the stage for a new bloodbath in Ashraf and it is urging the U.S., the European Union and the United Nations to prevent it, calling for the implementation of the appeal of U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon in a report to the Security Council on July 7 in which he asked “all stakeholders involved to increase their efforts to explore options and seek a consensual solution.”

Brian Binley MP: Another easy money fix is an expensive substitute for growth

Brian Binley is Conservative MP for Northampton South.

The growing difference between what the Office of Budget Responsibility anticipated as our path from recession, and what has actually happened causes me increasingly substantial concerns. Our response seems to be an insatiable appetite to reach for ever more expensive monetary instruments to kick-start our failing growth strategy – but the sums involved are terrifying in magnitude. Yet progressive increments of monetary indulgence have not worked to date, and there is little encouragement on the horizon. Inflation is not the way out of our current crisis, and we should not restrict ourselves solely to using monetary devices whose use may inhibit a sensible, balanced policy response.

Following last year’s General Election, the country faced a dreadful crisis in monetary, fiscal and financial terms: inflation was well below target; the budget deficit was of eye-watering proportions; and the banks were feeble and hesitant. Last June’s emergency budget removed us, temporarily, from the danger zone, and the Chancellor’s numbers were finely judged to avert cataclysm. Yet, fifteen months on, the crisis is every bit as profound, as we teeter on the brink of a double-dip recession. With just a few weeks before the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement, I hope that the Government will prove how alive they are to our current predicament, and take the cautious steps to provide additional relief.

Labour’s answer has been to call for a slower timetable in reducing the deficit, alongside unaffordable generic tax cuts: these demands are irresponsible and serve to prove that they wish to ignore the problem and hope that it takes itself away. But their shrieking for blunt, populist fiscal measures are proving a distraction from the argument which many of us wish to make about a more nuanced role for fiscal policy. Yes, tackling the deficit needs to be a major priority – as does bringing inflation back under control and fixing the troubles of our banking system – but we should be alive to the way in which careful, targeted tax measures could stimulate growth without creating additional burdens on the economy.

Brian Binley: Monetarism and this week’s low growth figures

Brian Binley is Conservative MP for Northampton South.

This week’s growth figures do not make happy reading.  The Government’s strategy relies on steady growth and rising exports and neither is happening to the extent we need.  Growth has declined to negligible proportions and our trade deficit continues to deteriorate.

The reason is clear.  Demand is weak thanks to an absence of confidence and it’s not difficult to understand why.

The world economy is bracing itself for further shocks, households and businesses are protecting their financial credibility, inflation is well above expectation, real incomes are shrinking, living standards are eroding, and house prices are still falling.  Unless we can sell more in the global market place and encourage people to spend our economic difficulties are likely to continue.

There is no doubt that tackling the deficit is a major priority: the mess left by the previous Government is well understood.  But it is important that policy reflects reality on the ground and the need to balance our International economic credibility whilst doing more to increase demand is apparent.  We must clearly divest ourselves of Mr Brown’s legacy of self perpetuating momentum in the public sector, not least because public spending of just under 50% of GDP suggest the rider is almost heavier than the horse. But we must do more.  Sadly the debate amongst economists seems to revolve around ideological preference with little thought for reality.

Brian Binley MP: How to stimulate the housing market

Brian Binley is Conservative MP for Northampton South.

Much attention has focused on the broad support offered by the International Monetary Fund to the Government’s strategy to restore fiscal control – through adopting a rigorous and robust approach to public spending cuts. The Chancellor has, rightly, stressed the importance of credibility in engendering the confidence of global capital markets.

But alongside bringing the public finances under control, we need to keep another form of confidence in mind: that of consumers and businesses whose everyday transactions facilitate economic growth and the distribution of prosperity. Consumers are currently feeling the effect of tax rises, are confronted by uncertainty over commodity prices and the cost of credit, and have entrenched away from spending.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the housing market, which has, effectively, been starved of first-time buyers through the combination of poor access to mortgage credit and anxiety about the risks of making a purchase. This is a problem that cuts to the very core of our national psyche: we are a nation of home-owners: home-ownership remains a major source of pride to Britons, and a fundamental aspiration for many who are faced with significant obstacles in the current economic climate. Yet a generation of would–be home owners now face the prospect of becoming home renters for years to come.

Brian Binley MP: The Camp Ashraf massacre defines Tehran’s influence in Iraq

Brian Binley is Conservative MP for Northampton South.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton rightly used her address at the end of the recent Nato Ministers’ meeting in Berlin to warn of the attempts being made by Iran to exploit the popular uprisings in Libya and beyond.  Sadly, however, she failed to highlight the importance of the regime's influence in Iraq. 

Ever since the fall of Saddam Hussein, Tehran has targeted Iraq as its perfect proxy and a nation upon which it can have its greatest influence in the region. With Nuri Al-Maliki, a close ally of Tehran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei controlling Iraq’s government, Iran’s influence has intensified, with the actions of the Iraqi authorities beginning to mirror those of its dictatorial neighbour.

Now a bloody attack by Iraqi forces at Camp Ashraf, home to members of the Iranian opposition - the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI) - in Iraq has left many commentators wondering whether Iran’s influence over Al-Maliki is greater than previously thought. As the UN confirmed that the 34 unarmed residents of Camp Ashraf who were killed by Iraqi security forces earlier this month died as a result gunshot wounds or having been crushed by military vehicles, the attack has been roundly condemned and described by many as a massacre and a crime against humanity.

Brian Binley: Those who are blindly defending the European Court of Human Rights are only aiding its demise

Brian Binley is Conservative MP for Northampton South and a UK delegate to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. After the House of Commons voted in defiance of the ECHR ruling on giving the vote to prisoners, Christos Pourgourides - a Cypriot who chairs the Council of Europe's Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights - was quoted as saying that he had hoped that "the Parliament of one of Europe’s oldest democracies - regarded as playing a leading role in protecting Human Rights - would have encouraged the United Kingdom to honour its international obligations". Here Brian Binley responds to him in the form of an open letter.

Dear Mr. Pourgourides,

I am sure I don’t need to remind you of the case of Mr Imad Al Khawaya, a British Medical Consultant, who was convicted in a British Court of assaulting two of his patients whilst they were under the influence of hypnosis some six years ago.

One of his victims, who suffered from multiple sclerosis and thereafter committed suicide before the trial, had given testimony to a legal officer which was properly allowed to be submitted to the Court as evidence.

The disgraced doctor thereafter appealed to the European Court of Human Rights who ruled that his human rights had been violated because he had not been able to cross examine the victim who had died and he was duly awarded compensation.

No wonder the remaining victim asked “where are my human rights?”

I could quote many other equally farcical judgements which have not only brought the Court into disrepute in the UK but across Western Europe but I am sure you are well aware of them.

Many of Britain’s most eminent jurists are now questioning the credibility of the Court.

Brian Binley MP: Yes to privatisation of Royal Mail but no to any erosion of the Universal Postal Service

Brian Binley is Conservative MP for Northampton South.

The General Election created some unlikely political bedfellows. A by-product of the coalition agreement has, perhaps unwittingly, been to throw together the likes of Bill Cash and Simon Hughes on the Government’s benches and who would have dared to have predicted such a outcome?

For my own part I find myself making common cause with the postal workers' union – the CWU. We share a mutual interest in the Postal Services Bill which is currently wending its way through Parliament. Unlike the union, I am not against the privatisation of Royal Mail, which is the centrepiece of the legislation, but I do share the brothers' concern that the Bill as it is written will herald the slow but sure erosion of what is called in the trade, the “minimum requirements that are included in the Universal Postal Service.”

The Universal Postal Service is the legal obligation that everyone must receive a visit from the postman. The minimum requirements are the services that make up the obligation. There are essentially seven of these requirements, including a commitment to collect letters nationally and deliver them to all 22 million UK households six days a week; to charge a single price by size and weight for postage; and to provide special services for the blind. This is what makes up the bulk of the work Royal Mail does. To you and me it is the daily visit from the postman and the liveried red vans that run around the streets. Along with the local post office, it forms an important part of the fabric of many communities.

The Government is conscious of the importance of these requirements and the Bill clearly sets out how any organisation that seeks to provide postal services (currently Royal Mail has that right exclusively), must meet these requirements.