Jeremy Brier: Economic measures will not stop the Syrian regime. Only a military response will work.

Jeremy Brier is a barrister and former parliamentary candidate for Luton North.

Ten years ago, in a Cambridge Union debate on the subject of the Middle East, I remember asking the Syrian Ambassador to the United Kingdom about the Hama Massacre, where in February 1982 the Syrian Army slaughtered tens of thousands of its own people in a town which had revolted against the Assad regime. The Ambassador was a highly articulate and jovial debater and our exchange was in good spirits even though we were on opposing sides. But his answer to my question, delivered gently and with a smile, always stayed with me. He did not seek to deny that the Massacre had occurred. Nor did he seek to find any basis to justify it. He simply said to the chamber: “This is none of your business.” This short answer revealed the insularity and privacy which tyrannical regimes assume. Their first thought is not to justification but to jurisdiction: there is no need to account, only to assert the exclusive right to determine what happens in their territory.

It is through such logic that the present slaughter in Syria continues. Nothing is clearer than that the Assad regime is oblivious to what the “International Community” want or think. After days of diplomatic manoeuvres, Baroness Amos may secure a limited passage for aid agencies but, welcome though that is, their job will be to apply salve to gaping wounds. The shells will continue to be fired. Similarly, William Hague’s words are a study in forlorn special pleading as he asserts: “we can agree a wider set of measures and tighten EU sanctions on Syria. Don't underestimate the impact of the cumulative effect that has.” It will have some impact, but not nearly enough to stop the slaughter. Syria will maintain economic cooperation with its allies (China, Russia, Iran) and the regime will ride out the sanctions, as they always do. After all, it’s none of our business.

When will we learn that economic and bureaucratic responses do not halt massacres? Only a military response will do so because it is the sole way in which the regime can be destroyed; the only way in which their firepower can be blunted and made irrelevant; the only way they will realise it is “our business” and come to the negotiating table. This is the obvious conclusion to draw from the recent Libyan conflict. For sure, it was not easy. It was also expensive. But it worked: in preventing the further massacre of Benghazi and in obliterating a fetid regime.

Jeremy Brier: Was the Lib Dems' seaside farce in Bournemouth the most hapless Party Conference in recent times?

Jeremy Brier is a barrister and the Conservative prospective parliamentary candidate for Luton North.

It’s always tragic to see great, beloved institutions fall from grace. On the other hand, it’s tremendously jolly to watch farcical institutions like the Liberal Democrats belly-flop off the Bournemouth pier. Devoid of a coherent philosophy under the maladroit Nick Clegg, I asked almost two years ago on this site: what do the Lib Dems want to be when they grow up? After this year’s seaside side-show, I’ve realised my question took too much for granted.

Arriving on the south coast on the luxurious political sunbed of being able to propose absolutely anything (since there is no chance of it ever being implemented), this week’s Conference gave the Lib Dems carte-blanche for a glittering array of attractive promises. And so, Day One began with Nick Clegg telling his key voter-base – students – that he would no longer abolish their tuition fees (the logic presumably being: why keep a populist policy for which you will never have to bear the cost, when you could just ditch it for no political gain?) and the scintillating news that the Conference “backed plans to ban airbrushing in adverts targeted at children”.

Yes, you heard right. Jo Swinson MP commented that

“Women face pressure from all directions these days. Hit hard by the recession, trying to juggle family commitments with work and home life, and bombarded with adverts that contain completely unattainable images that no-one can live up to in real life.”

All very well, but this ban is apparently aimed at adverts facing the under-16s. So, just to be clear for any multi-tasking children under pressure from the recession, you might be running short of pocket money and fighting off negative equity on your doll’s houses, but at least when you open your next edition of Heat the adverts will only contain pictures of normally good-looking people that are not “completely unattainable”.

Feeling better? Probably not, because aside from being patronising, unenforceable and easy for clever glamour photographers to side-step, this ban also excludes from its imperious scope actual photoshoots and stories. So poor little cash-strapped Jemima does not have to face a “completely unattainable” image in the Burberry ad before the contents page, but she’s still got to endure 90 pages of photoshopped scantily-clad models in the features section! 

Jeremy Brier is a barrister and the Conservative prospective parliamentary candidate for Luton North.

Jeremy Brier: Our “response” to terrorism needs to be braver than this

Jeremy Brier is a barrister and the Conservative prospective parliamentary candidate for Luton North.

They scripted their terrible plot with care. Those young, jeans-clad murderers – authors of the world’s latest terrorist atrocities in India in Al Qaeda’s bloody handwriting – chose the site of their carnage to be luxurious hotels and a building belonging to the city’s tiny Jewish community. 

This was not indiscriminate: it was a pointed attack on the free and the life-lovers; the businessmen who endeavour to create wealth and prosperity; those of the West who dare to live by values of equality and justice; the Rabbi and his family, practicing their ancient religion in privacy and peace.

The unimaginable devastation this causes, as well as the shattering of India’s fragile peace, will be pronounced and immediate. The longer-term implications of these attacks are more concerning still. How many of us are yet to lose our lives at the hands of these groups? How much deeper will fanaticism penetrate our own unconfident and unravelling society? Does anyone know what to do?

It was an attack on everything that Britain holds dear and it deserves to be responded to with vigour and intelligence from our leaders. Our Prime Minister, however, was left sounding vacuous, announcing that these attacks will be met with a “vigorous response”, but saying no more and directing the counter-terrorism squad little further than Damien Green’s office. What is the nature of your “vigorous response”, Mr Brown? What values do you assert against this outrage? What strategy are you undertaking? A trite, unparticularised response shows up a failure to grapple with the issues. We have heard more details this week of the Prime Minister’s letters to X Factor contestants than in relation to his “vigorous response” to the Mumbai massacres. A Prime Minister happier with reality TV than with real life.

Jeremy Brier: It's not the leader that's the problem, it's the party

Jeremy Brier, a Barrister and former World Debating Champion, says the Lib Dems need a purpose more than a new leader.

So, Gordon Brown called off the election and another Lib Dem leader falls victim to a bottle. The question now is in which direction does the Big Yellow (Ugly) Bird wants to fly? Left or right? Orange Book or Velvet Revolution? 18 points or (wait for it!) 22 points? Or rather: Who cares?

What the last two years have showed us is not that there is some sort of interesting philosophical debate about the future of the Liberal Democrats but that, rather, there is none. The Lib Dems have no core ideology, no "theme". They cannot persuade people to vote for them for any positive reason; resurrecting at election times largely out of public protest or apathy, rarely out of public embrace. They are not, like the Conservatives in 2005, in need of re-branding. They are in need of re-banding. 

Jeremy Brier: Lock kids in the canteen and make them eat broccoli

Jeremy Brier, a Barrister and former World Debating Champion, agrees with Jamie Oliver that school kids need to be coerced into eating school lunches.

Chicken Cottage, the deep-fried-chicken take-away where both words in the name are so off the mark it must be ironic is so crammed at lunchtimes that the chickens must feel like they’re back at the abattoir. Children flock out from class onto the High Street, salivating in anticipation of the steaming boxes of fatty breadcrumbs to come. “It’s terrible!” cry the Chattering Classes across the road in the organic juice café munching on alfalfa sprouts. “These children are so uneducated! We must teach them how to cook! Let’s make them understand all about broccoli and Sharon fruits and polenta! Let’s get that Jamie Oliver chap to do another series! This can’t go on!” etc. ad nauseam. 

This rather misses the point. Children don’t go to Chicken Cottage out of ignorance; they go to Chicken Cottage because it’s delicious. Absolutely delicious: flavoursome, juicy, crunchy, filling; perfect for the unsophisticated youthful palette (and mine) that craves salty satisfaction. I had the best education that mummy could buy and I stuffed myself with Pot Noodles every break-time (chicken and mushroom, if you’re interested); not because I didn’t know my hamachi from my humumus but because nothing fresh, healthy, organic or nutritious can possibly come close to the artificial delights in a mass-produced carton of dried chemicals. You can cook all the greens you like in the School Dining Hall and you can teach kids all you want about aubergines; but it’s a truth universally acknowledged that as long as Chicken Cottage exists down the road, there will be a queue there at lunchtime full of salivating, uniformed youngsters, each with highly deficient nutritional balances.   

Jeremy Brier: Standing firm against terror means standing apart from the Liberals

Jeremy Brier is a Barrister and former World Debating Champion.

Talking about a cosy relationship with the Liberal Democrats is providing the Conservatives with lots of honey-toned mood music at the moment. It softens up a rich vein of floating voters in marginal seats and it positions the Conservative Party in the warm Centre Ground. I like that: it’s good politics and we are thinking like a broad and inclusive party must. 

But, as the Attorney General knows, there is a pronounced difference between a convenient flirtation and a full-blown affair. In an age when national security is of pre-eminent importance, an official pact with the Liberal Democrat could not only dilute our party’s long-deserved reputation for being tough on crime and terrorism; it could also dissolve Britain’s already fragile defences against its various enemies.

The Liberal Democrat instinct is relativist and self-doubting. Its tendencies are towards bureaucratic multilateralism, anti-American gesture politics and the drawing of moral equivalence between terrorism and the fight against terror. Such approaches offer no effective answers to the major foreign policy challenges of the age. Iraq will not achieve the stability it deserves (and which we owe it) if we pull out our troops while its own institutions remain embryonic; Iran will not be prevented from building up a nuclear arsenal by relying on European Union diplomacy; and further African genocides will hardly be prevented by more unresolved resolutions from the disparate talking-shop of the United Nations.

Jeremy Brier: Signal failure - it’s now Tube policy to ignore fare-dodgers for fear of assault

Jeremy Brier, Barrister and former World Debating Champion.

Having foolishly left my bag on a tube train two nights ago (don’t worry: its most valuable contents was an invitation to the Harrow Conservatives barbecue which I reckon I can gatecrash), I felt I should helpfully alert the nearest Station Master to my oversight to prevent some Responsible Citizen or other pulling the emergency chord in fear of the infamous Unidentified Package.

As the kind and upright Station Master listened to my tale of incompetence and social concern with mild indifference, I witnessed an extraordinary thing: two girls (about 18 or 19 years old) leapfrogged over the ticket barriers and arrived a foot away from us, ready to head down the escalator to their train without a valid ticket. I stopped. I stared at their brazenness. And I looked at the Station Master. He looked back and he read my mind (“WHY don’t you DO something?”). The Station Master replied forlornly: “We’re not allowed to do anything anymore”.

'What?' I said. People are allowed to jump the tube barriers and not be caught out? Quite so. He told me (in strictest confidence mind, so I was sworn to secrecy) that London Underground have issued a written edict to all their station staff in London that under no circumstances are they to prevent, stop or punish barrier-jumpers on the basis that the cost to London Underground of their staff doing such a thing and then being assaulted is significantly greater than the cost to them in lost fares. 

Think it through: if you can get all the law-abiding citizens of London to pay a little bit more on their tickets to cover the cost of the criminal minority who evade their fares, that is far more economically efficient (if the law abiding customers comply, which they have to) than risking your staff’s health and safety when an inevitable result of their interventions will be their injury and consequent absence from work.

Jeremy Brier: Cheek by Jowell

Jeremy Brier is a Commercial Barrister, World Debating Champion and Conservative Council Candidate in Harrow West.

At Law School we used to get given “problem questions”, wildly implausible factual scenarios involving naughty people doing stupid things, and we would then have to comment on what the legal issues were before us that a barrister might like to raise. Well it’s good news for all those teachers at College of Law! David, Tessa and Tony have just created a tailor-made case study for any undergraduate lawyer to get their teeth into for hours, containing a seemingly unending variety of discrepancies, sleights of hands, failures of due process and just plain old fashioned New Labour greed and stupidity. What’s more, it isn’t too hard so there won’t be a need for too much grade inflation.

Let’s start with the basics. Do you think that the following statement from the Prime Minister might just raise a few questions of “due process” or what we sometimes call “procedural fairness”?

"I accept Tessa's assurance that she did not know about it (the gift) until the issue was resolved with the Inland Revenue. In these circumstances, she is not in breach of the ministerial code."

Or, in other words, “she told me she didn’t know about it so she didn’t know about it and because she didn’t know about it, she didn’t breach the ministerial code”. Brilliant. Clearly a very complex process of evidential scrutiny went into that decision. (You’re on full marks so far).

Jeremy Brier: After Hamas' 'victory'

Jeremy Brier, a barrister and blogger, examines last week's Hamas election victory.  Jeremy is a supporter of Conservative Friends of Israel and World Debating Champion for 2004-5:

"There are few issues on which you can trust a BBC Question Time audience to get it more wrong than on the Middle East. In Thursday night’s discussion on Hamas’s recent “triumph” in the Palestinian Elections, the audience clapped with particular earnestness at Claire Fox’s assertion that “if we in the West promote democracy, we can’t complain about the result”. But why do we accept such nonsense disguised as a truism? Whilst democracy does entail the holding of a free election and the fair counting of that vote (which appears to have happened in this case), it is about far more than just an administration of an election. It is also about the values which the elected government upholds. Such a government can only count as democratic (as opposed to, say, an elected dictatorship) when such values are based upon on the rule of law, the notion that governmental authority remains checked at all times by established written laws or procedures. These are, as Aristotle told us, the system of rules inherent in the natural order. They cannot include the arbitrary and unjust killing of innocent people; nor can they include a refusal to accept the existence of democratically formed neighbours.

It is therefore perfectly possible (indeed, it appears to have happened yesterday) that an undemocratic party takes part in a democratically conducted election. A party built on pillars antithetical to democracy – the armed and violent struggle against a nation state would certainly count as such in the case of Hamas – may still be the most popular amongst the electorate. However, that in no way means that true believers in democracy should feel they cannot bemoan the results, or that they have to accept the result as morally and politically equivalent to the election of a truly democratic party. The democratic election of an undemocratic party essentially is symbolically equivalent to a positive and a negative cancelling each other out.

It is rather the responsibility of democratic standard-bearers like the U.K, the U.S.A and the E.U, to use all forms of political and economic leverage to cajole Hamas into renouncing violence and terror and accepting the existence of their neighbouring democracy. Before this happens, on no account should Hamas be supported through words or funds, and to the contrary, it should be loudly pressurised into change. 

Claire Fox might get a loud clap on Question Time for implying that the result of any election must be accepted by the world at large. However, she has failed to grasp that the struggle for worldwide democracy is a much grander and more beneficial vision than simply the struggle for worldwide democratic elections. It is what happens in the period between polling days that political parties, and their commitment to democracy, should be judged on."