Stand Up, Speak Up on the National and International Security Policy Group Report

Last week the National and International Security Policy Group unveiled it's report. If you would like to comment or vote on any of the recommendations in the report you can now do so here at the Party's Stand Up, Speak Up site.

Comments

[Ali Gledhill]

Is national security so interlinked with international security that one policy group report can cover both?

[John Leonard]

What I find so frustrating about Stand Up Speak Up is that they have yet to post the Democracy Task Force report on there.

As this covers two of the key topics for many Conservatives and these topics also relate to many of the recommendations in the other reports. I find it ludicrous that it has not been posted.

I have raised this issue with the site editor Stephen Crabbe MP and will continue to do so. I suggest others do to!

[Henry Mayhew - Ukipper / delusional conservative]

I am sorry, I am too depressed by the contrast between the silliness of 'Stand up, speak up' and the topic, to read it enough to slag it off. Therefore, a victory for the Cameroons, the first by my count in 2007.

[dafberad]

I might have bothered taking part if I thought that my opinion actually mattered to David Cameron.

He will listen, But he knows better.

[James Maskell]

The CPF is dead, the Stand Up Speak Up having replaced it.

Theres no point in it at all since even before the launch of this site, the CPF had been to all intents and purposes neutered. Its sickening and Cameron is to blame for this. The issues have been poorly chosen and designed to avoid the right wing getting their nose in.

[Simon Newman]

I've read through the whole of 'uniting the community' at:

http://standupspeakup.conservatives.com/Reports/AnUnquietWorld/3_studies_uniting_the_country.pdf

It certainly represents an improvement on govt policy. It is unequivocal that the MCB and 'moderate' Islamists are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

It alludes to preventing foreign funding of radicalisation, but unsurprisingly doesn't mention that this funding comes mostly from our Gulf 'allies'.

It advocates increasing opprtunities for Muslim women and protecting them from forced marriage and other unpleasant practices - I agree this is certainly a desirable goal, which we should pursue, but most Muslim terrorists are men, they expect to be able to dominate their wives, and I'd think promoting female equality is more likely to aggravate than conciliate them. Presumably the idea is that in the long term Muslims raised by educated, liberated women are less likely to be terrorists, which seems a reasonable idea but is surely a long way off, especially as Muslim men continue to be able to bring in wives from Muslim countries where oppression of women is State-supported.

Finally, it states several times that the widespread belief that Islam is a threat to democracy is mistaken 'and must be countered', but doesn't give much reason why this belief is mistaken; on an objective reading most of the evidence in the report supports the view that Islam, as it actually exists, certainly can be a threat to democracy - there are Koranically-supported interpretations that are not such a threat, but the dominant interpretations definitely are. So this seems more like wishful thinking than hard-headed analysis.

[Simon Newman]

Overall, on my reading the report seeks to reject cultural Marxism/left liberalism, while also rejecting traditional conservatism (the defense of non-liberal values rooted in the particularities of nation and people), and seeks to adhere to classical liberalism, unfortunately thus keeping the door open to c-M values, in which 'integration is a two way street' becomes 'we must change our way of life to conciliate hostile immigrants'.

[Simon Newman]

The report's statement that

In an age of migration, the mental image of ourselves as a settled society to which incomers should conform without change or effort on our part is unhelpful"

is itself unhelpful, I think. Telling everyone else that they have to change to accomodate one group of incomers, during a terrorist campaign originating from amongst those incomers, is not going to make everyone else more favourably disposed towards them. Indeed it heightens the fear & anxiety that the report laments.