David Cameron’s plan to fight the terrorist threat posed by Islamic State got off to a doubtful start when he was forced to shelve key proposals even as legal uncertainty painted him into a corner. Liberal Democrat objections, and an uncertain stand by the security services made things only worse.
So what was supposedly a gung-ho operation has come unstuck.
After the video broadcast of journalist James Foley by the IS and the conviction that the executor had a British accent, Cameron was very keen to track all those British citizens who have left the country to go to Syria and Iraq. Where their sympathies lie might be a measure for banishing them entirely but what if innocent travelers are caught in the net?
Cameron displayed much raging emotion when he addressed MPs in an attempt to win their support for what could be one of Britain’s most draconian block of rights and freedoms.
His voice cracked a bit when he spoke: “It is abhorrent that people who declare their allegiance elsewhere can return to the United Kingdom and pose a threat to our national security. We are clear in principle that what we need is a targeted, discretionary power to allow us to exclude British nationals from the UK.”
The difficulties facing Cameron were underlined by the former Conservative attorney general Dominic Grieve, who warned that removing passports from UK-born citizens returning home would breach international law and UK common law. Grieve said “even taking such powers on a temporary basis is likely to be a non starter.”
While that is all very well the man in the street would be inclined to back Cameron’s rhetoric even if it is without much firepower. He is echoing a common fear.
Cameron said as many as 500 UK citizens were fighting in Syria or northern Iraq, representing the single greatest threat to the UK ... how do you deal with them as individuals with rights?
He hasn’t stopped underscoring what he sees as nonsense. “It absolutely sticks in the craw that someone can go from this country to Syria, declare jihad, make all sorts of plans to start doing us damage and then contemplate returning to Britain having declared their allegiance to another state.”
It is a very uphill climb. For one, how do you prove their guilt? For another how do you take them into custody without due cause? And finally, the other side of the coin; how do you let them return home and carry on as usual without stifling their freedoms by putting a 24 hour surveillance on them? The cost and manpower of that exercise is not only massive it keeps increasing and where does it stop? What if the 500 become 5,000?
