8

The Politicians

‘You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t possibly live long enough to make them all yourself.’

Samuel Levenson

Politicians have much to be proud of. It was political will that made the case against fascism, saw the need to lead the war efforts in the first half of the twentieth century and establish the NHS and a welfare state. It was political will which in the end abolished slavery, gave women, ethnic minorities, the disabled, homosexuals the right to be treated with dignity and shaped a Britain where all were equal before the law.

But we have also made many mistakes along the way, many in recent times regarding policy on ‘British Muslims’, where some policy has simply proved counterproductive because the how and why of policy-making has been flawed. Often led by naked politics, we have made decisions which are neither historically correct nor evidence-based.

It’s time to rebalance policy-making and reboot Britain’s relationship with its Muslims, because politics indicate a country’s direction of travel.

To leave or not to leave Europe is a question that has plagued British politics, and the Conservative Party more acutely, for decades. So the referendum in 2016 was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to settle the question. And although the debate had its fair share of exaggerated announcements on both sides of the argument, which predicted doom if voters were to vote one way or the other, for me the most startling revelations were from Steve Hilton, David Cameron’s long-term friend, godfather to his children and chief strategist for over seven years. The first revelation was this: that the numbers being used by government, most specifically the Treasury, were simply ‘made up’; he knew this, he said, because he’d done so in the past, simply made them up. And the second revelation was the claim that David Cameron was a closet Brexiter, and had he not been prime minister he would have voted leave.1 The allegation was, of course, denied by the prime minister, but the comments fed into a broader view that firstly politicians simply ‘make things up’ so the evidence fits their narrative and secondly that politicians don’t actually say what they truly believe, or indeed even do what they say.

Do we say what we believe? Do we do what we say?

I can’t profess that I could say yes to both questions at all times during my times in politics. There was many an occasion as Tory Party chairman I put my name to awful press releases about the then leader of the Labour Party, Ed Miliband, which would have been more suited to a primary school playground spat than so-called grown-up politics. But these two simple questions, these two filters, have the potential to act as a great check and balance against not just bad decision-making but also ruthlessly political decision-making. And they help us unpick the sins and inform the solutions to British Muslim policy-making.

The two questions seem most difficult to answer when it comes to Britain’s approach to foreign policy.

Let me start with our armed forces, an issue which for me and many British Muslims is personal. Of the millions who fought for Britain during the two world wars nearly 900,000 were Muslims; two were my paternal and maternal grandfathers.²

In 2013 the two men who killed Drummer Lee Rigby claimed to be Muslim; they killed in the name of Islam. Legally they committed a murder, religiously they committed a sin.

I had the privilege of being the minister with responsibility for Afghanistan from 2012 to 2014 in the last two years of the Afghanistan War as we withdrew our troops. I had the opportunity to travel to Afghanistan on many occasions, including to Helmand. I travelled with our soldiers, ate with them, met and talked with them, ordinary men and women with extraordinary courage. We lost over 450 during that war, which in the end lasted fourteen years.

They do what few politicians would have the courage to do. They implement the decisions we make and sadly often without the equipment and support they need. They give up the best years of their life, and many return to civilian life again without the support and resources they need to reintegrate into local communities. Sitting alongside young men and women dressed for battle in the intense Afghan heat, knowing that some of them would not survive the operation, was a sobering moment.

When terrorists murdered Lee Rigby they struck at the heart of what Britain held sacred, its young men and women who put themselves in harm’s way to protect us.

Fusilier Lee Rigby was twenty-five; he was a brother, a son and a father. From Crumpsall in Manchester, he had joined the army at nineteen and had served in Afghanistan. He was engaged to be married. His mother Lyn, when speaking of her loss and ‘the pain (that) never goes away’, put it in a way that only a mother could: ‘I thought giving birth was the hardest thing to do in the world, but to bury a child. That is a whole complete person you will never see again.’3 Lee’s life was cut short by two men who felt hacking him to death was an appropriate and ‘Islamic’ response because they disagreed with British foreign policy.

In 2006 we lost yet another soldier in Afghanistan. He was Lance Corporal Jibran Hashmi, who was killed in Sangin in Helmand Province in a rocket attack. The town, a strategic centre for the Taliban and one where British troops suffered a large number of casualties, is now sadly once more on the verge of falling under Taliban control.⁴ His family described Jibran as ‘a committed soldier and a committed Muslim. He was fiercely proud of his Islamic background and he was equally proud of being British.’⁵

I met Jibran’s mother some years ago. The years had not healed her loss. She quietly sobbed as she spoke of her son, but the pride she felt of her son’s service to his country shone through. She was an unassuming woman, one who could easily, because of her demeanour and how she was dressed, have been mistaken for being ‘traditionally submissive’.⁶ Her son was a British Muslim soldier.

Lee and Jibran lost their lives serving their country. We owe it to them to get things right.

And that starts with our first solution: clarifying our laws on who Brits fight for.

The current war in Syria, and the young European men and women, the foreign fighters, who have travelled to fight in the region, has again raised issues we’ve faced in the past. Europeans who went out in 2011–12, early on in the conflict, to fight against the Assad regime were in their belief, if not in their action, in the same place as government policy. They, like the government, believed Assad was a brutal dictator who needed to be defeated. Like the mujahideen of 1980s Afghanistan, whom we armed and advised,7 these young men simply implemented what we believed.⁸

It’s a phenomenon we’ve seen before. The Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s, despite the UK’s official neutral position, saw hundreds and possibly thousands of Brits travel to Spain to fight alongside the subsequently defeated republicans as part of the International Brigades. The prospect of fighting against fascism as their country kept quiet attracted a group of Brits who were made up of both educated middle-class and working-class idealists, socialists and communists, young men with a purpose who played their part in an international effort to uphold democracy against the right-wing threat and to live out an adventure. Some Brits even fought for the other side, the nationalists, who were supported by the fascist forces of Hitler and Mussolini.

Our intelligence services knew about these early ‘foreign fighters’ as they did the many that we not only knew about but also encouraged during the Soviet War in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989.⁹

Like the International Brigades of the Spanish Civil War, the young men who first went out to help as the Syrian Civil War started simply felt they were stepping up because their government wasn’t doing enough and they wanted to play their part. Some were aid workers and doctors who got caught up in Syria as the state collapsed, whilst others felt it their duty to fight injustice. The ‘thug life’ that ISIS offered came much later.

We currently have Brits fighting on all sides of the conflict in Iraq and Syria, some with anti-Assad groups, others for him, some with ISIS, some against them alongside the Peshmerga, but the only Brits we should have in the fight should be Brits in our armed forces. And yet some eighty years since the Spanish Civil War we still haven’t set out what I believe is a clear and necessary principle that if you are British and wish to be a soldier then you fight for Britain. Our law in this area is vague. Fighting for Britain is one of the most public acknowledgements of a commitment to Britain and what she stands for. If you take the nationality and the passport, then you fight under our banner and no other. It may have served us well, as it did during the Cold War, to harness the power, passion, religious fevour and brotherhood to attract foreign fighters to our cause, our agenda, but we must now stop doing so. It was a bad policy decision and it backfired. It’s time for us to make it a criminal offence to fight for a nation other than our own. We live in a diverse, multi-ethnic country, and whilst it’s natural to have multiple affections and affiliations to countries around the world, it should not be acceptable to take up arms for another nation, friend or foe.10

The second issue is violent dissent. As a nation we need to learn the art of disagreeing well, and that includes how we dissent on foreign policy. Many people disagree with British foreign policy. In 2001 I had reservations about our intervention in Afghanistan. Our planning, strategy and stated outcomes I felt were not sufficiently clear. In 2003 I was against the war in Iraq. As a lawyer, I had concerns about the legal basis of what we did and the reasoning behind the intervention.

These concerns were shared by millions across the UK, many of whom took to the streets: from the tens of thousands in September 2002 soon after Blair made the British case for war to the million who marched in London on 15 February 2003, as millions around the world too marched, expressing their opposition to the planned invasion of Iraq. Just over a month later the war started, the ramifications of which we are still feeling today.

Muslims, like the rest of Brits, have a stake in Britain’s future and in the welfare of our armed forces. They, like the rest of Brits, bear the consequences of the decisions our governments make, including on foreign policy. And they, like the rest of Brits, must be both mature about ‘national interest’ in foreign policy and passionate about holding our government to account when it says one thing and does another. That is patriotism.

Brits of all backgrounds, including Muslims, should be at the forefront of fighting persecution, discrimination and injustice anywhere in the world, but first we must hold our government to account, ensuring it remains true to the deep-rooted principles of fairness, human rights, the rule of law and international justice.

So let me be clear: attacks on our troops either here or overseas can never be justified; nor can an opposition to our foreign policy be seen as justification for inciting hatred against our soldiers. British Muslims owe it to our forefathers to remember the sacrifices that they and others made and owe it to their memories that live on through their medals to shout down the small number of bigots that think burning poppies or using violence is an appropriate form of dissent.

The responsibility and indeed culpability for those wars lies with politicians who made those decisions and not the thousands of men and women in our armed forces who simply follow orders. Such sentiments were expressed in emotional outbursts by families of soldiers on the publication of the Chilcot report into the war in Iraq. The decisions to go to war are made by politicians elected through the ballot box. Those decisions must be opposed through the ballot box. So strengthening democracy must be our second solution.

But just as British citizens, including Muslims, have a responsibility to dissent on foreign policy in line with our traditions and principles, so too politicians have a responsibility to make foreign policy in line with our traditions and principles. So thirdly, we need to tackle how we make foreign policy.

In an ever-more-connected world I believe we cannot have a domestic policy and foreign policy which send out completely different messages. To do so leads to charges of hypocrisy, a sin which toxifies the process of policy-making. I was one of the few ministers in recent years to simultaneously hold both a domestic and foreign brief. I explored the challenges of one rule at home and another abroad in 2015 at the Global Strategy Forum lecture:

For a very long time, I have said that how we conduct ourselves overseas reflects on who we are domestically, and the way in which we deal with our domestic communities has both positive and negative consequences as to how we are viewed in the world. Quite uniquely, as a Foreign Office minister and a communities minister, every day I saw how that played out with practical consequences.11

Policy-making in the context of counter-terrorism has seen this ‘difference in approach’ operate at its worst and it’s an approach that has a direct impact on Britain’s relationship with her Muslims.

Let me go back to David Cameron’s Munich speech from 2011, which I explored in chapter 4, in which he set out a number of tests which form the basis of sifting the bad guys from the good guys, the acceptable Muslims from the unacceptable ones.

Do they believe in universal human rights – including for women and people of other faiths?

Do they believe in equality of all before the law?

Do they believe in democracy and the right of people to elect their own government?

Do they encourage integration or separation?

Cameron argued that if individuals and organizations fail these tests then ‘the presumption should be not to engage with organisations – so, no public money, no sharing of platforms with ministers at home’.

It’s these last two, quite innocuous words that set the tone for a policy that says one thing and does another, one approach at home and a different one overseas. An approach and a policy which I thought, before her US visit, the current prime minister would distance herself from.

I took the ‘Munich’ tests and stress-tested them against the company the government keeps.

Do they believe in universal human rights – including for women and people of other faiths? What about women not being allowed to leave the country without the permission of men (Iran), not being allowed to drive (Saudi Arabia) or having what they wear proscribed (France)? Our domestic policy would suggest these ‘views’ are not to be engaged with. And yet we do. Do they believe in democracy and the right of people to elect their own government? If that were so, people who came into power via military coups would be out, and all democratically elected governments would be in. And yet we have regularly engaged with ‘military regimes’ throughout history in Pakistan, and more recently in Egypt. Do they encourage integration or separation? A wall separating communities, as in Israel, could be a pretty good indication of a separatist nation. And a lack of recognition of a minority, such as the Rohingya in Burma, should signal a ‘no mates’ stance. And yet they don’t.

There are many more examples. I often raised them during my time at the Foreign Office, suggesting that we ‘blind test’ countries against our stated values and principles. Many a current foreign ally, friend and special relationship would fail such scrutiny.

British foreign policy makes increasing reference to ‘ethics’ and ‘values’: from New Labour’s ‘ethical foreign policy’ to the use of the term ‘values’ four times during the Coalition government’s Strategic Defence Review and a whopping thirty-one times in the Conservative government’s National Security Review in 2015.12

Labour’s ethical foreign policy was laid out by the late Robin Cook, a man for whom I had great respect, within days of taking office in 1997. Labour’s policy, Cook said, would have ‘an ethical dimension … with human rights at the heart’ and ‘reverse the Tory trend towards not so splendid isolation’.13

Thirteen years later, the formidable William Hague, former leader of the Conservative Party and foreign secretary from 2010 to 2014, gave his verdict:

the previous government fell into a chasm of their own making between rhetoric and action in large areas of foreign policy. Their tenure began, as one newspaper put it, with ‘a sounding of ethical trumpets’. It ended with allegations of British complicity in torture, an Inquiry into the Iraq War, questions about the conduct of our Intelligence Services, a foreign policy machinery-of-government that had been run into the ground, piecemeal sofa-style decision making in Downing Street, accusations of hypocrisy and double standards in respect of international law and the epic Ministerial mismanagement of the finances of the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence.¹⁴

And that phrase, ‘hypocrisy and double standards’, was one that I was hopeful would not be used for the Coalition government.

It was the phrase that seemed most apt as Wikileaks started to publish confidential conversations from across the world. In the interest of national security I condemn the disclosure of classified material. But what became apparent in the cases of Bradley, now Chelsea, Manning, the former US soldier convicted of leaking sensitive government documents to Wikileaks, and Edward Snowden, the former CIA employee who leaked classified documents to journalists, was not the compromise of national security, which, to quote a former US defence secretary, Robert Gates, was ‘fairly modest’ and hadn’t really compromised intelligence sources or methods, but the fact we’d been found out, all of us: leaders around the world caught red-handed saying the things they dare not say in public. Showing our respective citizens that we neither say what we believe nor do as we say.¹⁵ Our main ally and friend the US has over time simply become complacent over its inconsistent approach, and allegations of hypocrisy are simply brushed away. This has occurred not only in the ‘war on terror’, where the great defender of human rights shelves them when it comes to its own conduct on security; not only in its refusal, like Sudan and Israel, to ratify the Rome Statute, which has now been signed by 139 states, including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, which created the International Criminal Court in 2002 to try perpetrators of war crimes and genocide, especially when national courts are unable or unwilling to do so; but also on issues such as nuclear non-proliferation, where the US picks and chooses who can and who cannot have nuclear weapons, turning a blind eye to those who illegally develop nuclear if they are friends whilst insisting others endorse the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Indeed Trump seeks to make a virtue of such hypocrisy.

Over the last decade many a discussion with foreign ministers of other nations confirmed to me that Britain was viewed very differently from the US. We are still in many countries, thankfully, viewed as measured, informed and genuinely committed to human rights, but this view is by no means universal. We must try to maintain this reputation, as without it what does Brand Britain mean? Does it mean anything if it doesn’t include a deep-rooted commitment to human rights and the rule of law?

Since 2003 successive British governments have produced an annual Human Rights Report, and each year the minister for human rights is questioned on it by the Foreign Affairs Select Committee. In government, I felt this was an occasion to showcase our stated values and how we act upon them. I quickly realized that it was seen within the FCO as an ordeal to survive. We went through the motions and hoped like mad we wouldn’t get found out. So I laid out some ground rules. If we were going to ‘do human rights’, we were going to do them properly or not at all. Human rights are an intrinsic part of my previous life as a lawyer and an essential part of my faith. For me they are about who we are.

Unfortunately, the Humans Rights department at the FCO seems to me to be a parking lot for mediocrity. It is low-level, low-priority, low-impact work. The most honest public acknowledgement of this was in 2015 from the top civil servant at the FCO, Sir Simon McDonald, at the Foreign Affairs Select Committee when he said that human rights are no longer ‘a top priority’ and that ‘prosperity was further up the list’.16

It’s an admission which pains me, but I welcome it because of its honesty. It says what we believe, it does what we say. If we believe in human rights we should say so and we should do so. If we don’t, which both my experience and the direction of travel suggest, then we should stop talking about them. Today, sadly, the talk of values and human rights in foreign policy-making is at best a fig leaf, at worst hypocrisy.

In the UK human rights is a dish served as a main meal at a very public banquet to our enemies. We shove it down their throat, force-feed them our values and make them sick by going on about their shortcomings. But when our friends come for tea we are happy to conveniently leave human rights in the back of the larder. To our foes we do human rights as public, loud and robust lectures alongside a stick of sanctions, bans and walkouts. To our friends it’s an aside at the end of a conversation on issues that really matter simply so we can record it as ‘done’, or a broad discussion on reform without any specific reference to the specific violations, or outsourced to a low-level committee of officials, as we do with China.17 Or, worse still, we make those awful diplomatic-speak statements that everyone knows mean nothing, like ‘nothing is off the table in discussions’, as we did during the state visits of President Xi Jinping of China and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India in 2015.¹⁸ We were warned by the Chinese that the president would not respond well if reprimanded on human rights during his visit. And there was no evidence that the appalling behaviour of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the RSS, a right-wing paramilitary Hindu nationalist organization, was raised with Prime Minister Modi.¹⁹

Or we say it’s a discussion for another time, as the issue is too difficult at present, such as blasphemy with the Pakistanis, despite Brits being arrested under these non-Islamic, man-made British-inspired laws. Or we simply brush it under the carpet in the name of cultural sensitivity as we do with women’s rights in Saudi Arabia. Or we compartmentalize human rights abuses and consider them irrelevant as we sign arms deals, selling as we have done in recent years record numbers to countries we list in our government’s own annual human rights report as having questionable human rights records.²⁰

In 2015 more than £3 billion worth of bombs, missiles, grenades and other weaponry made in Britain was exported to twenty-one of the Foreign Office’s thirty ‘human rights priority countries’ – those identified by our own government as being where ‘the worst, or greatest number of, human rights violations take place’.²¹

As minister for human rights between 2012 and 2014, I chaired a number of the FCO advisory groups on specific human rights, groups which harnessed the expertise of academics, lawyers, NGOs and others to inform our work on Human Rights. We had a learned and prestigious FCO advisory group on the death penalty and they did some tremendous work, often only to be let down by us politicians making our decisions based on whom we considered allies and enemies rather than on the issue. We talked a great talk on the death penalty, highlighting the numbers Iran hangs, whilst ensuring it was not an issue in our ‘special relationship’ with the US.

And then there is torture, that abhorrent practice which is against our law, against our numerous international commitments given through the numerous conventions we have signed and, of course, against our stated values. The prohibition on torture is a bedrock principle of international human rights law. It is absolute and allows for no exceptional circumstances – not war, not terrorism, not political instability or any other public emergency. And British law lays upon us a legal obligation to prosecute acts of torture, regardless of the place of commission, the nationality of the perpetrator or the nationality of the victim.

Our obligations are uncompromising and clear in an area where our conduct has certainly not been so. Take the recent, well-documented cases of British Pakistanis tortured by Pakistan with allegations of British complicity,22 or the encyclopedia of British torture that is Ian Cobain’s Cruel Britannia, a book described by the Reverend Nicholas Mercer (formerly Lieutenant-Colonel Nicholas Mercer) as ‘a hand grenade in the heart of the establishment’.²³ Cobain’s book charts the allegations of British torture from the Second World War through the colonial campaigns in Aden (now modern-day Yemen), Cyprus and the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya, for which I apologized in the House of Lords during my time as minister,²⁴ to our conduct in Northern Ireland, until we were slapped down by the European Court of Human Rights, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and our present-day war on terror²⁵ – constant reminders where we failed to live by our ‘values’.

And then there’s rendition, which in layman’s terms is the kidnap, false imprisonment and the all-expenses-paid world tour of exotic torture destinations, something that led to a breakdown of relationship between our two spy agencies, MI5 and MI6. My colleague Andrew Tyrie, chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Committee on Extraordinary Rendition, has tirelessly tried to get to the bottom of rendition, but it still festers as a sore which successive governments fail to treat.²⁶

It’s against this backdrop that we announced once again in the 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review: ‘our core British values. Democracy, the rule of law, open, accountable governments and institutions, human rights, freedom of speech, property rights and equality of opportunity, including the empowerment of women and girls.’27

Democracy is an often cited core value. And yet we struggle with democracy sometimes, especially if it produces a result we neither envisaged nor supported. But let’s take credit where credit is due. Unlike the US, who too talk a good game on democracy, we, in July 2014, as the Egyptian military overthrew an elected government, at least expressed discomfort with this assault on democracy. Although we refused to call a coup a coup, we did ostracize the Egyptians for a few months to show our displeasure at their rounding-up and imprisoning of political opponents, activists and journalists, including former BBC journalist Peter Greste. The UK behaved like the awkward boyfriend as we looked down at our toes, not quite sure whether we had broken up with the last partner and not quite sure whether we were ready to date the new one, and this behaviour was not necessarily a bad thing, because in that shuffling of our feet in a way that other countries did not we showed that we were genuinely having a ‘thoughtful moment’ about what we felt was the right approach. Our dilemma of a commitment to democracy on the one hand and an eye on future interests on the other was clearly being played out in the public domain. We came to the President Sisi period slowly and in some ways reluctantly, and in the long run this had a positive impact on our reputation as democrats and in our relationship with our own domestic communities. We were trying to say what we believed.

In the summer of 2014 the Gaza incursion was a particular flashpoint in conflicted and confused foreign-policy-making.

In a war that resulted in 2,139 dead and 11,000 injured Palestinians and the death of 6 Israeli civilians and 64 Israeli soldiers. Britain’s role in supplying arms into that conflict was put under the spotlight with a legal challenge on government policy mounted by the Campaign Against Arms Trade.²⁸ As concerns were raised about the proportionality of action by the Israeli government and the commitment of potential war crimes, the UK government was eventually forced into taking steps to revoke some licences as a ‘precautionary measure’, a move which was reversed within the year, with the Conservatives having won an election and those pesky Liberal Democrats with their obsession with human rights firmly out of the way.²⁹

But why is this all relevant? Why does our approach to foreign policy matter in the tale of Muslim Britain? Because time and time again, in terrorist videos, suicide notes and the words of the terrorists themselves, our approach to foreign policy is cited as a reason for the violence. Academic sources and indeed even government acknowledge it as a driver of radicalization.30 So it is right to examine what policy-makers are doing or perceived to be doing that triggers this accusation.

I do not believe that any individual community, faith or organization should determine British foreign policy. I believe that Britain should determine its foreign policy in accordance with our stated principles and values. And yet time and time again we do not appear to be doing so.

In government one of the most anomalous, inexplicable and morally indefensible positions I had to take related to the 2014 Gaza conflict. Human rights positions I had advocated for as an activist, lawyer and politician were being dismissed with no rational ‘national interest’ reason. At that time, I had, amongst other ministerial roles, responsibility for the United Nations, including the Human Rights Council in Geneva, the International Criminal Court and the human rights brief. I was also the government’s spokesman on foreign affairs in the House of Lords. I was thus having to answer questions sometimes daily on the unfolding crisis in Gaza.

A cabinet reshuffle had taken place during the Gaza conflict. The Foreign Office had lost the visionary William Hague and gained the perfectly competent accountant Phillip Hammond. Hague had led the campaign on gender equality and fought the scourge of sexual violence in conflict. In my first conversation with Hammond as foreign secretary, he was dismissive of the department’s human rights work, picking out the anti-death-penalty work for specific disdain. He appeared to see our worldwide support for the campaign against capital punishment as a distracting fringe issue. This set the tone for all future discussions. The last time we spoke was on the morning of 4 August 2014, the day of my resignation. In a discussion on rebuilding Gaza after the conflict the ifs, buts and caveats being laid out by Phillip Hammond were so extensive that it was obvious there was no political will on our part to make it happen, and that has since been the case.³¹

I did not resign because of what the Israelis were doing to the Palestinians, I resigned because of my government’s reaction, or more accurately put inaction, to it.

The world is full of both dictators and elected leaders, brutal regimes and appalling armies who persecute their own citizens; Israel is not an exception. From Afghanistan to Iraq, Libya to Syria, Sudan to Sri Lanka, we have taken a stand against leaders and regimes that brutalize their own populations. We have employed condemnation, high-profile visits to support the persecuted, as David Cameron rightly did with the Tamils in Sri Lanka, support for independence movements, as we did in South Sudan, where we continue to play a key role as part of the troika alongside the US and Norway, ostracism, as in the case of Pakistan and its exclusion from the Commonwealth during military coups, sanctions, such as those that lasted over a decade in Iran, invasion and war, as in Afghanistan, regime change, as in Libya, and we keep repeating in relation to Syria: ‘Assad must go, he is part of the problem not the solution.’ We generally seem, at the very least, to find some words with which to show our displeasure, and yet during Gaza we couldn’t even find the words to condemn the daily massacre of civilians, starting each government statement with the robust defence of Israel’s right to defend itself.

I agree, Israel, like any other sovereign state, has a right to defend itself. But as a member of the international community it has an obligation to do so within the parameters of humanitarian and international laws and norms.

During the crisis a resolution was presented to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva which condemned and called for a halt to the violence on both sides and asked for the establishment of a process of accountability at the end of the war for any war crimes committed by either side. It was a resolution which was in line with our values of accountability, no impunity for war crimes and support for international justice. We are a founder member of the International Criminal Court and one of its biggest funders, and believe in international organizations such as the UN. And yet we abstained on the motion.32

The resolution did pass, and a year later a UN report found credible the allegations of war crimes committed in 2014 by both Israel and Palestinian armed groups. It reported that the ‘devastation and human suffering in Gaza was unprecedented and will impact generations to come’. Israel neither responded to repeated requests for information nor allowed access to Israel and the Occupied Territories, but the commission did conduct over 280 face-to-face interviews via Skype and VTC and considered 500 written submissions, concluding that ‘impunity prevails across the board for violations allegedly committed by Israeli forces both in Gaza and the West Bank’ and arguing that ‘Israel must break with its lamentable track record in holding wrongdoers to account’. The report was balanced in its findings, saying ‘accountability on the Palestinian side is also woefully inadequate’.

We, in abstaining, sent out the message we didn’t want to support accountability. Our argument went something like this: we know it’s wrong, and the loss of civilian life is tragic, but we have to be seen to hold the line and show support for Israel to bank goodwill for another day when we will use the influence gained to get Israel to shift its position on issues like settlements. On one level this appears to be a good argument, sensible diplomacy. But I have yet to witness it happening.33

For me it felt like yet another moral cop-out. It was not a solution.

At the time of my resignation I was accused by a senior colleague of not being a team player. I dispute that. I accept I stopped playing for the team, but that’s because the team stopped playing for Britain. We should be at all times team GB, not team Israel, nor for that matter team Saudi, Pakistan, India or anywhere else in the world. Team GB’s policy should be made in Britain, and not at the behest of any country, community or religion; no tail should wag Bulldog Britain.

A united sense of purpose for our country, a national interest which is rooted in our stated values and a government acting in line with those values, I believe, will lead to a stronger Britain. Citizens are more likely to feel they belong when those in power act in the interests of the country and not at the behest of foreign powers.

And the Gaza ‘experience’ is not an exception. The ‘Muslim Brotherhood’ review of 2014 is another foreign policy faux pas that does not satisfy that test. The Muslim Brotherhood (MB), also known as the Ikhwan al-Muslimeen, is an international political, religious and social movement. It started as a pan-Islamic movement in Egypt in 1928 as a reaction to secularization and westernization, which they saw as the root of all contemporary problems of Arab and Muslim societies, and felt that Arab nationalism was not the answer. There are many versions of the group in public life: from charitable outfits that provide life-saving healthcare, water, sanitation and education to legitimate political parties that performed strongly in elections in Tunisia (2011), Morocco (2011 and 2016), Eygpt (2012), Libya (2012), Iraq (2014) and Jordan (2016), to being considered a terrorist organizations since 2015 by Syria, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. They held the presidency in Egypt between 2012 and 2014, and before President Morsi was overthrown in a coup we were midway through organizing a state visit for him, including a Ramadan reception.

The Muslim world is divided on the Muslim Brotherhood. Qatar and Turkey, both strong UK allies, are seen as sympathizers, and the UAE and Saudi Arabia, again both strong UK allies, officially declare them terrorists. We define them as Islamists who follow the ideology of ‘Islamism’, which we argue is the basis for terrorism, an assertion I challenged in chapter 4. The Foreign Affairs Select Committee concluded: ‘The vast majority of political Islamists are involved in no violence whatsoever … and because of their broader status as a firewall against extremism, political Islamists have suffered criticism and attack from ISIL.’³⁴

The MB and its various offshoots worldwide are politically challenging to the status quo. Sometimes they are the only form of welfare provision locally. Monarchies in the Middle East are fearful of them. And, yes, there have been cases where they have ‘inspired individuals to commit violent acts’.³⁵

It’s entirely right for the UK to review their activities in the UK and assess whether they pose a threat to us, but the review should have been our review, not, as was subsequently reported, a review at the behest of the UAE, a foreign government.³⁶ We should be team GB, not team UAE.

The report found that the MB ‘had not been linked to terrorist related activity both in and against the UK’, and yet the report was used as a means to discredit a number of British Muslim charities and organizations operating legally in the UK – again, a foreign policy position taken by the UK government, not to benefit other Brits but foreign states, having a negative impact on the relationship between Britain and its Muslims.

UK governments need to stop becoming pawns in other people’s wars. Let’s not be used to settle their scores, let’s stop outsourcing our foreign policy to foreign nations. Let’s make sure British foreign policy is made in Britain for Britain.³⁷

The UK has much to be proud of, and it would have even more if we simply put into action what we say are our values. But the more we simply say and not actually follow, the more we stand accused of hypocrisy. The more we shout values and not play by the rules we have set, the more we lose our moral standing, our reputation and our influence.

I understand that we have to further our commercial interests. I support the FCO as it champions Brand Britain, as an ever-roving trade ambassador, but surely we must find ways to do both: champion interests and remain true to our stated values. If we truly are values-based, let’s hold both friend and foe accountable, measured against the same human rights to the same standards. To do otherwise is both damaging our reputation and in the current war on terror merely feeding the problem. Or, if we are simply a market place and a nation of traders and no more, if we have genuinely decided to draw our self-interest this narrowly, then let’s stop preaching principles. Laissez-faire is better than hypocrisy.

One approach at home and another overseas is not new. Evelyn Baring, the 1st Earl of Cromer, was a British diplomat in Egypt. He preached for the liberation of Muslim women, fought for them to be freed from the clutches of the backward practices of the veil and segregation and yet at home argued against granting women the vote.38 Today such behaviour has consequences, and in Britain this approach to policy-making is having a disproportionate impact on our relation with ‘our Muslims’.

Domestically, for example, we will not engage with Salafi-, Deobandi- and Wahhabi-inspired groups, mosques or organizations. These theologies are seen as the problem, supporters of the violent and the so-called ‘non-violent’ extremism the government is trying to tackle. And yet internationally we engage with all these groups, paying special homage to the home of Wahhabi Islam, Saudi Arabia. The message government sends to young disengaged British Muslims in, say, Birmingham who might identify as Salafi or Wahhabi is this: your views are not acceptable within government circles, and we will not engage with you, as you are the ‘problem’, but we have no issue as your elected government about showing affection and reverence for the home and heart of Wahhabism, our allies, our friends, Saudi Muslims. When Saudi Muslims become more important to the British government than British Muslims, it’s time to rethink policy-making.

This domestic non-engagement strategy and its political dimension has resulted in a gulf between our domestic approach and our foreign policy approach. We regularly display our credentials as an open and transparent government; indeed we have branded the notion, developed expertise in this area and sell it to others around the world.³⁹ We regularly take the belated moral high ground on paedophilia and celebrity and establishment sex scandal cover-ups from the 1980s and ’90s, on policing at Hillsborough, at miners’ picket lines and policy decisions in Northern Ireland, but taking the moral high ground in hindsight is easy. If we genuinely regret these mistakes then let’s adopt principled policy-making for now, for the future. And that starts with challenging the sin of dishonesty in policy-making and policy-making rooted in myth.

So, and this is our fourth solution: we must make policy based on evidence and experts. The Brexit campaign was a lesson in post-truth politics, as was the presidential campaign adopted in the US by Donald Trump. Both were worryingly successful. We’ve entered a space in politics where truth and fact are irrelevant, evidence is not required to support a claim, and ‘experts’ are belittled as an unnecessary distraction.40

If politicians run destructive campaigns to win office, how can we possibly trust them to be constructive in office? It was a trait allegedly attributed to Michael Gove by David Cameron when he said: ‘The thing that you’ve got to remember with Michael is that he is basically a bit of a Maoist – he believes that the world makes progress through a process of creative destruction!’⁴¹ It’s an approach that I witnessed in government on the policy around counter-terrorism.

As I discussed in chapter 3, policy-makers must set the current war on terror within the context of history, be open to solutions from the past, mindful of the mistakes of the past and acknowledge that we’ve all been here before on many occasions. Counter-terrorism policy should be rooted in an honest understanding of terrorism, its manifestations and how we’ve tackled it successfully before. I’m convinced that if we put the politics and the obsession with ideology to one side and base our policy on evidence, data and science, policy-making in this area would be both more rational and more effective.

It was a point raised once again in 2016 by parliamentarians on the Home Affairs Select Committee in their report Radicalisation: The Counter-narrative and Identifying the Tipping Point: ‘there is no evidence that shows a single path or one single event which draws a young person to the scourge of extremism’,⁴² a finding supported by academics, medics, intelligence services and the testimonies of terrorists, and yet government policy continues to insist it is ideology. This is a flawed position, as I argued in chapter 4, and one that I believe makes us less safe. This view was supported by the HASC: ‘government’s broad brush approach fails to take account of the complexities … that would be counterproductive and fuel the attraction of the extremist narrative rather than dampening it’.

Some FCO officials attempted to go back to policy-making rooted in evidence and reality in 2013 after the murder of Lee Rigby. They measured the accuracy of the ‘Islamist ideology’ theory against our foreign policy. The interpretation and definition fundamentally failed. We found, for example, states governed by strict interpretation of Sharia law with a harsh criminal penal code and restrictions on women and minorities such as Saudi Arabia which are not seen or defined as Islamist extremists by the UK, and on the other hand we have states such as Turkey, whom we consider to be inspired by Islamist ideology, but where Sharia punishments are not implemented through criminal law and women enjoy rights and liberties as elsewhere in Europe.

After the Rigby terrorist attack we set up the Extremism Task Force and had an opportunity to root our counter-terrorism policy in evidence and fact. But we failed to do so. Without assessing the ‘problem’, my colleagues were keen to move to solutions. We didn’t discuss the two terrorists, their profile, their history; we didn’t discuss or try to understand their road to radicalization or journey to violent jihadism. We didn’t even take on board their own reasons, the words they spoke after the attack, or the note Adebolajo handed over as an explanation. A starting point to understanding, not excusing, would have been examining the two terrorists. As I argued in chapter 3, the first step to fixing the problem is knowing the problem.

This attack had been the second terrorist incident in mainland UK after 7/7, and the response from policy-makers was an inward-looking government-centric conversation dominated by ideologies, no community engagement, no genuine exploration, no call for evidence, no fact-based decision-making, no moment to reflect and no assessment of what had and hadn’t worked in the past. It’s no wonder that in 2016 a poll found that 96 per cent of Brits think the policy is failing.⁴³

This issue is too serious to second-guess, and getting it wrong is having damaging ramifications for both our security and our relationship with British Muslims. It’s time to finally turn to the experts: ‘a cross section of academic institutions’ is recommended by the HASC.⁴⁴

Sadly, over the last decade or so, initially under Blair and latterly under Cameron too, much has been in the hands of the chumocracy: friends and friends of friends who have direct access to ministers and special advisers in No. 10 and the Home Office, interest groups, lobby groups and individuals pursuing their own agendas. I saw this in operation during my time in government, and sadly it still continues. It’s the ‘politics’ behind the policy-making, the game-playing that is putting Britain’s cohesive future at stake.

The politics of the domestic war on terror started over a decade ago, although it was 2008 when I first worriedly started to see the methodical sowing of seeds which in the end became a wisteria-like approach to counter-terrorism policy-making, slowly taking over and choking out alternative views. It resulted in a British Muslim community becoming ever more disengaged and marginalized and a blurring of lines between general policy-making and an exceptionalized approach to policy-making when it related to Muslims, something I explored in chapter 5.

It was present in both the right and left of politics, finding champions like Hazel Blears in Labour and Michael Gove and eventually David Cameron in the Tories. At the time of 7/7 it certainly hadn’t taken hold of the Tory Party.

The 7/7 bombings happened while Michael Howard was leader, and I had the opportunity to work closely with him. ‘Responsible’ and ‘measured’ are the two phrases that best describe Michael’s response. Within days of the bombings, Tony Blair called a meeting of the ‘great and the good’ in the Muslim community. Michael was invited as leader of the opposition, and he asked me to accompany him. Sadiq Khan described that meeting as Blair pushing the responsibility of the attacks on to Muslims.⁴⁵ His version has been disputed and questioned by Labour colleagues Khalid Mahmood, MP for Perry Bar, and Shahid Malik, former MP for Dewsbury, who recalls the meeting ending with ‘a unanimous agreement on the need for unity in the fight against terror and the crucial role for Muslims’.⁴⁶

Personally, I left with three distinct impressions. Blair’s consultation with the community was more show than substance; he needed to be seen to be doing something. Secondly, it was an absolving of responsibility, firmly pushing the issue into the community’s court. And thirdly, the community was torn and divided between individual British Muslim politicians, who saw this as a moment to make their mark, and the broader Muslim community attendees, who were keen to keep the root causes of extremism at the table. Michael Howard wanted a pragmatic and inclusive response, logical and non-ideological. Unlike Blair, Michael showed no religious zeal or any desire to link this to a broader international project. He saw it as a domestic issue which needed a proportionate domestic response, and I firmly got the impression that he did not and would not play politics with the issue.

Immediately after this Downing Street meeting, a task force was announced, set up and the first meeting called. I was at the initial meeting, at which a series of sub-groups were established. The groups reported back in October 2005. The Preventing Extremism Together report made over sixty recommendations, covering everything from appropriate language to grassroots counter-terrorism work, women’s involvement, youth activism, online deradicalization material and better and more confident partnerships with the police.47

Less than six were fully implemented by the Labour government. The Muslim Women’s Advisory Group, the Muslim Youth Group and the Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board (MINAB) were the most high-profile. Of these three, the first two were dismantled by the Coalition government in 2010, whilst the third limps on but is never engaged with by government.

It was the Labour government’s response to terrorism, and although not perfect it was a very good start. And yet despite a further five years in government it simply wasn’t implemented. It was during this time that the rift between the ideologues like Hazel Blears and the pragmatists like John Denham apparently started to play out.

Two years later came the first serious piece of policy thinking by the Conservative Party in the area of foreign policy, counter-terrorism and extremism in a paper, which was authored by Baroness Neville-Jones just months after both she and I were appointed to the House of Lords.⁴⁸ The paper, An Unquiet World, from 2007, appears informed and thoughtful. A focus on balancing liberties with security, a critique of ‘contaminated … anti-terror legislation’, a focus on prosecutions through the normal legal system rather than ‘extra legal measures such as control orders’, a focus on violent extremism, on building resilience and strong societies and a call for an inclusive British identity were all in the report. But in the specific area of counter-terrorism and Muslims it simply incorporated an earlier policy paper, Uniting the Country, published earlier in 2007, and a paper that started the process of discrediting many Muslim organizations and introducing the concept of ‘ideology’.

Uniting the Country was heavily influenced by the thinking at that time of right-wing thinktank Policy Exchange. Policy Exchange was set up in 2002 by Nick Boles, the MP for Grantham and Stamford, who destroyed early attempts to set up an APPG against Islamophobia, Michael Gove and Francis, now Lord, Maude. It has been described as David Cameron’s ‘favourite thinktank’49 and since its inception has had a close, indeed often indivisible, working relationship with the Conservative Party.⁵⁰

In October 2007 Policy Exchange produced a report, The Hijacking of British Islam, which claimed to uncover ‘extremist literature’ being promoted in mosques and other Muslim institutions. By way of evidence it produced receipts of purchases of this ‘extremist literature’ from various mosques and institutions. Two months later, BBC Newsnight reported on the findings, alleging that amongst other concerns it appeared that the receipts were in fact forged, and the extremist literature could not have been bought from some of the mosques the Policy Exchange report cited. There followed a war of words, allegations and counter-allegations, which resulted in a partial retraction of the story in The Times, which had run the report on their front page, and the Guardian saying, ‘Cameron must rein in these neo-con attack dogs’.⁵¹

This Policy Exchange episode is not a one-off. The thinktank has form in this area: earlier in 2007, the methodology and reliability of another heavily publicized report on Muslim separatism came under heavyweight academic attack. But it was still used by David Cameron to rubbish multiculturalism.⁵²

There were questions about its financial sources, described by Transparify as ‘highly opaque’, its ideological links and the roll call of its employees and researchers, which include Dean Godson and Andrew Gilligan, and the platform they provided for Douglas Murray, a man who has been heavily criticized for his controversial views on Islam.⁵³

Policy Exchange shaped that first intervention by the Conservative Party. On policy-making towards British Muslims it was then and is now an axis of influence that is part of the problem.

Our report, Uniting the Country, was criticized by a number of British Muslim organizations,⁵⁴ possibly because so many of them were criticized in it. Neither the evidence nor analysis was robust but despite this I felt that it had some good recommendations, including its very first recommendation that ‘Government should combat the incorrect and damaging popular misconception, revealed in public opinion polls, that Islam as a religion per se is a threat to democracy’ and ‘make clear its intention to protect the right of Muslims to freedom of worship on the same basis as other religions’.⁵⁵ A decade on, I’ve yet to see the Conservative party fully embrace this first recommendation.

In hindsight the most worrying aspect of this report has been its selective implementation. The ‘anti-Muslim’ bits took centre stage in a future Conservative government and have become the basis of today’s counter-terrorism policy whilst the more ‘pro-Muslim’ bits have simply been shelved. Had we simply implemented all its recommendations, both the ones acceptable and those unacceptable to British Muslims, then counter-terrorism and integration policy would be in a better place than it is now.

Not addressing this destructive direction of travel early on in 2007–8 is one of my failings. Unfortunately, the alternative view was well resourced by Policy Exchange, while I relied on a young and talented campaigner, Naweed Khan, who subsequently became my SpAd in government, and Eric Ollerenshaw, a party stalwart with decades of experience but who at that time was fighting a marginal seat in Lancaster.

A senior civil servant working in counter-terrorism policy whom I turned to for advice assured me that much of the toxic thinking would be tempered by the ‘bureaucracy if [we] ever formed a government’.

In this policy area I was relieved that in 2010 the country delivered a Coalition government, where liberal thinking might prevail over an increasingly authoritarian streak.

So fifthly, we need to curtail the axis of influence in government. The many scandals involving the influence exercised by lobbyists, party donors, trade unions and big business have marred the reputation of politics and successive governments over the last two decades.56 Private calls on private numbers, communication via text rather than formal write-round, social gatherings used to influence policy, friendships formed in donors’ groups which led to visits to Chequers, private meetings in the flat above No. 11 Downing Street⁵⁷ – all these forums for policy to be influenced outside the proper channels must be replaced by civil-servant-led, academic-informed, evidence-based papers which inform politicians to make judgements. It’s time for calls to ministers and SpAds, calls to No. 10 and ‘private conversations’ to be logged. It’s time for transparency and public oversight of the axis of influence.

And that brings me to the sixth sin – policy-making not for the greater good but for the greater electoral result, the political analysis of who we feel will and will not vote for us and the slanting of policy-making accordingly. One such example was our ‘triple lock’ on pensions, which strengthened Tory support from the grey vote but didn’t necessarily make good economic sense, a point made recently by my Conservative colleague Ros Altmann.58

This approach in counter-terrorism has had devastating impact on the tale of Muslim Britain. In 2012 The Conservative Party decided that Muslims were unlikely to vote for them, and thus ‘the Muslims’ didn’t matter. At the time polling by Lord Ashcroft appeared to support this, but my experience and that of a number of parliamentary colleagues such as Andrew Stephenson in Pendle showed otherwise. The party decided to cement the Jewish vote and court the Hindu vote and, as Lynton Crosby colourfully put it, stop worrying about the ‘fucking Muslims’.⁵⁹

Campaign meetings increasingly focused on the ‘Hindu vote’, as polling showed us it was the ‘softer’ one to target. This thinking started to translate into divide-and-rule politics and dog-whistle messaging, something we saw play out in its worst form during the 2016 London mayoral election campaign.⁶⁰

Policy-making for all things ‘Muslim’ revolved around counter-terrorism and extremism. Every engagement with Muslim communities from religious festivals to community events became an opportunity to discuss extremism, whereas other communities were engaged on business, entrepreneurship and other positive messages. The battle to engage the Muslim community on ‘normal’ issues or indeed any issue other than terrorism became a daily grind.

Language in speeches at Jewish and Hindu events was constantly referencing the ‘others’, the war on terror, praising our ‘electorally relevant’ communities and dismissing the others.⁶¹

The space for Muslims within the broader Conservative family too began to close. Conservative Home, a website run by the former chief of staff of Iain Duncan Smith, went as far as publishing a ten-point list that all Conservative political candidates of the Muslim faith should satisfy before they were considered sound.⁶² And even Conservative Party conferences increasingly became a no-go zone for British Muslim groups, with many being turned away, not allowed to exhibit and refused permission to hold fringe meetings.⁶³

This unwelcome approach alongside a disturbing policy agenda that exceptionalized ‘Muslims’ left many, including members of the Conservative Party, feeling that the party was not the one for them. On the one hand we raged against the politically correct brigade and especially ‘the Muslims, whom we felt wanted exceptional treatment, and on the other hand we exceptionalized them, sending out the message to British Muslims that they didn’t matter to the Conservatives and increasingly didn’t measure up to our ‘British values’: they didn’t belong.

This naked political aspect of policy-making and its impact on Britain’s minority communities isn’t something new – the exploitation of the politics of race and minorities runs through all political parties – but sadly my party, the Conservatives, seems to have the worst history. ‘The Muslims’ may be the latest on the receiving end of this hostility, but, as I discussed in chapter 2, they are simply in a long list of ‘others’. Oddly, despite our history, the approach towards ‘the Muslims’ started well under Cameron’s leadership, and we have much to be proud of from those early years. Appendix 3 sets out some history and key moments in that journey.

But over time a combination of policy-making in the area of counter-terrorism and a Conservative Party uninterested in ‘Muslim voters’ has played a large part in how the Conservative Party is now viewed by British Muslims. It’s shaped the tale of Muslim Britain.

I’ve often said to British Muslim communities who feel under attack by the government and feel there is a grand plan against them that, although there are and have been individuals in government with a deeply disturbing political ideology which is anti-Muslim, most politicians from all parties are well-intentioned. Despite the odd few who have over a period of around a decade engaged in a well-orchestrated but destructive policy agenda, much of what we see is either cock-up, complacency or, most often, politics and self-interest. Another time, another place, it could be, and indeed has been, another community.

Politics is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as ‘the activities associated with the governance of a country or area, especially the debate between parties having power’. Politicians are defined as people professionally involved in politics. An alternative definition suggested is ‘a person who acts in a manipulative and devious way’. I urge my fellow practitioners of politics to focus on the former, not the latter – the professionalism not the manipulation – to use their status as policy-makers to create ease not angst, to unite not divide, and to find solutions not simply shout. It’s time to take the politics out of policy-making on counter-terrorism; we owe it to the security of our nation.

And this means genuinely re-engaging our Muslims both politically and in government. Let’s recognize the many hands within British Muslims that are extended in friendship, individuals keen to help, eager to play their part, more mature than before and accepting of their unique role in the challenges facing Britain, but also feeling vulnerable and isolated, battling the daily Islamophobic abuse and attacks that have sadly become all too common. As The Economist described them, they are ‘pious, loyal and unhappy’.64 And let’s do so before it’s too late. And let’s do so sincerely and not as part of another counter-terrorism response.

In 2015, after the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack in Paris, the government in a clumsy and mistimed attempt tried to reach out to Muslims. It failed miserably. A well-intentioned letter from the then secretary of state Eric Pickles backfired. I was not surprised: ‘there was a trust deficit, a questioning of motive to a letter sent with the best of intentions. For too many, the hand of friendship felt like an admonitory finger that was once again pointing at Britain’s Muslims.’⁶⁵ A further half-hearted attempt was made in October 2015 called the Community Engagement Forum. This meeting was hastily arranged, badly managed and not reflective of a broad range of British Muslim opinions, but at least it was finally an acknowledgement that the policy of disengagement had failed and government once again needed to start to engage British Muslims. The status of this forum is now unclear. It is uncertain whether the initial attendees were permanent members or one-off attendees. A subsequent meeting involved women only and was once again chaotic, with one attendee recounting to me that she ‘was invited at short notice to a meeting with no agenda, no format, no clarity of purpose, no outcomes or follow-up’.

It’s time for government to put in place a formal process of engagement. We have a blueprint for it: heads of all major Jewish community groups have an annual meeting with the prime minister. I have had the privilege of attending alongside David Cameron. The meeting was hosted in the cabinet room at No. 10 Downing Street. I’ve argued for a long time that all prime ministers should hold a similar meeting with other major faith communities. This would be a start.

At the time of writing the new Theresa May government has yet to make any major domestic intervention on ‘the Muslim issue’. May’s speech at the Republican conference in Philadelphia and subsequent press conference do not bode well.

This ‘pause’ in counter-terrorism policy-making was much needed after the Cameron years. So the seventh solution is to take stock, assess what has worked and what has not; to call time on policy failures and be brave enough to try another way; and to implement both the menu of solutions that we already have statutes on our books for before we call for more legislation.

And this starts with calling time on Prevent in its current form. The Prevent strand of the CONTEST strategy, which started as a policy ‘for hearts and minds’ and is widely now seen as a ‘securitization’ of a community, ‘an array of mechanisms for the disciplining of Muslim subjects’,66 must stop. Let’s start by having a thorough and transparent review, as recommended by David Anderson, QC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation. Let’s acknowledge that Prevent as a brand is ‘toxic’ and at the very least needs to be reworked and reworded.⁶⁷

The Coalition government tried to heed the advice of the parliamentary inquiry into Prevent by separating community cohesion from the hard-edged disciplinary aspect of Prevent, but in practice not much has changed. We have a well-resourced Home Office practising Prevent and a severely under-resourced Department for Communities playing at cohesion. Prevent, from the so-called science that underpins it,⁶⁸ to its hit-and-miss approach, to how it’s interpreted and implemented locally, to the complete lack of transparency on where and how the funding is spent, is irreparable.

It’s time for ‘Promote’, a concept I discussed in chapter 4. The work of Promote is too important to be an odd add-on in the Department for Local Government, where too often it has become the sacrificial lamb offered to the god of austerity. Promote needs its own space, with its own experts and most importantly its own resources. The fallout of the EU referendum, the diversity of the country that we now are and the fracturing of the UK between the British nations, the north and the south of England, the city regions and the centre due to ever-increasing devolution means the need for unity has never been greater. These times need a new approach: it is time for a Department of National Identity and Integration (NII), a proposal we considered as a party in 2008–9 as we put together a programme for government. The work on identity and integration is as important as national security. The NII should be as necessary as the NSC (the National Security Council). The secretary of state should have the remit to work across the United Kingdom, something that the current Department for Communities cannot do. We are either serious about the unity of the United Kingdom and we should show we are or we are not and as such should stop talking about it. National resilience is an essential element in national security.

Let’s tackle inaction and implement the laws we already have rather than simply talking up an issue. Talking as opposed to implementing has been a feature of policy-making, which has had serious consequences for British Muslims and the security of Britain. The sorry sagas of Abu Hamza, Omar Bakri, Abu Qatada and Anjum Chowdry are but a few cases in point.

Abu Hamza, famously known as ‘The Hook’, arrived in the UK in 1979. We finally convicted him in 2012 and then extradited him to face trial in the US. This man poisoned young minds for twenty-three years and in the end he was convicted for, amongst other crimes, crimes under the Offences Against the Person Act, 1861, on evidence which he had publicly promoted.69 He now serves a life sentence in the US for terrorism-related offences. We could have taken him off our streets earlier – a view apparently held by Her Majesty too.⁷⁰

Omar Bakri arrived in the UK in 1986 and after building Hizb-ut-Tahrir and subsequently Al Muhajiroun, the source of many an extremist, he left the UK within weeks of the 7/7 attacks. The Home Office banned him from returning, saying his presence in Britain was ‘not conducive to the public good’. In nearly two decades, despite his praise for terrorists, terrorist acts and terrorism, he was neither arrested, nor charged, nor convicted. He is now in Lebanon serving a prison term for terrorism.

Abu Qatada arrived in the UK in 1993, and, despite being responsible for sermons that radicalized many a future terrorist and fatwas calling for violence, it took twenty years to finally deport him. His preaching at Finsbury Park mosque inspired many a young man to commit terrorist acts.⁷¹ He now lives in Lebanon.

The domestic, delusional, destructive force that is convicted extremist Anjum Choudry of Al Muhajiroun and Islam 4 UK fame was born here. The son of a market trader who failed his first year at university because of his preoccupation with drugs, drink and porn, he pronounced on live TV that I was not a Muslim because I didn’t ‘dress like one’ and believes that a Muslim takeover is possible.⁷² He is now behind bars. Most British Muslims have always viewed him as a dangerous, attention-seeking TV caricature of the Daily Mail’s idea of a Muslim. We loathe the amount of attention the media has given this man over the years, and after the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby I publicly challenged Channel 4’s obsession with using him for comment. He was a darling of the media, who helped build his profile and made him more relevant than he was in reality. He inspired many an associate who went on to commit terrorism. The media need to consider their responsibility in giving him the oxygen of publicity. The media’s constant billing of him as an example of British Muslim thought infuriated British Muslims, who neither saw him as a genuine, authentic or respected voice for British Islam nor supported his ‘vision’ of British Islam. The outpouring of joy from Muslims at his conviction was widespread.

There are numerous theories amongst British Muslims about Al Muhajiroun, its many manifestations and Chowdry, from the conspiratorial to the more believable: he is a terrorist honey trap, he has a ‘deal’ with the police about his ‘remit’, he is incredibly shrewd at staying within the limits of the law, and, as one police source suggested following Chowdry’s conviction, he was a useful intelligence tool.73

Al Muhajiroun and its various aliases have operated in the UK since the mid-1990s. Successive governments since 2006 have banned their various incarnations, but the individuals involved have largely remained at large to continue their destruction, such as the gang of men who ‘egged’ me in a confrontation in Luton in 2009.⁷⁴ They took issue with how I dressed and my decision to enter politics. And they are the same gang that for three decades has attacked Muslim British politicians who have called for political engagement.⁷⁵

British Muslims, including members of the Lords and Commons of the Muslim faith, have for two decades been calling for their removal from our streets, indeed from our country. And communities were pushing for a crackdown on them long before government got its act together.⁷⁶

Hate preachers on our streets, the pop-up mosques of the 1990s and a gang of robed agitators caused unease between communities. They preached hatred in the name of Islam. Hamza, Bakri and Qatada were all foreigners, and yet for years we allowed them to poison young minds on the streets of London and create a broader movement for violence. We allowed them to shape British Islam.

And it seems ironic that the very community who suffered at the hands of these preachers, who lost its kids to terrorism because of these groups and who felt let down by the authorities who didn’t confront these gangs, is today seen as a suspect community.

Policy-makers need to take responsibility for the mistakes of the past and act more quickly in apprehending and convicting those who sow division. The inability to arrest, charge and convict the hate preachers, some of whom still roam our streets and have become rent-a-quotes for the media while in the meantime government stretches ever deeper into ordinary British Muslim lives through an ever-increasing demand for legislation and surveillance powers, is not just bad policy-making, it’s also naive and perilous. It can feel as though shaking the whole tree and losing good fruit through our ever-intrusive counter-terrorism policy we deem better than simply picking off the rotten apples that are rotten for all to see.

In policy-making let’s implement the plethora of recommendations which successive governments have detailed as solutions in policy papers and simply never used. The vast majority of the recommendations in the Preventing Extremism Together Working Group’s report in 2005 still hold true today, including recommendations on opportunities for young British Muslims to be leaders and active citizens and to instil a more faithful reflection of Islam and its civilization across the entire education system, including the National Curriculum, further education, higher education and lifelong learning.

It’s a document I returned to after the Lee Rigby terrorist attack in 2013. We could at that point have simply looked at the response to 7/7, where there had been extensive community engagement, numerous recommendations, defined streams of work and expert assistance in the form of advisory groups, and actioned the recommendations which were published just over a decade ago and never fully implemented by Labour. But we didn’t, instead setting up yet another task force, the ETF, extending the definition of the ‘extremist’, extending the flawed Prevent programme and drawing battle lines on the vague concept of ‘British values’.

The practical solutions it did propose, such as communications support for groups that wanted to combat terrorism online, to legal and practical help for mosques at risk of extremist takeovers, to support for projects that highlight the shared British and Muslim history, were left to languish as civil servants and ministers failed to agree funding.77 Each time solutions were offered but rarely implemented and certainly never supported long-term. And like the recommendations of the post-7/7 taskforce, the Conservative Party’s policy papers from 2007 to the ETF, recommendations remained just that: recommendations.

In a policy area as serious as international and domestic security we can’t afford to simply convince the public we are ‘dealing’ with the challenge when in reality through our policy positions and lack of implementation we simply are not. If we are serious about the fight against terror let’s start by fully implementing our own damn recommendations over the last twelve years, which continue to gather dust as government policy papers.

Let’s stop talking about forced marriages and fund genuine support for victims of this crime. Let’s stop talking about FGM and start prosecuting perpetrators. Let’s stop talking about Sharia councils and change the law to give Muslim marriages equal status and thus Muslim women equal access to the civil courts. Let’s be brave enough to have that honest conversation with British Muslims. Let’s work with them to get their house in order on civil marriage registrations. Let’s give them a grace period, say three years, to implement the simultaneous religious and civil marriage ceremony, after which let’s have the confidence to make it compulsory. Let’s give civil courts the power to instruct a panel of approved scholars to grant women a religious divorce when an estranged husband is refusing to do so. These proposals have sat in ‘policy papers’ in government for over five years, and yet politicians simply announce another policy review. Let’s stop talking it all up and get on with fixing the problem. Because, as history has taught us, politicians talking up matters does not resolve issues it simply greenlights bigots.78

Politicians are usually terrible historians. We have a great propensity to make the same mistakes over and over again. We find ourselves faced with political challenges faced by our political predecessors and sadly find ourselves making the same mistakes that they did.

As I outlined in chapter 2, we have a long history of making bad policy, and the right of politics seems to have particular form for getting it wrong when it comes to some of the most marginalized in society.

We’ve discriminated against communities in the past; it was morally wrong and we should learn from that. We’ve pitted community against community in the past; it backfired, we should learn from that. And we’ve marginalized whole communities in the name of fighting terrorism; it hindered, not helped, and we should learn from that. It’s time to do things differently It’s time to rethink the way we do foreign policy. It’s time to say what we believe and do what we say.

It’s time to make policy based on evidence and informed by experts, not influencers with personal agendas. It’s time to have an honest fact-based discussion on the science of radicalization. It’s time to use language which resolves challenges rather than riles communities. It’s time to stop feeding the media monster which has become a large part of the problem. It’s time to end the policy of disengagement, to call time on Prevent, to promote Promote.

Most politicians are on a journey, it’s rare to see politicians take the same position decades after they first entered politics. Experiences and events shape us like they do everyone else. Regular moments of self-awareness are an essential part of good decision-making.

I’m not advocating midday yoga sessions or the contemplation suite or tranquility room created by the last Labour government in DCLG.79 I’m suggesting a self-imposed filter which asks whether what we do as policy-makers is fixing or furthering the problem. Is our approach nurturing or destroying the journey of Islam in Britain? How will a generation of policy-makers be remembered?

Politics, like religion, is open to interpretation. It’s a cocktail of ideology, pragmatism, national interest, public service, self-interest and a basic instinct for power. What may seem like the right thing to do may not be the right thing for oneself.

In policy-making the response to ‘the war on terror’ both domestically and internationally has seen the worst of this kind of behaviour. It’s time for politicians to put naked self and party interests aside and, in forming our policies about our Muslims, start acting in the national interest.