The Shamima Begum debate plays right into Theresa May’s hands

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Theresa May is trying to distract us from Brexit (Parliament Live)

The furore over Shamima Begum is unfathomable. Theresa May is using this as a smokescreen to divert public attention from her failure to negotiate a good withdrawal deal with the EU.

As home secretary, May once asked universities and colleges to essentially spy on Muslims. And while the idea of identifying people who are vulnerable to extremism and radicalisation is to be applauded, it was bound to class the entire Muslim community as suspicious and drive a chasm between Muslims and non-Muslims in this age of populism, antisemitism and Islamophobia. It also fails to address the root causes of homegrown terrorism and acknowledge Britain’s complicity in the gruesome atrocities perpetrated in Yemen, Syria, Iraq and the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict.

Dr Munjed Farid Al Qutob
London NW2

What happens if Britain washes its hands of Shamima Begum? Isis will set her up somewhere blogging the UK with stories of how Britain dumped her because of a decision she made aged 15, whereas her new friends support her unconditionally.

What does that say about Britain? She’ll turn other young heads.

Conversely, if we welcome her and her new child back to their UK home, she may blog for our side. And her publishing deal – a Four Years With Isis bestseller, the profits of which should go to victims of terror – will place her in the top taxpayer bracket, paying for her use of the welfare state.

Barry Tighe
Woodford Green

The Iraq war is to blame for Isis

Towards the end of his excellent review of the debacle that is now Middle Eastern politics and strife, Patrick Cockburn draws attention to the difference between the reaction to Tony Blair’s invasion of Iraq and the lukewarm attitude at the beginning to events in Syria.

At the time, the negative response by the west to appeals for help from the Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighting against the tyranny of the Syrian regime could be attributed to a reaction against western interference in Syrian affairs as a result of the quagmire in post-Saddam Iraq created by lack of planning for the country after hostilities had ceased. This was exacerbated by the over rapid de-Baathification of the infrastructure resulting in chaos which continues to the present day.

In other words, if George W Bush and Blair, rather than acting on spurious “intelligence” and invading Iraq, had concentrated on developing Afghanistan after defeating the Taliban, there might have been less resistance by voters to helping the FSA at the outset in Syria and Isis would have been stifled before it could gain a foothold in the region.

Patrick Cleary
Devon

Sean O’Grady writes: “The time has surely come for the public to be confronted with a plan for the consequences of Brexit and [be] asked if they still want to go ahead”.

We should have been “confronted” with a plan two years ago but were given nothing but slogans: cheap, nasty slogans that did nothing to address the gross inequalities brought about by austerity and by a nasty Tory party that was happy to allow the EU to be blamed for all our woes.

So, when O’Grady gets his initial wish and we leave the EU, who will be to blame when it all goes to pot – as it most certainly (and foreseeably) will? The prime minister for not getting the right deal? Not the Brexiteers, you may be certain. Not David Davis, not Liam Fox, not Michael Gove not Boris Johnson (now officially and, by a long street, the worst foreign minister we have ever had – as, tragically, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe can testify – and a very expensive mayor, and not Jacob, who clearly lives in another universe.

Jeremy Corbyn has been equally useless. So, who will to be to blame? Who, if any, of those fine Brexiteers would like to own up to not having had anything even close to resembling a plan that O’Grady now, belatedly, seeks?

Beryl Wall
London W4

How Jacob Rees-Mogg convinced me to love the EU

On Question Time this week, Jacob Rees-Mogg has claimed that the EU is a failed economic model, stifled by regulation, that we must leave, with the eurozone achieving growth of only 26 per cent since the euro was introduced, while admitting almost in the same breath that our growth in that same period was 44 per cent, even faster than that great example of deregulated markets, America, which grew by 42 per cent.

This suggests to me that we have a fantastic deal in the EU. For example, we were allowed to stay out of the euro, the cause of most of their problems, and we would be foolish to abandon this deal which has served us so well in return for the vague hopes and promises, not to say lies, of the Brexiteers, that even when supposedly applied in the US did not yield as good a result as we got within the EU. Why on earth is he arguing for us to leave on the basis of evidence that actually points in exactly the opposite direction?

Even if he is right, we must not forget that, perhaps in an unguarded moment, he admitted that it might take up to 50 years for his supposed benefits to come through.

He might also have been challenged on the 2017 election result: the Conservatives, promising to leave the single market and the customs union, failed to get a majority and are only in office because of questionable inducements to a Northern Ireland party that only reflects the minority opinion there on Brexit. Not really a convincing mandate for a hard brexit.

We must not allow the Brexiteers to get away with such absurd arguments, especially if we do manage to get a second referendum, in which every vote will count.

Adrian Cosker
Hertfordshire

We could all learn something from the younger generation

As our parliamentarians behave like children, milling around the playground in gangs, obsessed with the Brexit craze, cowed by bullies, the free riders seeking to profit from the chaos of no deal, it falls to our schoolchildren to sound the alarm bells of the issue which, but for the saturation of parliament by this futile and manufactured craze, would, one likes to think, be firmly on the centre of this farcical stage – the very real peril of the extinction of our species.

As we bemoan the alienation of our youth from politics, can we wonder that our children, acutely aware of the dark shadow over their future, in desperation decide to break school rules to shame our politicians, and to inject some much-needed anger and urgency into the meandering climate change debate.

While the planet manifests its increasing volatility with ever more frequent extreme weather events, what is so dispiriting is the fact that the vast complexity of extrication from the EU was entirely predictable, had those responsible for inducing the slender majority of the electorate to vote Leave paused for a moment to consider what it was they were advocating. Unless, of course, a parliament drowning in the intractability of the process is what they were seeking.

As denigration of parliament rightly descends to utter disillusion, it is time to heed the timely wisdom coming from the mouths of our children.

Martin Allen
West Sussex