Gonna Miss This Bloke

Outgoing Prime Minister Tony Blair:

We have tried continually to deport foreign nationals who were either engaged in or inciting extremism. We have chosen as a society to put the civil liberties of the suspect first. I happen to believe this is misguided. If a foreign national comes here, and may be at risk in his own country, we should treat him well. But if he then abuses our hospitality and threatens us, I feel he should take his chance back in his own home country.

I was stopped by someone the other week who said it was not surprising there was so much terrorism in the world when we invaded their countries (meaning Iraq and Afghanistan). No wonder Muslims felt angry. I said to him: tell me exactly what they feel angry about. We remove two utterly brutal and dictatorial regimes; we replace them with a UN-supervised democratic process. And the only reason it is difficult still is because other Muslims are using terrorism to try to destroy the fledgling democracy and, in doing so, are killing fellow Muslims. Why aren't they angry about the people doing the killing?

The odd thing about the conversation is I could tell it was the first time he'd heard this argument.

Tony Blair did Labour proud.