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TRAVEL
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INTERVIEW
CULTURE
№ 10,023
·
OCTOBER 16, 2016
British
hotels
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T H E S U N DAY T I M E S . C O . U K
© THE SUNDAY TIMES/FRANCESCO GUIDICINI 2016
CHED EVANS: THE FIRST INTERVIEW
MPs blame
Corbyn for
‘vile’ abuse
of Jews
Tim Shipman
POLITICAL EDITOR
JEREMY CORBYN has allowed
“institutional anti-semitism” to
thrive in the Labour movement
and has made his party a
“safe space for those with
vile attitudes towards Jewish
people”, a damning report by an
all-party committee of MPs has
concluded.
In a withering judgment on
the Labour leader, MPs on the
home affairs select committee
concluded that Corbyn has
shown a “lack of consistent leadership” in tackling anti-semitic
abuse within the Labour ranks.
The report — signed off by the
Labour MPs Chuka Umunna and
David Winnick — questioned
whether Corbyn “fully appreciates” the nature of anti-semitism
and said the party was guilty of
“incompetence” over its handling of high-profile allegations of
anti-semitism.
It also delivered a damning
verdict on a report by the Labour
peer Baroness Chakrabarti, saying her conclusions exonerating
Labour in her investigation of
anti-semitism in the party were
“clearly lacking” and saying her
decision to take a peerage from
Corbyn had “completely undermined” her report.
The MPs said of Corbyn: “We
believe that his lack of consistent
leadership on this issue and his
reluctance to separate antisemitism from other forms of
racism has created what some
have referred to as a ‘safe space’
for those with vile attitudes
towards Jewish people.
“The failure of the Labour
Party to deal consistently and
effectively with anti-semitic
incidents in recent years risks
lending force to allegations that
Continued on page 4 uu
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O N LY
£2 T O S U B S C R I B E R S
Boris: my case
for Britain to
stay in Europe
Secret article reveals his argument for ‘remain’
EXCLUSIVE
The footballer Ched Evans, pictured with his fiancée Natasha Massey and their son, Flynn, has said being
convicted of rape was ‘so bad you just couldn’t imagine’, but being cleared in a retrial last week was ‘even
more powerful’.
Exclusive interview by David Walsh, page 5
Life is golden for Assad’s henchmen
SPECIAL
INVESTIGATION
MICHAEL
SHERIDAN
35%
OFF
ALEPPO is in flames and its
children are dying, but for
three men who built today’s
Syrian regime, and for their
families, life is sweet, luxurious
and safe — in Mayfair, Marbella
and Paris.
Untouched by sanctions, not
listed on any roll of war crime
suspects, they enjoy apparent
immunity for their acts in the
service of the Assad clan whose
decades of misrule led to the
ruin of their homeland. Rifaat
al-Assad, 79, the uncle of
Syria’s president, Bashar
al-Assad, divides his time
between a nine-bedroom
house in London’s Mayfair,
near Claridge’s, and an estate
known as Gray D’Albion on the
Avenida Jose Banus in the
Spanish resort of Marbella.
Trained in the Soviet Union,
he commanded elite security
forces notorious for their cruelty and corruption. A former
vice-president,he isblamedby
human rights groups for massacres in the city of Hama and
in a desert prison at Tadmur,
crimes that fuelled Islamic
fundamentalism in Syria. He
denies any guilt.
Abdel Halim Khaddam, 84,
helped
Hafez
al-Assad,
Bashar’s father, to seize power
in a coup in 1970 and then
served as his foreign minister.
He forged the axis between
Syria and Iran that led to the
slaughter of 241 US troops,
including 220 marines, and 58
French paratroopers in suicide
attacks in Lebanon in 1983.
Today the ailing Khaddam
Continued on page 9 uu
BORIS JOHNSON’S secret newspaper column, urging Britain to stay
in the European Union, is published
by The Sunday Times today.
The man who led the Brexit
campaign before becoming foreign
secretary declared: “Britain is a
great nation, a global force for good.
It is surely a boon for the world and
for Europe that she should be
intimately engaged in the EU.”
Johnson’s unpublished article
rehearsed warnings that Brexit
could lead to an economic shock,
Scottish independence and Russian
aggression, only two days before he
concluded that Britain would be
better off out.
The article is revealed in an
explosive new book that also discloses how David Cameron’s aides
blamed two of Britain’s top mandarins for vetoing tougher demands in
his renegotiation with Brussels.
The two men, Sir Ivan Rogers,
now Britain’s ambassador to the
European Union, and Tom Scholar,
the senior civil servant at the Treasury, were accused this weekend of
still seeking to weaken Theresa
May’s plans for leaving the EU.
The book, All Out War, by Tim
Shipman, political editor of The
Sunday Times, also reveals that:
0 Johnson “wanted to punch”
Michael Gove after he tried to
apologise for knifing him on the
morning of his leadership launch
0 Lynton Crosby, the Tories’
election guru, advised Johnson to
support Brexit once Cameron had
ignored Crosby’s advice to delay the
referendum
0 Cameron would have made Johnson defence secretary if he had won
and remained prime minister
0 The “remain” campaign’s digital
chief, Jim Messina, called Andrew
Cooper, Cameron’s pollster, “the
worst I’ve ever worked with” for
getting his forecasts so wrong.
The text of Johnson’s column is
published on page 8. Its existence
was known but its contents, which
contradict positions the foreign secretary has adopted since he joined
the cabinet, have remained secret.
He wrote it on February 19, two
days before shocking Cameron by
opting publicly for the “leave” campaign. He had already penned one
piece arguing the case for “out”,
then wrote the “remain” article as a
way of clarifying his thoughts,
before composing a final article
backing Brexit for publication.
The book dispels the myth that
Johnson’s case for “remain” was
better than his argument to “leave”.
In fact the article was dashed off
quickly and seems to be an attempt
by Johnson to convince himself the
case for staying in was weak. But it
nonetheless shows some of the concerns he had about leaving the EU.
Johnson, now a proponent of a
“hard Brexit” that would take
Britain out of the European single
market, put the opposite argument
in his “remain” column.
“This is a market on our doorstep,
ready for further exploitation by
British firms. The membership fee
seems rather small for all that
access.Whyarewesodeterminedto
turn our back on it?” he wrote.
He also warned that Brexit would
cause an “economic shock” and
could lead to the “break up” of the
United Kingdom.
The book challenges the idea that
Johnson was motivated solely by his
ambition to be prime minister. It
reveals that Ben Wallace, the MP
running his leadership campaign,
warned him that backing Brexit
would damage his hopes of
replacing Cameron.
Being associated with Nigel
Farage, George Galloway and older
Eurosceptic Tories would mean he
was campaigning with a “cast of
clowns”, Wallace said in an email.
Both Johnson and Wallace
expected at that stage that “leave”
would lose the referendum, but
Wallace added: “The upside is that if
the ‘outers’ win, then you will be
master of all.”
The top mandarins blamed by
Continued on page 8 uu
City traffic slower than horse and cart
Mark Hookham
TRANSPORT CORRESPONDENT
CONGESTION for motorists
has jumped by up to 40% in
four years as Britain’s trafficchoked roads grind to a halt,
new figures reveal.
Theworseninggridlockhas
been blamed on the growth of
white van deliveries, caused
by internet shopping, the
squeezing of road-space by
segregated
cycle
lanes,
increasing numbers of minicabs and badly planned roadworks.
Business chiefs in northern
England are urging the chancellor, Philip Hammond, to
use next month’s autumn
statement to fund more road
schemes, while Lord Wolfson,
the Tory peer and boss of Next,
warned that millions were
wasting “countless hours in
needless traffic”.
In an analysis for The
Sunday Times, Inrix, a traffic
information company, examined congestion over four
years in 18 urban areas, which
include more than 50% of the
UK population. Drivers in
those areas spent on average
an extra 12.4 hours a year
stuck in rush-hour traffic
jams in 2015, compared to
2012.
London is worst hit, with
drivers last year wasting on
average 101 hours — more
than 12 working days — stuck
in rush-hour traffic, up 40%
from 72 hours in 2012.
Busesonsomeofthebusiest
sections of roads are averaging
3.8mph, only marginally
faster than walking pace and
slower than a horse and cart.
Full story, page 7
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8
STEFAN ROUSSEAU
Cripes! I jolly nearly
backed Dave on Europe
It’s the article Boris Johnson tried to bury — the case for remaining in the EU, written
at the same time as one backing Brexit. Could these words have changed British history?
Boris Johnson’s decision in February to campaign for Brexit came as a blow to David Cameron
OK OK, I admit it. If you gave
him a truth drug, or hypnotised him, I don’t think even
the prime minister would
really deny it.
This European Union deal is
not perhaps everything that we
would have liked. It is not what
we Eurosceptics were hoping,
not when the process kicked
off. We were hoping he was
going to get really deep down
and dirty, in the way that the
Bloomberg speech seemed to
indicate. He was going to probe
the belly of the beast and bring
back British sovereignty, like
Hercules bringing Eurydice
[sic] back from the underworld. I had the impression
that this was going to be the
beginning of a wholesale
repatriation of powers — over
fisheries, farming, the social
chapter, border controls, you
name it: all those political hostages joyfully returning home
like the end of Raid on Entebbe.
It was going to be a moment
for the ringing of church bells
and bonfires on beacons, and
union flags flying from every
steeple, and peasants blind
drunk on non-EU approved
scrumpy and beating the
hedgerows with staves while
singing patriotic songs about
Dave the hero.
I don’t think we can pretend
that this is how things have
turned out. This is not a fundamental reform of Britain’s
position in the EU, and no one
could credibly claim it is.
It is not pointless; it is not
wholly insignificant; it is by no
means a waste of time. But it
will not stop the great machine
of EU integration, and it will
not stop the production of ever
more EU laws — at least some of
which will have deleterious
effects on the economy of this
country and the rest of Europe.
Never mind the Tusk deal;
look at the elephant in the
room: the great beast still
trampling happily on British
parliamentary
sovereignty,
and British democracy. So
there are likely to be a significant number of people — perhaps including you — who will
feel that in all honour we can
now only do one thing.
We said we wanted a
reformed EU. We said that if we
failed to get reform, then
Britain could have a great
future outside. We have not got
a reformed EU — so: nothing
for it, then — ho for the open
seas! Viva Brexit! That would
seem to be the logic, and yet I
wonder if it is wholly correct.
Shut your eyes. Hold your
breath. Think of Britain. Think
of the rest of the EU. Think of
the future. Think of the desire
of your children and your
grandchildren to live and work
in other European countries; to
sell things there, to make
friends and perhaps to find
partners there.
Ask yourself: despite all the
defects and disappointments of
this exercise — do you really,
truly, definitely want Britain to
pull out of the EU ? Now? This is
a big thing to do, and there is
certainly a strong politicalphilosophical imperative leading us to the door.
We are being outvoted ever
more frequently. The ratchet
of integration clicks remorselessly forward. More and more
questions are now justiciable
by the European Court of
Justice, including that extraordinary document, the European Charter of Fundamental
Rights. This bestows on every
one of our 500m EU citizens a
legally enforceable right to do
all sorts of things across all 28
states: to start a business, to
choose any occupation they
like, to found any type of
religious school, to enjoy
“academic
freedom”.
I
shudder to think what is going
to happen when UK citizens
start vindicating these new
“rights” in Luxembourg.
There is going to be more and
more of this stuff ; and I can see
why people might just think, to
hell with it. I want out. I want to
take back control of our
democracy and our country.
If you feel that, I perfectly
understand — because half the
time I have been feeling that
myself. And then the other half
of the time, I have been
thinking: hmmm. I like the
sound of freedom; I like the
sound of restoring democracy.
But what are the downsides —
and here we must be honest.
There are some big questions
that the “out” side need to
answer. Almost everyone expects there to be some sort of
economic shock as a result of a
Brexit. How big would it be? I
am sure that the doomsters are
exaggerating the fallout — but
are they completely wrong?
And how can we know?
And then there is the worry
about Scotland, and the possibility that an English-only
“leave” vote could lead to the
break-up of the union. There is
the Putin factor: we don’t want
to do anything to encourage
more shirtless swaggering
from the Russian leader, not in
the Middle East, not anywhere.
And then there is the whole
geostrategic anxiety. Britain is
a great nation, a global force for
good. It is surely a boon for the
world and for Europe that she
should be intimately engaged
in the EU. This is a market on
our doorstep, ready for further
exploitation by British firms:
the membership fee seems
rather small for all that access.
Why are we so determined
to turn our back on it?
Shouldn’t our policy be like our
policy on cake — pro having it
and pro eating it? Pro Europe
and pro the rest of the world?
If sovereignty is the problem
— and it certainly is — then
maybe it is worth looking again
at the prime minister’s deal,
because there is a case for
saying it is not quite as con-
NEXT WEEK:
EXCLUSIVE
EXTRACTS
temptible as all that. He is the
first prime minister to get us
out of ever closer union, which
is potentially very important
with the European Court of
Justice and how it interprets EU
law. He has some good stuff on
competition, and repealing
legislation, and on protecting
Britain from further integration of the euro group.
Now if this were baked into a
real EU treaty, it would be very
powerful. Taken together with
the sovereignty clauses —
which are not wholly platitudinous — you can see the outlines
of a new role for Britain:
friendly, involved, but not part
of the federalist project.
Yes, folks, the deal’s a bit of a
dud, but it contains the germ of
something really good. I am
going to muffle my disappointment and back the prime
minister.
Topsy-turvy Brexit
uu Continued from page 1
Cameron’s aides for vetoing a
much tougher EU renegotiation are now involved in May’s
preparations for Brexit. Rogers
and Scholar, who was Cameron’s adviser on Europe and is
now permanent secretary at
the Treasury, faced claims this
weekend that the civil service
establishment is seeking to
water down May’s plans.
A minister said: “Ivan
Rogers is dragging his feet. He
didn’t want the prime minister
to reveal her hand on article 50
so quickly, which shows what
he knows about the politics of
the situation.”
Scholar has been accused of
“egging on” the chancellor
Philip Hammond to emphasise
the economic dangers of withdrawing from the single
market. The book reveals the
two civil servants repeatedly
clashed with Daniel Korski and
Mats Persson, advisers to Cameron on EU affairs, who wanted
to demand more from Brussels.
“We were too beholden to
Tom Scholar and Ivan Rogers,”
one Cameron adviser said.
“They were status quo. They
were happy to take ‘No’ for an
answer, happy to believe
things weren’t possible when
they could be possible. I’ve lost
count of the number of times
Ivan threatened to resign.”
May will travel to Brussels on
Thursday and explain what
Britain wants from a new
relationship with the EU,
emphasising that she would
like “close links” but has to put
immigration control first.
She will seek to maximise
the gains of Brexit by launching
a trade mission to India next
month to pave the way for a
new free-trade deal. The prime
minister will take a delegation
of small and medium-sized
businesses with her when she
meets Narendra Modi, the
Indian prime minister, and
opens a tech summit in Delhi
on November 6.
May said: “As we leave the
European Union we have the
chance to forge a new global
role for the UK — to look
beyond our continent and
towards the economic and
diplomatic opportunities in the
wider world.” But she faces a
new challenge to reveal her
plans for Brexit.
Former party leaders Nick
Clegg and Ed Miliband, plus
leading Tory Nick Herbert and
Brexiteer Stephen Phillips will
table a motion for a backbench
debateandasubstantivevoteto
force the government to publish an outline of its negotiation
plan — the equivalent of a white
paper — and for this to be
agreed by the House of Commons prior to negotiations.
Miliband told The Sunday
Times: “‘Leave’ and ‘remain’
voters are united in their belief
that the government must get a
mandate for their Brexit negotiating plan from parliament.”
Clegg added: “The government should not take decisions
that will have massive economic consequences, such as
leaving the single market,
without seeking parliament’s
approval.”
Keir Starmer, Labour’s
spokesman on Brexit, said he
will endorse the plans, making
it possible that the government
would be defeated if enough
Tory “remainers” rebel.