Syria

On 17 June, a meeting of the Henry Jackson Society, held in the House of Commons, discussed (according to the minutes published on the society’s website) how a tribal elder in northern Cameroon who runs a car import business in Qatar has become one of the main intermediaries between kidnappers from Boko Haram and its offshoot Ansaru and those seeking to free hostages. It was alleged that embezzlement of funds going to Qatar via car imports might be disguising ransom payments. It was also alleged that Qatar was involved in financing Islamist militant groups in West Africa, helping with weapons and ideological training, and (with Saudi Arabia) funding the building

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, visited New York for talks at the United Nations; he said Britain supported the American air strikes on the Islamic State. ‘These people want to kill us,’ Mr Cameron said on NBC news. Mr Cameron met President Hassan Rouhani of Iran in New York, the first such meeting since the Iranian revolution in 1979. Mr Cameron was caught by cameras in New York saying to Michael Bloomberg, its former mayor, that when he rang the Queen with the Scottish referendum result, ‘She purred down the line.’ Alex Salmond resigned as First Minister of Scotland and leader of the Scottish National Party, with effect from November. This

‘Are Syria air strikes legal?’ asks the BBC as part of its lead story today. The answer is that nobody is very sure. But personally I do wonder: ‘Why should we even care?’ Is beheading people legal? Is crucifying people illegal? Probably not. But aside from some vague talk last month of international inspectors being sent in to Isis-controlled areas to try to collate evidence of war-crimes I have seen very little written about this. This debate over the ‘legality’ of hitting Isis reminds me of nothing so much as the conversation after Osama bin Laden was shot in the head. I recall back then being on an edition of Question Time where, rather than expressing

Home Britain’s terror threat level was raised from ‘substantial’ to ‘severe’ in response to fighting in Iraq and Syria, meaning that an attack on Britain was ‘highly likely’. Three days later, David Cameron, the Prime Minister, in a hesitant statement to the Commons, proposed that: police should be able to seize temporarily at the border the passports of people travelling overseas; there should be all-party talks on drawing up powers to prevent suspected British terrorists returning to Britain; those under terrorism prevention and investigation measures (Tpims) should be subject to ‘stronger locational constraints’. The Celtic Manor Resort (rooms from £77), near Junction 24 on the M4 outside Newport, prepared to accommodate

No, no, no, you don’t want a house abroad — the paperwork, the taxes, the piping, the cost of the pool. What you want are good, kind, generous friends with houses abroad. That’s what we’ve enjoyed this summer, meeting scores of interesting new people and being looked after by our best friends. We pay them back with wine, little presents and London hospitality. The only downside to ‘les vacances ligging’ is having to book extra seats home on Ryanair for our vastly swollen and moaning livers. The most striking thing we did in France was to visit Oradour-sur-Glane, the Limousin village where on 10 June 1944 a Panzer division of