The UK still hasn’t come to terms with the Muslim Brotherhood
Earlier this month, the UAE announced it was sanctioning 11 individuals and eight rather obscure organisations for alleged connections to…
Missiles alone won’t solve the problem of the Houthis
Eventually then, enough was enough. After months of Houthi drone and missile attacks on Israel and vessels in the Red…
How the West made a mess of Syria
It was the last week of August 2013. I was Her Majesty’s Ambassador to Saudi Arabia. The course of the Arab uprisings of…
Ayman al-Zawahiri got the death he deserved
At times like this, it’s tempting to channel Bette Davis: only speak good of the dead. Ayman al-Zawahiri’s dead. Good.…
Iran's hidden hand in the Houthi drone strike on Saudi Arabia
Over the past six years, Saudi Arabia and its allies have – not always accurately – dropped western-built munitions worth…
A blurred distinction between refugees and migrants is a recipe for chaos
Among the most evocative and distressing press images of the year were those of Maryam Nuri Hama Amin. The 24-year-old Kurd…
Will we learn the truth about the Liverpool bomber's conversion?
It’s been more than a fortnight since the bombing of Liverpool Women’s Hospital, and there remain plenty of unanswered questions. It is a…
There's nothing wrong with Macron's war on Islamism
It’s always the French, isn’t it? Not content with having given the modern world existentialism, structuralism, deconstructionism (with some help…
Britain is still failing to confront Islamism
How time flies. In March 2014, quite out of the blue, I was commissioned by then prime minister David Cameron…
We’ve become desensitised to terror
Samuel Paty, a teacher at a school in a sedate suburb of Paris, was beheaded in the street last Friday…
Soleimani’s assassination has exposed the EU’s big weakness
What a difference a day makes. When I went to bed on 2 January what seemed to be the most…
