77 Quotes by Crispin Blunt

Refusal to engage with the Russian government is not a viable long-term foreign policy option for the U.K.

For the government, there is the frustration of not being a full part of the anti-Isis coalition. For ministers to have their position restrained by our parliament is an embarrassment with their international colleagues.

Frankly, everyone knows that Iain Duncan Smith is not making the impact we would all like him to be as our leader and is not making the necessary impact to carry credibility with the electorate as the alternative prime minister.

In delivering the agreed objective of a Syrian-led and Syrian-owned political process, the removal of Isis from its territory in Syria by Syrian forces, the Syrian army and the Syrian Free Army fighting alongside each other is an opportunity to bind wounds.

Having western, Russian or Iranian forces providing the ground defeat of Isis would certainly work militarily, but would be the least attractive option as it might help reinforce the Isis myth.

In 2013 I voted against military intervention in Syria.

Trump has shown that there are limits to how brutal the maximalists can afford to be.

When the air forces of the U.S., Russia, France, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and others are already engaged with Isis in Syria, it's a shortage of targets rather than of aircraft that is the coalition's principal military constraint.

Many other countries have tried this and getting businesses to work in partnership in prisons, in prison and with prison labour, and to actually be able to make an economic return is extremely difficult.