Alan Duncan’s diaries

JVL Introduction

In the Thick of It: The Private Diaries of a Minister by Alan Duncan were published in April to the delight of those (almost everyone!) who love the exposure of pompous politicians who take themselves too seriously.

What is extremely unusual about these memoirs is that Duncan is a strong defender of Palestinian rights.

Here Jonathan Coulter explores what Duncan revealed to us about the politics surrounding this issue – and what he failed to explore.

CAMPAIN, publishers of the original article, invite you to add your comments on their website and/or below.

This article was originally published by Campain: time to end misrepresentation on Wed 9 Jun 2021. Read the original here.

Alan Duncan’s diaries inspire – but he could do much more

Summary

In his recently published diary the Conservative politician and former Minister Sir Alan Duncan, denounces in forthright terms his own Government’s appalling acquiescence in Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians, and its damaging interference in Britain’s internal affairs through lobby groups, especially Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI). At the same time, his diary shows a disappointing lack of empathy for his Labour opponents who have been the primary targets of Israeli interference.

I conclude that the gravity of this problem demands more of people like Duncan. If, as he indicates, Israeli interference has been corroding public morality and our ability to purposefully manage our own affairs in the UK, we need to treat this as a major national problem, rather like a pandemic or a war. This means being prepared to reach out to one’s erstwhile political opponents and tackle the problem in partnership with them.

Discovering Duncan

I became aware of Alan Duncan’s vigorous defence of Palestinian rights from his speech of October 2014 to the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). He complained that Britain had granted Israel impunity with respect to its illegal occupation and de facto annexation of Palestinian land, and contrasted this to its opposition to other cases of illegal territorial expansion, such as when General Galtieri seized the Falkland Islands, Saddam Hussain invaded Kuwait, and Russia annexed the Crimea and engaged in subterfuge in Eastern Ukraine. He roundly condemned western Christians who colluded with Israel’s settlement project, and some Jewish organisations in the UK for unreasonably accusing people of antisemitism “more often than not as a diversion from the actual issues in question”.

Shai Masot, Israeli agent conspiring to take down British MPs

Duncan joined Theresa May’s Government in July 2016, thinking that his experience as an oil trader and his contacts in the Middle East would be helpful to Britain’s foreign affairs. He was soon to be disappointed, finding himself disqualified on account of opposition from Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI). He ended up with a portfolio that pointedly excluded the Middle East save for Oman, becoming Deputy to Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson in other matters. Subsequently, in early 2017, an Al Jazeera undercover operation showed us an Israeli operative conspiring with House of Commons staff to destroy Duncan’s political career.

Despite opposing Brexit, Duncan intended to remain tight-lipped and, in his own words: “loyal to Theresa, loyal to Boris… out of the news”. However, he found it increasingly difficult to contain his criticism of Johnson whom he described as a “circus act” and resigned when Johnson was elected Conservative leader in July 2019.

When Duncan published his diaries in April 2021, he did not mince his words. He denounced pro-Israel lobbyists for their “disgusting interference” in British public life and for damaging British foreign policy in the Middle East, and accused HMG of complicity with that interference. He was particularly scathing about Stuart Polak and Eric Pickles of CFI whom he described as just wanting “to subjugate Palestinians and destroy all genuine advocates for Palestine”. He expanded on this in a Mail+ interview, saying that CFI “interferes at a high level in British politics in the interest of Israel, on the back of donor power within the UK.” Duncan also denounced Priti Patel as deceitful and morally corrupt, on account of her unapproved visit to Israel in late 2017 (coordinated by the self-same Polak), about which she lied, both to the Prime Minister and the public.

Photo of Jan 2017 showing: Mark Regev, Israel’s ambassador to the UK; Priti Patel, minister for international development; and Stuart Polak, hon. president of CFI

But Duncan reserves his worst words for the grovelling behaviour of the very Government to which he belonged, and notably:

  • accuses Polak and Pickles of “entrenched espionage” that should prompt an inquiry, saying “it’s corrupt, but the whole system buys into it without realising how wrong it is”;

  • describes his Government’s indulgence of Netanyahu’s behaviour as that of “supine, lickspittle, insignificant cowards”, and;

  • castigates the Government for not objecting: (a) when Naftali Bennett, the pro-settlement party leader in Israel, said that all Judea and Samaria belongs to Israel, and; (b) when the Israelis intended to evict 500 Bedouin from the E1 area on the edge of Jerusalem and turn it into settlements.

He goes on to say that: “the rules of propriety, and all the morality and principle that goes with it, are discarded and rewritten to accommodate this exceptional pro-Israel infiltration into the very centre of our public life”.

Duncan has singularly unflattering words for a long list of other public figures, notably Michael Gove (an “unctuous freak”), “the odious Matthew Elliott”, the “execrable duo” of special advisers Fiona Hill and Nick Timothy, Gavin Williamson (“a disloyal, and inexperienced schemer”), the “brainless Iain Duncan Smith”, and the “inarticulate” Sajid Javid who is “just sucking up to the CFI”. Given his views on colleagues, I suspect Duncan would have done much better by resigning earlier and alerting us to their nature before they gained an unassailable parliamentary majority, and by causing an overdue stink about the role of the Israel lobby.

The Labour party dimension

I wanted to see how Duncan treated the defamation meted out to the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn. What did he really feel about the period from 2015 to 2020 when the pro-Israel lobby, the mainstream media, the Government, the Blairite faction in Labour, and others endlessly pilloried Labour as “antisemitic”, and often “institutionally antisemitic”?

I had myself taken a close look at the allegations against Labour, and found them at odds with hard evidence about the incidence of anti-Jewish prejudice across the political spectrum, and that mainstream media had systematically avoided any mention of that evidence.

Jeremy Corbyn

I did not expect Duncan to be uncritical of Corbyn, but hoped that his comments would show some light and shade, and empathy for someone who, despite political differences, was “in the same boat”. Like Duncan, Corbyn’s Labour posed an obstacle to the Israeli Government’s plan to dominate the whole of Palestine and silence dissent. But it was Corbyn who, as Labour’s prime ministerial candidate, posed the greater threat.

Unfortunately, I found Duncan defaulting to a rather one-dimensional Daily Mail script, saying Corbyn was a “farce of a leader”, had “no credibility”, was “our Fidel Castro”, and wanted “to nationalise everything”. Whatever Corbyn’s shortcomings, Duncan never mentions the fact that he was the first prime ministerial candidate to take seriously the plight of the Palestinians, and a leading figure behind the opposition to our disastrous invasion of Iraq – that Duncan supported.

Duncan describes Corbyn’s supporters as “far-left nutters”, and a “rather nasty, ideological base”, singling out “the odious Chris Williamson, the hard-left Labour MP who is probably the most hated man in Parliament”. I have spoken at length with Chris Williamson and, whatever his politics, find him a decent human being, who has correctly called out Jeremy Corbyn for being unreasonably apologetic in his response to antisemitism smears.

Hajo Meyer, Holocaust survivor

At one point his diary (1/8/18), Duncan endorses one of these smears against Corbyn on account of a meeting he had hosted in 2010. The main speaker was Hajo Meyer, a Holocaust survivor, who spoke about “The Misuse of the Holocaust for Political Purposes”. Duncan should have known better than to criticise Corbyn for hosting a meeting on a legitimate topic.

On 4/09/18, Duncan speaks of a bitter feud between the “Jewish community” and Corbyn’s Labour Party. I was surprised to see him treating the Jewish community as a monolithic entity without reference to the diversity of opinion among Jews, and not so much as alluding to the many Jews who wholeheartedly support Jeremy Corbyn (including more than 30 that the Labour Party is investigating for “antisemitism”). Duncan goes on to critique Corbyn for continuing “to attack the manner in which Israel was founded” and seeming to “challenge the right of Israel to exist at all”. I find this farfetched, because Corbyn has never said or implied the latter.

Concluding comment

It is commendable that Alan Duncan has stood up for the Palestinians and called out our Government’s hideous complicity with the machinations of pro-Israel lobbyists. I would love to see him build on his achievement by organizing a broad-based campaign to bring this appalling situation to an end. However, this will mean taking the time to engage with, and properly understand, erstwhile political opponents.

 

We cannot successfully combat the problem of Israeli interference, and the media bias that facilitates it, simply at the level of party politics. Clever and well-resourced lobbies will play divide-and-rule, exploiting party and sectarian rivalries to get what they want. In this vein we have seen:

  • right-wing/Blairite Labour excoriating left-wing rivals for “antisemitism”;

  • Conservatives blaming Labour as a whole on the same grounds, despite evidence that prejudice against all minorities (including Jews) is higher among Conservatives, and;

  • Lib Dems aligning themselves with the dominant media narrative, not out of principle, but for party-political advantage and fear of being monstered with adverse publicity in the media.

It is time for us to treat this type of politically motivated distortion of facts as a national problem, like a pandemic or a war, and not allow ourselves to be manipulated in this way.

Comments (11)

  • Allan Howard says:

    It is ironic that Chris Williamson was suspended from the party for saying that Labour have apologised too much (regarding the allegations of A/S), and he was obviously alluding to Jeremy Corbyn. I don’t actually know how many times Jeremy apologised altogether during his tenure as leader, but it was probably only about half-a-dozen times during the course of four-and-a-half years. If that! And THAT is part of the problem – ie that the perception can end up being WOTT, and then he – Jeremy – gets criticised for THAT erroneous perception, in this case by elements of the left. And then, at the same time, he is criticised by Blairites and pundits et al for not apologising enough!

    The reality is that he was in a no-win situation, and was constantly being pressurised to apologise by the malevolent forces ranged against him, and if and when he refused to apologise – as in the Andrew Neil interview, for example – he is then just further vilified and condemned and demonised.

    It seems to me that there are a fair few commentators on the left who are quick to criticise, but what they DON’T do is put themselves inside Jeremy’s shoes.

    0
    0
  • Alan Maddison says:

    Great article Jonathan.

    Politicians seem too corrupt or cowardly to end these Israel lobby groups subverting our democracy. Perhaps the only solution would be some form of independent legal action for the harms inflicted?

    It surely can’t be allowed to continue.

    0
    0
  • rc says:

    Surely Duncan’s great faults in regard to Israel/Palestine can be traced to those of the traditional Tory/FCO ‘Arabists’ well portrayed, analysed and indicted in James Barr’s A LINE IN THE SAND (Simon and Schuster 2011 ) and in Richard Aldington’s expose of Lawrence ‘of Arabia’ ( also Barr, P 15 etc – check his index on p 447) . These people (let us not forget Gertrude Bell – see e.g. Barr p 9 )) were and are rational imperialists. Their ‘love’ for the feudalist oppressors of Saudi and the Emirates is based on geopolitical and especially geoeconomic calculation. They do not regard Israel as (Ronald Storrs, see also Barr pp 23-4,28, 40-2, 100) hoped, as ‘a loyal little Ulster’ (what a foul oxymoron) – but their reservations are based on a conceivably longer-term view of the needs of capitalist imperialism. On the late W.Churchill, see also Charmley (CHURCHILL, THE END OF GLORY, Hodder 1993, passim but esp chapters 25-6), A spoon of many leagues’ length is required to make even limited common cause with these ‘gentry’, as exampled e.g. by Gaitskell’s appalling and mendacious budget. The late Fred Halliday declined from an apparently principled and materialist analyst of the greater Middle East (ARABIA WITHOUT SULTANS, Penguin, ca 1970) to a bagman for Blair’s criminal war against Iraq (even his 1991 piece carefully omits US encouragement of Iraqi repossession of ‘Kuwait’ through Ambassador April Glaspie), and uncritical deplorer of the ‘terrorism’ of Arab resistance (Chomsky in Said and Hitchens: BLAMING THE VICTIMS); such are the pressures that characterize (I cannot write ‘plague’ for such a profitable ‘surrender’) centrists and reformists, however high-faluting their ideologies.
    It would be illustrative were Duncan to be cross-examined on the appalling “Abraham pact”.

    0
    0
  • Hazel Davies says:

    Thanks for an article that recognises the poisonous influence of the Israeli government in British politics. It is a scandal that a foreign government conspired with British politicians to destroy elected members of Parliament, including the Leader of HM’s Opposition. Imagine if this had been any other foreign government!

    0
    0
  • John Noble says:

    We the people need to shout this type of thing loud and clear, it is great exposing this stuff here but. Incisive article, thank you.

    0
    0
  • Gen Doy says:

    very good article

    0
    0
  • Rayemond says:

    The writer hoped Duncan would show some empathy for Corbyn who was ‘in the same boat’as far as attacks from tbe Israel Lobby.. Erm – He was an oil trader and a leading Tory and here is more evidence that Corbyn (or the movement behind Corbyn) scared the sh** out of them, so all and any weapon against Corbyn is vallid as far as they are concerned and Zionist contol is preferable to ‘Corbyn’s threat of nationalisation’.

    0
    0
  • @rc What can I say in defense of Alan Duncan? Well firstly, nobody’s perfect.
    Then he has really stood up for the Palestinians, and shown courage in doing so. When he made his RUSI speech of 2014, he must must have realized he was risking his political career. How many other MPs, of any persuasion, are prepared to do that?
    And he has shown he is capable of changing his views, as he did on Brexit. Maybe he will become less antagonistic towards the Labour left. We all need to take time to engage with, and properly understand, erstwhile political opponents.

    0
    0
  • John Bowley says:

    Dissapointing Dunc. I did not expect better of him. I should thank Dunc for speaking up for the Palestinians. It is astonishing that Dunc was in a minority in our Parliament. In times past, I believe that a large proportion of the English Establishment liked the Arabs. Whatever that meant I am unclear. Now the Esablishment is Zionist, inclusive of most Conservatives but also of top-down conformist Sir Keir Starmer and his oppressive starmtroopers. It is indeed a corruptiion of our so-called Great British Democracy.

    0
    0
  • I said that Alan Duncan could do much more for the Palestinians, so I am glad to find that he has joined the advisory board of a new organisation called the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (https://www.icjpalestine.com/). ICJP is “an independent organisation of lawyers, politicians and academics who support the rights of Palestinians and aim to protect their rights through the law”. The Director of ICJP is Crispin Blunt, MP, who has a long record of standing up for Palestinian rights and who, like Duncan, is fed up to the teeth with British complicity with Israel’s crimes. An interesting range of other figures are also involved.

    I wish ICJP much success. At the same time, I stand by my comments about Duncan’s posture towards Labour opponents. If he is serious about helping the Palestinians, he should focus single-mindedly on this objective, and be prepared to set aside sectarian concerns of the British political scene. As stated in Matthew 6: 24, no-one can serve two Masters.

    0
    0
  • Mondoweiss has just published an updated version of this article that mentions Duncan’s joining ICJP: https://mondoweiss.net/2021/06/alan-duncans-political-diary-inspires-but-he-could-do-more-for-palestine/.

    0
    0

Comments are now closed.