However, what more directly put people on the conveyor belt towards condoning or practising violence was the political aspects of the Islamist extremist world view. We needed therefore to focus particularly on arguments such as the claim that the West is engaged in a conspiracy against Muslim people or Muslim countries, or the belief that only those who want an ISIS-style caliphate are true Muslims.
A few days after the Tunisia tragedy, I spoke at the annual Conservative Summer Party, a gathering of our top six hundred donors and supporters. One by one, I took on the sloppy, misguided and dangerous arguments that stood in the way of a robust and thorough response to such terrorism.
It included a call to arms to get behind all those in Muslim communities – the vast majority – who utterly rejected not just violence, but every sentence in the narrative of ISIS. It was about making sure those who condoned, or excused, or ignored parts of this ideology understood precisely what they were giving rise to. I told the audience: ‘We’ve got to show that if you say, “Of course I don’t agree with murder – but I agree building a caliphate is a good thing” … or, “Yes I condemn terror – but frankly, Muslims and Christians can’t really exist together in a successful society” … or, “Violence isn’t justified, but suicide bombs in Israel are a different matter” … If you say these things, think these things, promote these things, you’re advocating the narrative of extremism.’
Such clear thinking would inform my decision-making. And some decisions would be bigger than others.
Back in May 2015 I had held a Ministerial Small Joint Group meeting that tasked the relevant authorities to locate and kill ISIS attack planners. Several targets were identified. The strategy had come back to the NSC, and Michael Fallon authorised the specific operations.
On 21 August 2015, Reyaad Khan, a twenty-one-year-old from Cardiff who had appeared in ISIS propaganda and was plotting attacks on British military commemorations, was killed by an RAF drone in Syria. This was a new departure for our country – the first time a British citizen had been killed by the British state in a country with which the UK was not at war. Another British Jihadi, Ruhul Amin, was also killed in the attack.
Our small group had also agreed with the identification of Junaid Hussain as a target. Along with Khan he had been searching online for people willing to carry out attacks in the UK and worldwide. He was killed in a US airstrike on 24 August (we and the Americans were working hand in glove, sharing the burden, and both ready to strike if the conditions were right).
Then in November, Mohammed Emwazi, ‘Jihadi John’, was killed, also by a US drone. The death of such a prominent and prolific killer was a huge blow to ISIS.
What were the steps that had led us to this point?
I was determined that we should fight back against the terrorists with everything we had, including lethal force. This determination was only strengthened by the horrors of the beheadings that had begun in August 2014. They had to be stopped.
When terrorists operated in countries where we were working directly as allies of their governments, including on the battlefield, this was straightforward.
In Afghanistan, for instance, the international terrorists were also enemy combatants participating in an armed conflict. Our forces could help to target them, and frequently did.
The situation in Pakistan was more complicated, but still manageable. The terrorists were assisting the Taliban against the government in neighbouring Afghanistan, and so were legitimate targets of the US drone programme. So we could support that.
In Yemen, the Americans and Saudi Arabia were also helping a national government in a struggle against a terrorist insurgency. So al-Qaeda operatives were, again, legitimate targets.
But what about places where there was no government, or where we had no allies? I was sure that, even there, we could and should act. I had seen for myself the effectiveness of the US drone programme in Pakistan and Yemen. In both cases it helped to fundamentally weaken the terrorist organisations – principally al-Qaeda – that threatened us all. The US programme had matured over time. Obama was determined that his actions should be seen to be lawful, and shifted the focus from the CIA to military action by uniformed personnel.
Why, I kept asking, weren’t we doing more ourselves, particularly now that the ISIS threat was growing? Why should we accept and work with the US programme, but not supplement it with our own? Surely there would be times when our priorities – and the urgency of hitting some targets – would be subtly different from those of our American friends.
I started to make this argument with our military and intelligence experts. Frequently I would drag them from the NSC discussion around the cabinet table on a Tuesday afternoon into my office next door, where we could have a more private and frank exchange. I wanted us to get into a position where we could act with our own sovereign capability, in concert with the United States, but as a partner providing more of the lethal military capabilities as well as the intelligence.
They responded positively, with candour and can-do. We had the necessary drones, and were getting more. We were key to the intelligence, including on the ground, that could help target those who intended to do us harm. But we needed a plan, operating procedures and clear legal advice. Soon we would have all three.
As well as being the first prime minister since Churchill to have a military adviser in Downing Street, I was also the first to hire a No. 10 legal adviser. I had confidence in the attorneys general that I appointed, but I wanted to know what was and what was not legal as we formulated policy at its earliest stages, not just at the end of the process.
So, in 2014, Andy Hood joined us. He had been a senior legal adviser at the FCO, and immediately made himself indispensable. In 2016 he was replaced in No. 10 by Theo Rycroft, from the attorney general’s office. The position has now become permanently established, which in my view has strengthened both the PM’s effectiveness and the nation’s rule of law.
As I said to the House of Commons in September 2015, the legal advice stated that terrorists plotting to attack our country could be targeted on the basis of self-defence. To pass the legal test for legitimate self-defence, first there needed to be clear evidence that anyone we targeted was planning or directing an imminent armed attack against the UK. And second, we needed to show that any actions we took were necessary and proportionate.
We had the first – and given the circumstances in Syria, we had a strong argument that options other than airstrikes were not available. The Syrian government was not willing or able to prevent attacks by terrorists. If we wanted to disrupt the terrorists’ plans, we would have to do so from the sky.
The pilots of yesteryear put on flying caps and goggles; today, drone operators sit with a joystick and a map. Their professionalism and dedication are every bit as valuable. I saw when I visited their base in Lincolnshire how they followed suspects for hundreds of hours to build up a pattern of their movements. I heard about the meticulous work to avoid civilian casualties or harm to any operatives we or our allies might have on the ground. They knew that our drones were only ever as good as our intelligence. I met the people who followed Reyaad Khan and those following Emwazi.
But while we were now able to confront ISIS members in Syria that threatened our country, the picture in that country more broadly was deeply depressing. And it was about to get worse.
In the summer of 2015 Assad was still in power, still massacring his people, still driving radicalisation. And we were still powerless to intervene militarily. But with his resources being reduced and his army bled dry, we comforted ourselves with the thought that he wouldn’t be able to go on forever.
And then, with no warning, Russia changed the game entirely. On 30 September it intervened directly in the Syrian civil war, putting its aircraft and soldiers on the front line for the first time, in support of Assad’s beleaguered government. The Russians’ public narrative was tha
t they were leading the fight against terrorism. They even released a map that divided Syria into areas controlled by ISIS, the al-Nusra Front (including al-Qaeda) and Kurds. There was no mention of the Free Syrian Army.
This wasn’t surprising. Syria was Putin’s main foothold in the Middle East. The US had effectively opted out of the conflict – and he could opt in and win tactical and strategic advantage, while Iran provided its Shia brothers there with militias. It was another example of the price you can pay by failing to act.
And, wielding his phoney map, Putin could do all this under the guise of ‘defeating ISIS’. The truth was that 80 per cent of the early Russian airstrikes didn’t target ISIS at all, but the armed opposition groups that were weakening Assad.
I got plenty of expert advice that this would be short-lived, and the Russian forces would not be able to sustain their operations because they were still in Ukraine. Obama also believed Russia wouldn’t last the course and that we should leave them to it.
But the bear was mightier than we thought. Putin’s intervention saved Assad, and by the end of 2017 his forces had recaptured Aleppo, and the regime had quadrupled the area under its control. Putin won some international respect from the action taken to drive ISIS out of parts of central Syria. I didn’t doubt that this was one of his motivations for getting involved. Russia, like all of us, was vulnerable to ISIS’s poison. At the end of October 2015, a plane from Sharm el-Sheikh to St Petersburg was bombed by ISIS, killing 224 people.
Two weeks later, Paris was to endure its deadliest attack since the Second World War. A hundred and thirty people were murdered by ISIS in cafés, restaurants, bars and at a rock concert at the Bataclan theatre. The attacks were planned in Syria and organised in Belgium. They were carried out by French, Belgian and Iraqi terrorists, some of whom had fought in Syria and made it back to Europe by travelling, as many had feared, among the hordes of refugees, using false Syrian passports.
This tragedy highlighted the nonsense of the fact that we were acting against ISIS in Iraq, but not in Syria. Syria was where the attacks were being planned and the fighters were being trained. It was the base from which they were radicalising more supporters. ISIS didn’t respect the border between the two countries – to them it was one caliphate. It also showed that drones weren’t enough: we needed manned airpower to go after ISIS forces in general, not just individual targets. Now was our moment, our opportunity, I thought, to change our policy and properly take the fight to ISIS in Syria.
Although the legal advice for drones and airstrikes was the same, for the latter we would need a parliamentary vote. This was the first time since the disastrous vote in 2013 that I felt we might get such a policy through Parliament. The Paris attack had given ISIS renewed relevance. An opinion poll showed that the public supported airstrikes against ISIS in Syria by 59 per cent to 20 per cent. And the UN would soon signal its support. While there would be no Chapter VII resolution specifically authorising force, there would be a Security Council resolution that we should ‘take all necessary measures’ against ISIS. Surely that would prove enough this time for our parliamentarians?
However, there were still factors working against us. While the Lib Dems could be trying as partners in government, at least being in coalition had given us a large majority; now we only had a majority of twelve, which could easily disappear when you considered the Conservative backbenchers’ rebellious tendencies. The SNP’s fifty-four MPs could be counted on to oppose almost any military action. Labour, despite being under the sensible interim leader Harriet Harman, was increasingly left-wing with its new intake. And by the time Parliament met again in September, the party was being led by white-flag-waving pacifist Jeremy Corbyn.
That summer, Gavin Williamson, still my PPS, said that the temptation for Labour MPs to damage me would be too great for such a vote to succeed. He wrote: ‘I personally believe that with the forces that you will have stacked against you, including a minimum of twenty rebels on our side, if not substantially more, a vote on Syrian intervention is a vote that you would lose.’
On 3 November 2015 the Foreign Affairs Select Committee published a report saying: ‘We believe that there should be no extension of British military action into Syria unless there is a coherent international strategy.’ The language – my italics – was pointed: ‘In the absence of such a strategy, taking action to meet the desire to do something is still incoherent.’
The implication frustrated me. We weren’t doing something because we desired to do something – but because we had to do something. Our enemies were plotting death and destruction in Syria – Raqqa was ISIS’s self-declared capital – and we weren’t able to take proper action. The strategy to respond to this threat with airstrikes was entirely coherent.
MPs often find it easier to vote against the process rather than the substance of an issue. Confronted with a question of whether to take military action, you hear a barrage go up: ‘Insufficient time for debate.’ ‘No clear sight of the legal basis for action.’ ‘Failure to respond to the select committee report.’ These are often points people can hide behind so they don’t have to make up their mind about the question of substance: ‘Do you support the bombing of ISIS in Syria or not?’
I was determined not to let these second-order questions get in the way, so I wanted to do everything correctly. I would respond to the report, and put the question of airstrikes to a parliamentary vote.
What we ended up proposing was more restrictive than it could have been. Unlike the Americans and the French, we were limiting ourselves to only striking ISIS, while they could broaden their attacks to include groups affiliated to al-Qaeda.
The chief whip, Mark Harper, did a great job in persuading our MPs and turning Gavin’s predicted rebellion of twenty into single figures. Being careful about the process meant that we won over many Lib Dem and Labour Members by delivering detailed briefings.
There was, however, a screw-up.
The night before the vote I was telling ministers we mustn’t make any exaggerated claims or use language that might put Labour or Lib Dem MPs off supporting the motion. We had to be measured and matter-of-fact.
Then, before seeing the 1922 Committee and giving my final speech to colleagues about why they should support the vote, I had a meeting with the DUP to try to secure their support. Nigel Dodds, their leader in the House, had his doubts, but said that I could count on his support, not least because he knew Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour front bench would be opposing us. ‘I don’t want to go into the lobbies with any terrorist sympathisers,’ as he put it.
I have a bad habit of getting phrases that I’ve heard stuck in my head. And when it came to the peroration of my impassioned 1922 speech to my backbenchers, what did I warn them? ‘Don’t vote alongside Jeremy Corbyn and a bunch of terrorist sympathisers!’
I had been guilty of the very thing I’d told everyone else not to do. It went down a storm in the room, but then of course it leaked. So the following day I sat there on the front bench knowing that my hot-headed speech to the 1922 had ruined what should have been a dignified parliamentary occasion. Labour MP after Labour MP, including moderate and sensible individuals who wanted to back what I was proposing, asked me to withdraw my remarks.
I feared that a withdrawal would drown out everything else in the debate, and would be an even bigger distraction than the original comment. I also suspected that while there was anger across the floor of the House, the votes would still be there. And a large, stubborn part of me thought, hell, Corbyn was a terrorist sympathiser. He praised Hamas and Hezbollah. He invited the IRA for tea after they tried to assassinate the prime minister. He dubbed the death of the world’s most prolific terrorist, Osama bin Laden, a ‘tragedy’ (on a TV channel run by the terrorist-sponsoring Iranian government, which paid him for his appearances). So I stuck to my guns and refused to back down. But inwardly I was kicking myself for such an avoidable error.
There was one MP, however, whose speech carried the day. Sitting next to Corbyn but taking advantage of the free vote, the shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn urged MPs to confront this evil, and with sixty-six of his colleagues sided with the government. It was one of the best speeches I had ever heard in the House of Commons.
Seven of the usual suspects flouted my three-line whip and voted against airstrikes, but 397 MPs to 223 backed airstrikes against ISIS in Syria – a massive majority.
People don’t realise how much this meant to the Americans and our allies like France. They wanted us by their side – not just for the solidarity, but because we could really make a difference. We shouldn’t sub-contract our security to others and rely on their bravery to keep us safe. We had done the right thing. It was a slightly imperfect way of getting there, but we got there in the end.
By the time I left office in July 2016, ISIS in its current form, with its caliphate, was well on the way to defeat. For all the subsequent bluster and boasting of Donald Trump, he was given a war that was well on its way to being won.
There are many regrets you have after you have left office. You see things you put in place coming to fruition – like the virtual elimination of the deficit, the opening of the five-hundredth Free School, the sequencing of the 100,000th genome – and wish they had happened on your watch.
One of my biggest disappointments was not to have been there in July 2017 when Iraqi forces took back Mosul after a long, gruelling battle. Or to see Raqqa seized by brave Kurdish fighters. Or to congratulate Iraq’s prime minister Haider al-Abadi when he announced in December 2017 that his security forces had retaken the last of ISIS’s territory in Iraq, freeing slaves, ending tyranny, averting further death and destruction, and restoring hope to the country.
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