Death by drone is not justice

I WOULD cheerfully bring back the death penalty tomorrow, as long as it came with unanimous grown-up juries and a restored right to silence.

But I’d never seen David Cameron as an ally in this. When it comes to defending us against actual heinous murderers in Britain, Mr Cameron (like most politicians) is an excuse-making anti-gallows liberal softie.

How does he square this with his enthusiasm for executing people without trial in the middle of someone else’s desert, using a remote-controlled chunk of high-explosive?

No doubt the victims of this are not very nice, though nothing resembling evidence has been produced against them. But that shouldn’t blind us to the principle involved. If we think killing people we don’t like with drones in other countries is legal and OK, we have licensed everyone else to do the same, even to us, here.

It is all part of a confused and delusional policy towards Syria and ISIS. George Osborne, the Chancellor, still seems to want to attack Syria’s President Assad, whose army is now one of the main barriers against an ISIS victory.

Last week he said Parliament’s vote not to bomb Assad in 2013 was ‘one of the worst decisions the House of Commons has ever made’.

On the contrary, if we had bombed Assad then, we would have helped the people who soon afterwards became ISIS. Given this confusion at the highest level, Parliament should be very careful not to allow Mr Osborne and Mr Cameron to make the same mistake again.