Article published in The Spectator Australia, Saturday 17 March 2018.  © Richard Kemp 

He died in 1900, but my great grandfather, Archibald Richardson, outback explorer and early Rockhampton pioneer, is even today spoken of with respect in central Queensland. To me though he is a grave disappointment. I’ve been bragging about being descended from a criminal transported to the Australian colonies. But I learn from the Rockhampton Historical Society that Richardson made the journey of his own volition, destroying any street cred I had down under.

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Shortly after I arrive in Sydney news breaks that Israeli intelligence foiled an Islamic terror plot to blow up a passenger plane flying out of here last year. I know of many other times Israeli intelligence has saved the lives of Australians – as well as Brits, Americans and Europeans – in our cities and on the battlefields of Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. The Israelis are not alone in their impressive track record against jihadists. The ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence system enables seamless cooperation between Australian, New Zealand, British, US and Canadian services. Asio and Asis, like their MI5 and MI6 counterparts in the UK, have prevented many more terrorist plots than have succeeded.

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In TV and radio studios I’m asked the question: what do we do about Islamic State returners? My answer is the one I give in Britain: ban them. They chose to join an orgy of mass murder, torture and rape in the Middle East; let the ones we cannot kill with airstrikes rot there rather than return and threaten people here. To snowflakes who complain this breaches their human rights, I reply that no sane government would allow the rights of these savages to take priority over those of their innocent Australian victims.

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Europe could learn a thing or two from Australia about putting a stop to the mass illegal immigration that jihadist groups use as a Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Express, Wednesday 7 March 2018.  © Richard Kemp 

We do not yet know who poisoned Colonel Sergei Skripal in Salisbury. But there are many similarities with the assassination of Alexander Litvinenko on the orders of the Russian government in 2006.

Russian President Vladimir Putin described Skripal and other spies exchanged in a swap with the West as ‘traitors’ who ‘will kick the bucket’.

He said they ‘betrayed their friends; their brothers in arms. Whatever they got in exchange – those 30 pieces of silver – they will choke on them’.

It is Putin’s aggression that must be choked. In 2014 he annexed the Crimea, territory of another sovereign state.

Today he poses such a threat to Nato members in the East that Britain and her allies are compelled to deploy forces to the Baltic states and the Black Sea to deter him.

Russia’s intervention in Syria has kept in power a murderous regime that most Western and Arab governments and the Syrian people want removed.

Russia is also backing Iran, the greatest threat to world peace and the number one state supporter of terrorism.

Whatever you may think of President Trump, unlike his predecessor he is prepared to support his allies and stand up to those who threaten them.

But Britain, Europe and the free world must pull their weight too. Not only by force, but also by diplomacy. President Putin is entering another election, which he is set to win.

Russians are football mad and looking forward to the World Cup.

We should cancel it and relocate to a nation that does not sanction the murder of its citizens overseas, rattle its nukes, support a genocidal war criminal, back ayatollahs who seek to foment conflict across the Middle East, annex sovereign territory and threaten violence against its neighbours.

Such a message to the Russian people and to the president whom they continue to support in droves may be even more powerful and cost less blood than the alternative that is bound to come sooner or later.