Jonathan Powell:- "Neocons put national security first, but unlike the myopic "realists" (many of whom also supported the liberation of Iraq, e.g. Henry Kissenger) realize that our national security is better served by living in a world of liberal democracies than a world of oppressive dictatorships." This statement seems too trivial to contest; we are less likely to be attacked if other nations are democracies, because their governments will have to justify the expense and loss of life to their own citizenry resultant from any conflict. There is, however, a substantial oversight in the implication of your argument. For the imposition of democracy necessitates the use of force, and the use of force to govern a country - as is necessary in the absence of popular government - understandably creates resentment amongst the population. It is myopia to deny that several thousand casualties of innocent civilians prompt a retributive and aggressive retaliation by their family and friends. To do so would imply that the retributive response of the US against Osama Bin Laden and other terrorist leaders was unjustified. But just as the families of victims of 9/11 seek to bring the perpetrator to justice, so do the families of the victims of 'collateral damage' seek to retaliate against the perpetrator. It is a natural human response, not ideological dogma, which turns people against those that kill their relatives - on purpose or on accident. That, in the absence of a state military capacity such as the US possesses against Al Qaeda, people turn to some other means of retribution - suicide bombings, IEDs or kidnappings - is not a result of their indelible 'hatred of freedom' and intrinsic 'Islamo-fascism,' but their desperation. The process of 'democratising' a nation makes us the perpetrators of these civilian casualties, and, when the the concrete threat to our security - that is, the British mainland and its overseas possessions - from Saddam Hussein or Mahmood Ahmadinejad is literally none, the price we pay for removing them is to create a market for anti-Western propaganda. That this takes the form of Islamism, instead of Communism or Nationalism, is incidental to the country we invade and the traditions there. To return to your analogy, we could have stepped in earlier against Hitler before he was capable of harnessing Blitzkreig sequentially against his neighbours; or we could have prevented his rise in the first place, by refusing to engage in collective punishment which ignored the hardships of many people with whom we had quarrel. From the embarrassment and financial impositions of the Versailles Treaty, to the crippling occupation of the Ruhr, the collapse of the German currency and the widespread violence against the population by French troops, our collective punishment of the German people created an understandably retaliatory mentality which found its expression, lo and behold, through the most popular politician of the age. The most infuriating expression that captures the historical ignorance of the neoconservative movement is "the post 9/11 world." Recognising, just as "the post 1933" world was a product of the pre 1933 world, so the fight against terrorism must be executed in a manner that learns whence popular support for terrorist groups, like Hezbollah, Al Qaeda and Hamas, come, and alters strategy accordingly. It does not come from any inherent 'hatred of freedom,' but from the tangible destruction that is wrought by the enemies of these peoples - viz the West - in their attempt to rationalise and impose historical models on development by force. If we blindly refuse to connect cause and effect, we will continue to suffer from the well minded but necessarily destructive process of foreign intervention.

David (17:31): Fascism always had an appeal for the British romantic right, in a way that National Socialism did not. Churchill was not, initially incensed about Fascism. Exactly right. Though it is preferable to pretend that Churchill was a bastion of moderate conservatism, he himself conceded, "If I were Italian, I should don the fascist black shirt." Historically, that fact cannot be ignored, so perhaps a rephrasal of the title - to "Was Churchill right to fight Nazism?" would be more appropriate. Though Oliver McCarthy is wrong to assert that fascism implies "racist imperialism, ... the targeted bombing of civilians, ... the use of poison gas to kill women and children", and indeed is wrong that Churchill espoused the first and final of these statements (for his culpability over civilian bombings is undeniable), he is correct, historically, that "Churchill didn't fight against fascism, he fought against Germany", or rather, that Churchill didn't fight in order to fight fascism, but to fight German expansionism and its threat to Great Britain.

Newsnight is amongst the worst of the BBC's offenders. Though attracting a justifiably-low audience, I intermittently watch/listen, and was shocked about this week's piece on public services in Cuba, where the reporter waxes lyrical over free education for doctors (comparing it with a totally fallacious US medical student who announces that the same education in America would cost $200,000) amongst other things. What surprised me the most about this report was this absolutely genuine, verbatim conclusion: Some of this country's admirable healthcare record is based on very Cuban factors. First, it's not a liberal democracy, so if the ruling Communist Party decides that any health policy is worth pursuing, they don't exactly have to worry about cliffhanger votes in parliament.(!) It's also got a wage structure that suits its shrunken national income. Here, doctors earn around 25 US dollars a month. And then there's the fact that the 44 year old US embargo (Anti-americanism) means that rationing is still in place, so - as happened in Britain during the Second World War - people tend to eat a pretty balanced diet. Cuba is a developing world country, constricted by all sorts of (Communist) rules of regulations and crushed by the American embargo, its economy is in a real mess... If coming here and exploring the health system teaches you anything, it's that there's actually all kinds of things we can learn.

The obvious major issue is the pledge. We will leave the EPP. That is unequivocal, and there is no room for spin or backtracking. This is a matter of trust. Whether one agrees with this pledge or not, it was made, and it cannot be unmade. So far, Mr Cameron has asked us to take him on trust. So far, we have. This is THE test. How far do we have to take him on trust before he delivers his promise? He promised to leave the EPP: not to investigate leaving it, determined by the domestic politics of possible allies. If Cameron is incapable of delivering this pledge before the end of the year, with or without a new grouping, he will have lost both the Eurosceptic wing pf the party and the general public's trust in his credibility as a principled alternative. If David Cameron cannot deliver on a small coalition of Eurosceptic parties in Brussels, can he be trusted to conservatively lead government any better than Blair?

What useful influence does the conservative group have within the EPP ? Surely it is better to leave the EPP, show some independence and do something right. If nobody, on this site at least, seems to think that ideologically membership of the EPP is justified for the Conservative Party, why does Cameron have difficulty leaving this grouping? The case isn't made, in any of the above comments, in favour of positive Conservative membership of the EPP, and when such consensus is reached and a leadership candidate explicitly promises this popular policy, how can he benefit from reneging on it? It seems to me that the membership's attitude is wholely inconsistent; when, in a recent survey, site members were asked if, in the case of a hung parliament, the Tories should coalesce with the Lib Dems in order to govern, only 15% supported the proposal. If Tory MPs can't sit with integrationist Liberals at Westminister, despite the political advantage that would be conferred thereby, why can they in Brussels? To jettison the position of the natinal leadership and most MEPs to get more floor time in the EU parliament barely seems justifiable. It cannot feasibly and politcally be advantageous for David Cameron to break his only pre-leadership promise and prompt internal conflict just as Labour are on the verge of imploding.