BBC News | PANORAMA | Britain on the Brink

Britain on the Brink - Quotes from the debate

A selection of the best comments from the Panorama debate, Britain on the Brink:

Michael Ancram MP on whether Britain should stand shoulder to shoulder with USA
"If you are an ally, of course you talk to your ally, and you discuss things, but in the end a true ally is somebody who stands by you in the fight, and we've got to make it clear to the Americans that we are not going to be fairweather friends, we are not going to back away half way through."

Michael Ancram MP argues that America should not change foreign policy as a result of the attacks
"That would be saying to the terrorists your action has actually won a result. We used to find this in Northern Ireland. The IRA used to say put a bomb in the City of London and the government will change its policy. It's very, very dangerous to go down that path."

Nicholas Soames MP
"It (America) can be more perhaps realistic in terms of some of its foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East where it can finally, I believe, take the steps that it needs to take to be more even-handed as between the Arabs and the Israelis."

Nicholas Soames
Soames: Expel people who preach terrorism
Bianca Jagger
"If we are going to support military action that will create a humanitarian catastrophe then we have the obligation to receive refugees."

Nicholas Soames MP
"We have in this country now a large number of people who shouldn't be here, whose presence here is damaging to the interests of the United Kingdom and to the safety and security of its people and we need to get rid of them and we need to use the full rigour of the law... these are people who preach terrorism, who preach sedition, who preach against the interests and the security of our country and we shouldn't allow it"

Terrorists take total advantage of our society

Col Bob Stewart
Col Bob Stewart
"Terrorists, and I have been fighting terrorists of one sort or another for most of my army career, terrorists take total advantage of our society, and they cut through it like a knife through butter, they cock-a-snoot at us, they don't care about human lives, they don't care about law, and they use that, and then we have to fight them with our hands tied behind our backs."

Robert Marshall-Andrews MP
"I have never known a police officer, excellent though most of them have been, who have not said at one stage in their lives I am fighting crime with my hand tied behind my back, and they are, and that is part of the price that we pay for the democracy that we live in."


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