The United Kingdom Independence Party candidate for the 2012 London Mayoral election, Lawrence Webb, has criticised, the Prime Minister, David Cameron for not making his long awaited speech in Holland today. Mr Webb told the me that "David Cameron is using this as a convenient excuse to not give a speech he didn’t want to make". The "this" being the Algerian hostage crisis.
Mr Webb did say on the hostage crisis in Algeria: "There are always inherent risks when doing business in certain parts of the World and parts of (North and West) Africa are particularly dangerous, and whilst the Arab Spring has certainly heralded massive changes in the region it has also made some of these areas more volatile. There are very few perhaps with the exception of Tony Blair who thought much of the late Col Gadhafi, but what he and other leaders in the region did was keep a tight grip on the radical elements within their countries".
Continuing: "Since the fall of the old regimes there has been a growth in the number of heavily armed local militias, and whilst some might be motivated by ideology others motivated purely by profit. As of yet there is no direct connection between events in Mali and Algeria. The media is very quick to label Islamic groups as belonging to Al Qaeda, but Al Qaeda is little more than a franchise, a bit like ‘happy shopper’ and there is often no link whatsoever between the various groups."
Moving on to the reports of British fatalities Mr Webb said: "Any loss of innocent lives is a tragedy but it is too early to speculate as to exactly what happened. The outcome will simply be that the cost of oil production in certain parts of the world will cost more as oil companies are forced to improve security".
He finished by saying of the Prime Minister: "David Cameron is using this as a convenient excuse to not give a speech he didn’t want to make."
