This Changes Not Very Much: Reflections on the state reaction to the Paris murders

“To all those who have seen these awful things, I want to say we are going to lead a war which will be pitiless.” said Francois Hollande after the murders in Paris on November 13^th.[1] It sounded dramatic and the impression we were given by sensational headlines and news reports was (to misappropriate Naomi Klein) ‘this changes everything’. Angela Merkel, Queen Elizabeth II, David Cameron, the Dutch foreign minister and the NATO secretary general were all among those who said they were ‘shocked’ by the murders.[2] Yet, if we look at what Cameron said three days later at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet[3] [insert joke about pigs, snouts and troughs], we see something more real to the facts: “The more we learn about what happened in Paris the more it justifies the approach that we are taking in Britain.” We see that the PM does not see UK’s response as a change in direction but a ‘redoubling’ of efforts for an ‘approach’ Britain was already perusing.