̶ Chris Doyle, director of Council for Arab British Understanding

European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group in the European Parliament, which includes center-right parties like the UK’s ruling Conservative Party.

Doyle added that the Conservatives should “seriously question” being allies in the European Parliament with a party which has such extremist views.

Benjamin Martill, Dahrendorf Fellow in Europe after Brexit at LSE, told Arab News: “The sources of these policies are not difficult to discern. Communities across Europe, reeling from years of wage stagnation and austerityinduced cuts to public services, are looking for someone to blame. Blaming immigrants, Muslims and other nations for society’s problems is scapegoating, pure and simple.”

Martill said the implications for the Conservative party are ‘interesting.’

The LSE fellow said that to suggest the Conservative party would endorse any such policy is “clearly very far-fetched.”

He said: “Whilst the statements of some Conservative backbenchers do express nationalist and sometimes Islamophobic sentiments, these are generally in the minority, and tend to be quite indirect

“Amongst all her bluster about a ‘great global Britain,’ Theresa May’s statements … have been very supportive of Britain’s multicultural heritage.”

However, Martell said the DPP’s latest call for a mosque ban should cause the Conservatives some pause for thought, “since it highlights just how radical Tory euroskepticism is relative to other political systems across Europe.

“That the Conservative rejection of European integration is mirrored on the continent only by populist and (quasi-) fascist parties should prompt some difficult questions about the friends the government keeps and the severity of its anti-European posture,” he said.