It’s high time our virtue-signalling ruling class stopped pandering to people who despise Britain
If YoU ever needed proof that our ruling class is utterly adrift from the rest of Britain, then just look at the reaction to recent comments by two Conservative MPs.
No doubt alarmed by the frightening scenes in Westminster last week, which saw mobs screaming at his fellow MPs and projecting antiSemitic slogans on to Big Ben while police looked feebly on, Lee Anderson, in an intemperate outburst, suggested that ‘Islamists have got control’ of London mayor Sadiq Khan.
His comments were clumsy and wrong: Khan, for all his many faults, is neither an Islamist nor a friend to them. But the public response has been shocking.
After being suspended and savaged by his fellow MPs, Anderson was left to face the wrath of our virtue-signalling ruling class, who lined up like lemmings to denounce the ‘Islamophobia’ and ‘hate’ that, they claimed, lies at the heart of the Tory party.
Apology
Within days another MP, Paul Scully, was forced to issue a grovelling apology after daring to suggest there are ‘ no-go’ areas in parts of East London’s Tower Hamlets, and that some people — mainly Jews — are ‘fearful for going out’ [sic].
Again, no doubt Scully could have chosen his words better.
But the debate around the two men’s comments is deeply revealing.
It shows that the political elite has become disconnected from the concerns of millions of decent, ordinary people, and would much rather we all focused on the unhelpful words of a couple of renegade MPs than on the far more serious threat we face.
I am not talking about ‘ Islamophobia’ ( a sinister coinage used to silence any criticism of Islam).
or ‘hate’ (another all-encompassing word used to dismiss any challenge to the orthodoxy of uncontrolled mass migration).
No, it barely needs saying, but one of the main threats facing our country, our people, our values and our democratic institutions is radical, violent Islamism. And this is what
Anderson and Scully, in their clunky and counterproductive ways, were trying to highlight.
Islamism is the reason our elected politicians are being intimidated, harassed and undermined by an angry mob. It is why Mike freer, the Tory MP for finchley and Golders Green in North London (which contains a large Jewish community) was just hounded out of office, concluding he was no longer safe.
It is why the homes of other MPs have been targeted by protesters — and why police are so reluctant to treat the ‘free Palestine’ radicals with the full force of the law.
It is why the brave and honourable late politician Sir David Amess was stabbed 21 times in his constituency office in 2021, why police officer Keith Palmer was murdered outside Parliament in 2017 and why soldier Lee Rigby was killed and very nearly beheaded in 2013.
I have more examples. Islamism is why a grammar school teacher from Batley, West Yorkshire, is still in hiding after three years amid serious threats to his life.
It is why British Jews are now facing the highest rates of anti-Semitism for decades and why so many of them are thinking of leaving our country, once such a safe haven, altogether.
It is why we’ve spent months watching thousands of people marching through our capital city glorifying the terrorist atrocities committed in Israel on october 7.
And yet, to our elite, Islamism is the threat that dare not speak its name.
Britain still prides itself as a bastion of free speech. You might expect our leaders to be willing to address the fact that, in recent years, more Muslims left Britain to join Islamic State and other Islamist groups than were serving in the British Armed forces.
You might also expect them, like great leaders in our recent past, to take threats to our democracy seriously. But our cowardly ruling class is manifestly too scared to acknowledge what is blazingly obvious to the rest of us: that large numbers of Islamists in this country — either British citizens or recent arrivals — hate who we are, hate what we believe and hate our way of life.
The British people know this. But our leaders are unwilling to address the problem. They are obsessed instead with priorities utterly remote from the rest of the country, instead trying to turn every debate into a lecture on ‘hate’.
Well, it won’t wash for much longer.
We are told in the broadcast media that our MPs face ‘growing security threats’ — but no context for this vague menace is given.
We are sold the fantasy that the ‘far Right’ is our most fearsome domestic enemy, when radical Islam is responsible for the vast majority of terrorist attacks — as well as 80 per cent of the counter terrorism police’s live inquiries.
Slogans
And now this week, again, we are urged to turn our eyes from the racist slogans beamed on to the Mother of Parliaments and instead fret about ‘ Islamophobia’ in the Tory party. What happened to British courage?
Much of this will get worse unless we radically change course. While countless immigrants contribute enormously to our way of life, and the overwhelming majority of British Muslims are decent, law-abiding people, it is also true that tens of thousands of British Muslims have admitted to pollsters they do not want to integrate fully into British life.
They would prefer to live under Sharia law and send their children to Islamic schools. So, what do we do about it?
for a start, we need to encourage new leaders to run for high office: people who admit publicly that the era of
Western nations tolerating hateful extremists who loathe our liberal democracies is over. france last week showed that it is possible by brusquely deporting a radical Tunisian national who appeared to call the tricolour flag ‘satanic’.
Mahjoub Mahjoubi apologised but was expelled less than 12 hours after his arrest using new immigration laws.
We must also dramatically reduce mass immigration and reshape future migration around high- skill, high-wage workers who share, even cherish, our values.
We need to clamp down on illegal migrants entering Britain — most of whom are young men — and establish a genuine third-country deterrent, in Rwanda or somewhere else.
Integration
We also urgently need an unflinching policy of integration, forcing newcomers to adapt to British society and breaking up segregated schools and neighbourhoods.
As brave writers such as Ed Husain have already shown, there are now many areas in this country where, if you are a young British Muslim, you can spend your entire day having barely interacted with the non-Muslim majority. This has to change.
We also need to deport foreign nationals who glorify Islamist terrorism or commit serious crimes. If their countries of origin don’t play ball then we should stop sending these faraway lands taxpayerfunded international aid.
We should also leave any international court or convention which stops us from prioritising the security and safety of the British people over the rights of illegal migrants.
As for British citizens who voice support for radical Islamism, we should make their lives as hard as possible — withdrawing welfare benefits, social housing and state support. If they won’t play by the rules, they should not benefit from them.
It’s high time we drew a line in the sand and stopped pandering to people who despise us. And we must do so now — before it’s too late to save the country we cherish.