14Kelly’s Eye

LEE Anderson is suspended from the Conservative party for “Islamophobia” after claiming that Islamists had “got control” of London Mayor Sadiq Khan.

For what it’s worth – and despite not being able to abide Khan, who rarely misses an opportunity to indulge in identity politics

– I think Anderson is wrong on this occasion.

He was instantly branded a racist for his remarks too, despite the fact that Islam is a religion, not a race. And as religion is a choice, it should be as subject to scrutiny and ridicule as anything else in a society that prizes free speech.

Though the very uncomfortable truth, which none of us likes to acknowledge, is that that’s no longer true in the case of one religion.

Contrast the rush to adverse judgment on Anderson with the coverage given to the case of Harley Street gynaecologist Dr Dimitrios Psaroudakis. He sent various offensive messages to colleagues, including one saying that Hammersmith in London would benefit from being “Jewfree”.And the punishment from the General Medical Council for such anti-Semitism? A three-month suspension, accompanied by the tribunal’s shifty evasion that the doctor was not racist but “comfortable with using discriminatory language”.

Can you doubt that had this charmer expressed an equivalent desire to see Hammersmith black or Muslim-free it would have been one of the lead items on BBC or ITV News?

As I said last week, we are normalising one type of racism as simply something we must accept as part of modern Britain. Like those MPs compromised by last week’s Gaza folly in the House of Commons, the unspoken deal is that by doing so we might avoid the attentions of Islamist extremism. Ultimately the result will be the precise opposite.