Charles Moore
In her “Letter to the Nation” yesterday, Theresa May said that the day of Brexit in March next year “must mark the point when we put aside the labels of ‘leave’ and ‘remain’ and we come together again as one people”. So it should, but we can achieve the “renewal and reconciliation” which she seeks only if the question at stake has been settled. Under her deal, it will not be, because the conditions surrounding the backstop mean that we may never be allowed to leave. Unless we drop the backstop, the fight will continue.
From the other side of the fence, Jean-claude Juncker hails the deal agreed in Brussels because “Britain will not be like other third countries”. That, too, encapsulates the problem. If only we were like other third countries, rather than beholden to future EU approval of our decisions, we could get on with life.
More than 20 years ago, the word Islamophobia got off the ground as a concept in public policy. I remember it happening because I was accused of it in the first report on the subject, produced by the Runnymede Trust in 1997.
Wisely, successive governments have fought shy of giving the word legal force because its meaning is so slippery. Trevor Phillips, who at that time was the chairman of the Runnymede Trust, has now become a prominent critic of such concepts. He worries about the damage they do to free speech.
On Tuesday, an all-party parliamentary group chaired by Lady Warsi who, despite being a Conservative peer, is indefatigable in attacking the Government, will launch a formal definition of Islamophobia. They hope to persuade James Brokenshire, the Communities Secretary, and the Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, to accept it. It is likelier than usual that this might slip through because the Government has no time to think about anything but Brexit.
As I write, Mr Javid, who is from a Muslim family, seems sceptical, and Mr Brokenshire is chary. Both men should stay that way. The idea of Islamophobia derives from the concept – very strong in the Muslim world’s notion of blasphemy – that anything insulting to Islam should be criminalised. The definition of insult likely to be advanced by the group is that anything is Islamophobic which upsets Muslims or makes them feel stigmatised or stereotyped.
Although I strongly believe that all the great world religions deserve respect and need to be studied much more carefully than they are by many who generalise about them, it would be wrong for attacks on Islam (or Christianity, come to that) to be outlawed. In a free society, this should scarcely need saying.
How can we strive to work out what is true if we cannot criticise fiercely versions of the truth with which we do not agree? Take, for example, the Islamic law that Muslims who “apostasise”, ie publicly abandon their faith, should be punished (including by death). I am not threatening Muslims when I say that this is brutal and wrong, no matter how many Muslims Lady Warsi might find to say that they feel hurt. I am expressing a legitimate view. Unfortunately, we increasingly do not live in a free society.
The BBC is currently running, in its own news programmes, an occasional series about “fake news”. Its definition of fake news has a political stance of its own. The one I came across, by chance, one lunchtime was an extremely obscure piece about how, in the Philippines, propagandists were trying to gloss over the evils of the Right-wing Marcos regime in the 1980s. The programme-makers would not have dreamt of reporting the same about, say, Castro’s Cuba.
The BBC itself constantly puts out propaganda in the guise of news. Take its huge increase in reporting of women’s cricket. Women’s cricket is a good thing. But would it, on its sporting merits, make the grade in the tight schedule of a general news programme?
Being no cricket follower myself, I have checked with those who are. They recognise improvement in women’s cricket, and welcome the good people who are popularising the sport, but say the standard of play is, as one buff puts it, either “goodish public-school” or “minor county”.
Yet the BBC bulletins often speak of “England’s cricketers” and mention only later that the item is about women players, as if the sexes were interchangeable. They are not, any more than our much-loved local point-to-point is in the same league as the Grand National. Fake news!
The growth in coffee bars is one of the most remarkable phenomena of our times. More than 2,000 new ones have opened in the past five years. For each new coffee bar, two pubs have shut.
You would think it cannot be much longer before the cappuccino froth is blown off these businesses and lots of them close. There must be some limit to the amount of coffee we will pay more than £3 a shot for. However, a major factor in the modern coffee bar is that it is the workplace of the internet age, containing almost as many laptops as people. At present, internet businesses largely escape business rates while old-style retail pays punitive ones. Therefore, though Starbucks and Costa live on the high street, they make their profits by harbouring its enemies.