They could always get Greece/Italy or Ireland to fill the gap?
Off Topic The Politics Thread
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Bloody hell I am corrected. A first Stroller!
However, you know as well as I do you are only supporting her because if she stays you may get a Labour government or a second referendum. Fortunately for the good of this country, you are clutching at straws
I'm supporting her in getting a deal that is the least damaging for the country.
Right Tory balls up. If it wasn't so serious I would be jumping with joy! Saying that, I honestly don't think any party could deliver with the divisions in each.
It isn’t Islamophobic to criticise Sadiq Khan
Brendan O’Neill
Editor
It is censorious to brand Trump a bigot for criticising the mayor.
A
13 July 2018
288 comments
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Anyone who doubted that the accusation of Islamophobia is used to silence perfectly legitimate political debate will surely change their minds as a result of the Trump / Sadiq spat. In the rush to brand Trump an Islamophobe and a racist merely because he criticised Sadiq Khan’s response to terror attacks, Labour and its media cheerleaders have exposed how much of a conceit the phobia accusation is, how cynical it is, and that it really serves no other purpose than to shush unpopular opinions by slurring them as bigoted.
In his interview with the Sun, Trump, as is his way, had a pop at pretty much everyone. Theresa May. The EU. ‘Soft’ Brexiteers. And the London mayor Sadiq Khan. Trump and Sadiq have been engaged in the global-politics equivalent of a Twitterspat, a camp exchange of insults, for ages now. So it wasn’t surprising that Trump seized the Sun opportunity to re-air his criticism of Sadiq’s response to the two terror attacks in London last year, at Westminster Bridge and London Bridge. ‘I think he has done a very bad job on terrorism. I think he has done a bad job on crime’, said Trump. He also said there is too much immigration into Europe and Britain. No surprise there. Everyone knows he thinks this.
That was it. He didn’t mention Sadiq’s skin colour or his religion. He didn’t mention the mayor’s Pakistani origins. He said nothing about brown people. He didn’t suggest Sadiq was soft on terrorism, far less that he is soft on it because he’s a Muslim – he just said he’s done a bad job on it. And yet for that, Trump has been roundly denounced as Islamophobic. Not just by the usual members of the Twitterati left for whom every criticism of the Koran or mocking of Muhammad is an act of bigotry that must be crushed – even very influential players in the Labour Party have opted to play the shrill identitarian grievance game and have suggested that Trump’s criticism of Sadiq is by definition racist and anti-Muslim.
Trump is saying that Sadiq is ‘responsible for terrorism’, says Labour’s shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry. He didn’t say that, though. He simply said Sadiq has done a bad job on terrorism – the same way many, many people said Tony Blair did a bad job on terrorism and may even have stoked it up with his foreign interventions. Trump’s comment on Sadiq is ‘Islamophobia and it is racist’, Thornberry said.
Labour MP David Lammy said, ‘The real reason Trump blames my friend Sadiq Khan for the terror attacks last year’ – he didn’t do that! – ‘is simple. He hates that London chose a Muslim mayor.’ Lammy offers no evidence for this. But why should he? In the increasingly grating grievance politics of identity and victimhood, proof counts for nought and inference is always enough. Criticise Islam, you hate Muslims. Wonder about the wisdom of mass immigration, you’re racist. It’s automatic. Maybe I’m racist for criticising David Lammy.
Dawn Butler, Labour spokesperson on equality, slammed Trump’s ‘ugly dog-whistle politics’. In short, she can’t prove that his comments on Sadiq were racist, but she can imply that they contain some kind of secret code that will be audible to more vulgar Britons – the ‘dogs’ in that analogy – who will have their innate ‘Islamophobia’ stirred up by their American master. This genuinely prejudiced view – that Trump could provoke the uncouth underbelly of British society to acts of hatred or violence – is now widespread online.
Everything about this dash to brand Trump an Islamophobe for criticising the London mayor is worrying. It confirms that the chattering-class concern with Islamophobia is not about protecting Muslims from genuine discrimination or violence (both of these things are already illegal), but rather is about ringfencing Islam and all Muslims from criticism, surrounding this one religion with a blasphemy-deflecting forcefield. So any commentary on Islam or even on influential Muslims can be casually batted aside as ‘phobic’. Even worse, today’s spat shows that now political debate, never mind differences on religion, can be demonised with the Islamophobia brand. Is it Islamophobic to criticise Sadiq? Must we all hold our tongue because he is of Asian and Muslim origin? Isn’t that, erm, a little racist – treating a brown-skinned politician more gently and cautiously than you would a white one?
And this is worrying because of what it tells us about the Corbyn-led Labour Party: that it has been swallowed up by the infantile politics of grievance, identity and offence-taking. These are no longer traits limited to the so-called ‘snowflake’ generation or people in academia – rather, political parties themselves now embrace and weaponise overblown identitarian sensitivity and self-pity in order to chill political criticism, silence certain opinions, and exercise greater control over what it is permissible to say in public life. People are using Trump’s visit to talk up the division and crisis he has apparently visited upon the American republic, but right now I am more worried by the insight we are getting into the further drift of British political life into the elitism and censoriousness of identity politics.
Brendan O’Neill
Brendan O’Neill
Editor
It is censorious to brand Trump a bigot for criticising the mayor.
A
13 July 2018
288 comments
Facebook Twitter Email Addthis185Share
Get spiked by email
Anyone who doubted that the accusation of Islamophobia is used to silence perfectly legitimate political debate will surely change their minds as a result of the Trump / Sadiq spat. In the rush to brand Trump an Islamophobe and a racist merely because he criticised Sadiq Khan’s response to terror attacks, Labour and its media cheerleaders have exposed how much of a conceit the phobia accusation is, how cynical it is, and that it really serves no other purpose than to shush unpopular opinions by slurring them as bigoted.
In his interview with the Sun, Trump, as is his way, had a pop at pretty much everyone. Theresa May. The EU. ‘Soft’ Brexiteers. And the London mayor Sadiq Khan. Trump and Sadiq have been engaged in the global-politics equivalent of a Twitterspat, a camp exchange of insults, for ages now. So it wasn’t surprising that Trump seized the Sun opportunity to re-air his criticism of Sadiq’s response to the two terror attacks in London last year, at Westminster Bridge and London Bridge. ‘I think he has done a very bad job on terrorism. I think he has done a bad job on crime’, said Trump. He also said there is too much immigration into Europe and Britain. No surprise there. Everyone knows he thinks this.
That was it. He didn’t mention Sadiq’s skin colour or his religion. He didn’t mention the mayor’s Pakistani origins. He said nothing about brown people. He didn’t suggest Sadiq was soft on terrorism, far less that he is soft on it because he’s a Muslim – he just said he’s done a bad job on it. And yet for that, Trump has been roundly denounced as Islamophobic. Not just by the usual members of the Twitterati left for whom every criticism of the Koran or mocking of Muhammad is an act of bigotry that must be crushed – even very influential players in the Labour Party have opted to play the shrill identitarian grievance game and have suggested that Trump’s criticism of Sadiq is by definition racist and anti-Muslim.
Trump is saying that Sadiq is ‘responsible for terrorism’, says Labour’s shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry. He didn’t say that, though. He simply said Sadiq has done a bad job on terrorism – the same way many, many people said Tony Blair did a bad job on terrorism and may even have stoked it up with his foreign interventions. Trump’s comment on Sadiq is ‘Islamophobia and it is racist’, Thornberry said.
Labour MP David Lammy said, ‘The real reason Trump blames my friend Sadiq Khan for the terror attacks last year’ – he didn’t do that! – ‘is simple. He hates that London chose a Muslim mayor.’ Lammy offers no evidence for this. But why should he? In the increasingly grating grievance politics of identity and victimhood, proof counts for nought and inference is always enough. Criticise Islam, you hate Muslims. Wonder about the wisdom of mass immigration, you’re racist. It’s automatic. Maybe I’m racist for criticising David Lammy.
Dawn Butler, Labour spokesperson on equality, slammed Trump’s ‘ugly dog-whistle politics’. In short, she can’t prove that his comments on Sadiq were racist, but she can imply that they contain some kind of secret code that will be audible to more vulgar Britons – the ‘dogs’ in that analogy – who will have their innate ‘Islamophobia’ stirred up by their American master. This genuinely prejudiced view – that Trump could provoke the uncouth underbelly of British society to acts of hatred or violence – is now widespread online.
Everything about this dash to brand Trump an Islamophobe for criticising the London mayor is worrying. It confirms that the chattering-class concern with Islamophobia is not about protecting Muslims from genuine discrimination or violence (both of these things are already illegal), but rather is about ringfencing Islam and all Muslims from criticism, surrounding this one religion with a blasphemy-deflecting forcefield. So any commentary on Islam or even on influential Muslims can be casually batted aside as ‘phobic’. Even worse, today’s spat shows that now political debate, never mind differences on religion, can be demonised with the Islamophobia brand. Is it Islamophobic to criticise Sadiq? Must we all hold our tongue because he is of Asian and Muslim origin? Isn’t that, erm, a little racist – treating a brown-skinned politician more gently and cautiously than you would a white one?
And this is worrying because of what it tells us about the Corbyn-led Labour Party: that it has been swallowed up by the infantile politics of grievance, identity and offence-taking. These are no longer traits limited to the so-called ‘snowflake’ generation or people in academia – rather, political parties themselves now embrace and weaponise overblown identitarian sensitivity and self-pity in order to chill political criticism, silence certain opinions, and exercise greater control over what it is permissible to say in public life. People are using Trump’s visit to talk up the division and crisis he has apparently visited upon the American republic, but right now I am more worried by the insight we are getting into the further drift of British political life into the elitism and censoriousness of identity politics.
Brendan O’Neill
Whatever you want to call it, Ellers is just blaming the EU for sticking to their strategy of giving us a bad deal. If they believe that is the best thing for them, why is ellers pretty much putting the whole blame on them rather than not criticising the tories for not walking away from the deal of a soft brexit.
At the end of the day, its up to our government to do what is necessary. If ellers, doesn't think that the current government to performing the brexit that he wants, then he should be blaming them and not the EU for not letting us have a deal we want.
Of course yaddah yaddah.
They turned down our proposal to negotiate on trade first before deciding the money. The EU then,most unreasonably, asked us to settle up first. They then turned down our proposal to pay tuppence ha'penny instead of the £40 million owed. In the meantime, the government got it spectacularly wrong by calling an election to strengthen their hand when they did not need to, trying to sidestep Parliament on a flawed idea of the constitution which an A-level law student would have realised was cobblers. It took a year and a bit to get to that stage.
Since then, not sure what proposal has been put forward by Buffoon Davies, the schoolmistress or the wild idiot who was in the Foreign Office which actually was a proposal about the Northern Ireland border, the ECJ , sovereignty , customs borders because the government otherwise known as the TORIES have been waging civil war. There's been a lot of posturing and press releases and wish lists but the only thing that has actually been issued so far as I can remember are press releases by 57 different Tory spokesmen putting forward their own views of what should be done and what they believe unites the party. When they can sort themselves out, agree on a proposal to put to Barnier you can come back and have another go. I do so enjoy your little speeches.
So far as I can see the only thing the EU are doing is to keep pointing to their watches and the calendar on the wall. But yeah tell me time and again it's all the EU's fault for looking after themselves rather than their soon to be former member.
yeah have another one
It's amusing to see people who are apparently incapable of accepting the result of one referendum trying to tell us that they will genuinely honour the result of a second, regardless of the outcome, if only they can tweak the rules a bit more, honest...
It's amusing to see people who are apparently incapable of accepting the result of one referendum trying to tell us that they will genuinely honour the result of a second, regardless of the outcome, if only they can tweak the rules a bit more, honest...
You cannot please everyone..or even most people...or even a minority. Let's face it you cannot please anyone.....
No one will be happy with anything.
What a mess
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I think it's best for us to leave the EU, but 100% stay right in there...
This is why I could not bring myself to vote in our referendum in the 1st place, but right now with this very slow and very boring car crash that leaving seems to be I would have voted stay in 100% tbh
This is why I could not bring myself to vote in our referendum in the 1st place, but right now with this very slow and very boring car crash that leaving seems to be I would have voted stay in 100% tbh
Totally echo that mate. Stated a 1000 times that I didn't understand what was involved in leaving hence not voting. Don't personally know one single leave voter who based his vote on what is potentially going to happen. Lose lose for everyone really.I think it's best for us to leave the EU, but 100% stay right in there...
This is why I could not bring myself to vote in our referendum in the 1st place, but right now with this very slow and very boring car crash that leaving seems to be I would have voted stay in 100% tbh
Bobby if you are going to say stuff about me at least do the decent thing and get it right. That fact that someone has actually liked your post is also a concern...hang on it's only Bob, so that's okay.
go back and read what I have said. You should work for Sky News fella.
Don’t think Bob has said anything wrong and the kid can do his 73 times table in his head so I trust him.
Not (So far) on this mini vote. When a nation wakes up and realises it has made a gargantuan, colossal error, it should have the right to remedy that.
I don't what's worse liking it once or wanting to like it twice?
