What is the point of an ‘anti-Muslim hostility tsar’?

Derrida et al were right. The written English language (langue) can be vague and elliptical and the intended meaning not always assured.

Back in about 1980, when I was working as a reporter for the South Wales Echo, the paper’s cartoonist, Gren, got himself into terrible trouble. I ought to add that Gren was a legend in South Wales, a brilliant cartoonist and a very charming man. Anyway, it had just been announced that a Rape Advice Centre was opening in Cardiff. Gren’s cartoon depicted a man with his trousers around his ankles in a phone box, while behind him you could just see a woman’s legs, supine, emerging from a bush. The man was saying: ‘Hallo? Rape Advice Centre? What do I do next?’ Ooh, the fury unleashed – but Gren, when I saw him, looked bemused. ‘It was the wording I was mocking,” he said, shaking his head.

I wonder if the same problem will beset our new ‘anti-Muslim hostility tsar’. The syntax suggests to me that this will be someone who oversees anti-Muslim hostility and that, as a kind of ombudsman, he or she might be petitioned to encourage more of it. His annual report would highlight in glowing terms where most of the hostility took place and how year-on-year there had been great strides forward in spreading the hatred across the country. I do not think we need a tsar, or a satrap, or an aja, or a prince and worry that the appointment will have a seriously adverse impact on freedom of speech. But if we do have one, at least make it clear what his purpose is.