Douglas Murray

Despite the ‘Leave’ and ‘Remain’ campaigns rightly halting as soon as the news of the savage murder of Jo Cox MP came through, some people could not pass up the opportunity to press what they saw as a political advantage.  The campaign for Britain to leave the EU may have been silent, but EU officials were not.  A day after the murder the German Chancellor Angela Merkel made a call for all sides in the referendum to respect the opinions of others: ‘Otherwise, the radicalisation will become unstoppable.  Exaggerations, and radicalisation of part of the language, do not help foster an atmosphere of respect.

After last week’s featherweight entrants, we were onto some seriously heavyweight fibs this week. In truth there were only two contenders in this week’s EU dishonesty stakes. The first was Jeremy Corbyn’s lacklustre attempt to explain why after a lifetime’s Euroscepticism he is backing ‘Remain’. Here is how the BBC captured the excitement of Corbyn’s speech: ‘The Labour leader said the EU could "deliver positive change" on issues ranging from mobile phone charges to clean beaches and protecting bees.’ Gosh. Well sign me up. Of course all the brightest and most honourable members of the Labour party – Frank Field, Gisela Stuart, Kate Hoey – are campaigning for ‘Leave’.

This has been another fine week for EU deceits, lies and misrepresentations. The chutzpah of the week award must go to Nicky Morgan who earlier this week ‘slammed’ Boris Johnson. Last month the former Mayor of London had urged gay people to vote to Leave the EU and specifically not to believe the lie that gay rights only exist in Britain because of the EU. As Boris pointed out, such rights come from ‘our courts and Parliament’ and not from Europe. Although this is a sectional argument, Boris was responding to an argument that can be heard across wider society. That argument claims that if Britain left the EU all human rights could be stripped away by a future Tory / Labour / SNP government who will then be allowed to crucify us all Isis-style.

The USA has a new CVE (Countering Violent Extremism) strategy. It is a typically curious document. I wonder in fact if the key to it does not lie in the foreword by John Kerry, which is accompanied by a photograph of the Secretary of State looking strangely stoned. Although in that foreword Secretary Kerry claims that ‘our challenge is dynamic’, he seems to have got that all the wrong way around. Certainly America’s enemies are dynamic. But on the evidence of this document the US government is quite supremely blissed-out. For instance, readers will be unsurprised to learn that in this 12-page document purporting to deal with one of the great security issues of our time, the word ‘Islam’, let alone ‘Muslim’, does not appear once.

I’m pleased to announce that we have a winner of The Spectator’s President Erdogan Offensive Poetry competition, and here it is: There was a young fellow from Ankara Who was a terrific wankerer Till he sowed his wild oats With the help of a goat But he didn’t even stop to thankera. The author of this winning entry is former Mayor of London and chief Brexiteer, Boris Johnson MP. The Spectator Podcast: Douglas Murray discusses Boris Johnson's poem   I am sure there will be those who claim this is a stitch-up. I am aware that Boris’s entry - which came via an interview by the Spectator's Rome correspondent Nick Farrell and the Swiss journalist Urs Gehriger for Die Weltwoche - commits two solecisms.

According to David Cameron this morning, if Britain votes to ‘Leave’ the EU on 23 June, the Germans will invade Belgium, the Russians will invade Crimea (again), and we’ll all have to spend the coming years re-learning the finer details of the Schleswig-Holstein question. The Prime Minister’s latest attempt to warn of apocalypse in the case of Brexit has one huge flaw.  In his latest scare-speech this morning he said: ‘Can we be so sure that peace and stability on our continent are assured beyond any shadow of doubt? Is that a risk worth taking? I would never be so rash as to make that assumption.’ Well nothing is ever assured.  But how could anybody still think that peace and stability in Europe are remotely assured by the EU?

If I were the Conservative party I’d be getting worried: Labour’s implosion is happening too fast. At this rate they could fall apart and regroup in time to go into the next election with a respectable leader. Everybody knows the latest developments. Naz Shah MP was found to have said some anti-Semitic things on social media. After some bitter internal wrangling she was suspended from the party. Fellow MP Rupa Huq tried to come to her defence and compared anti-Semitism to any old mishap. And then Ken Livingstone smoothed it all over by talking about which of Hitler’s policies he thinks Zionists agree with.

The former head of the UK Equality and Human Rights Commission has once again said the ‘unsayable’.  In a piece for the Sunday Times (ahead of a Channel 4 documentary to go out on Wednesday) Trevor Phillips unveils an in-depth new poll carried out by ICM (which can be viewed here). The findings include the facts that: 23 percent of British Muslims polled support the idea of there being areas of the UK where sharia law is introduced instead of British law. 39 percent believe wives should always obey their husbands. 31 percent believe it is acceptable for British Muslims to keep more than one wife. 52 percent think homosexuality should be illegal in the UK. The usual people are trying to find ways to quibble with the authority or depth of this poll.