Douglas Murray

[audioplayer src="http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/thereturnofassisteddying/media.mp3" title="Lord Falconer and Douglas Murray debate 'assisted dying'" startat=42] Listen [/audioplayer]A couple of years ago I contacted Holland’s top pro-euthanasia organisation. Our House of Lords looks likely to approve a bill legalising euthanasia here, I told them. ‘Very exciting!’ came the reply. Next month Parliament will again be discussing ‘assisted dying’, and although the tone of the British debate is not yet quite like the Dutch one, a shift in tone has undoubtedly occurred. In the past few years euthanasia has been renamed ‘assisted dying’ and become part of the ‘progressive’ cause.

The Times today reports that leading Muslim clerics in the UK are warning that 'religious sectarianism is on the rise in Britain's Muslim community and threatens to spill over into violent crime and terrorism'.  An investigation by the paper 'found a sharp but largely hidden rise in sectarian tensions between the minority Shia community and the dominant Sunni groups'. I must say that I am shocked - really shocked - by this.  Like everyone else, I had always assumed that if you allowed very large numbers of people with totally different beliefs into this country then in no time they would be down the local pub and fully integrated loyal members of the Women's Institute and their local Anglican church.

I didn’t have very high hopes for ‘Life In Squares’ (the BBC three-parter about the Bloomsbury circle which concluded this week).  But the first episode stuck me as promising.  The second faltered, and the third was rushed and anti-climactic.  Nevertheless it was all much better than expected, with some strong performances. The main reason for advance pessimism was a certainty that the programme-makers would try to woo their audience with lashings of sex.  I don’t know why programme-makers do this.  It’s like nudity in opera.  Nobody who wants to see nudity has to go to BBC 2 on a Monday evening and watch a drama on the Bloomsbury Group to get it. And the people who are already there are unlikely to be coming much for that.

Every age has people protected by a certain ‘halo effect’? At points in the past members of the clergy might have been said to enjoy the advantage. More recently it would appear that celebrities were the ones who could get away with anything. We like to think we are beyond all this now – and it’s true that we’re wise to cardinals, priests, politicians and disc-jockeys. But our own blind-spots haven’t gone away – they’ve just changed. It has often occurred to me that if you wanted to perform any great con trick these days you could do no better than to have a hard to pronounce name, wear achingly ethnic clothing and cultivate a sort of 'mother earth' persona.

Friends of mine who still call themselves ‘liberals’ or ‘leftists’ occasionally confide in me that they think the left might be screwed.  Depending on how I feel on that particular day I tend to reply either that (a) they must stay and fight their political corner and make the left decent again or (b) one day they will realise that this is because the left is wrong. Anyhow – evidence for the (b) answer seems to grow by the day. The Labour leadership race aside, consider the Guardian newspaper, which is a pretty good weathervane for what has gone wrong with the left.  In the last fortnight the paper has interviewed two prominent British Muslims.

The literary emissions of the left are hardly ever enjoyable, but they can be instructive. Last year Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century became one of the biggest-selling political books of the year. Like a thousand-page Soviet report on tractor production, it hardly seemed intended to be read. The point of its success was that it could be said to ‘prove’ the left’s argument. They could then hit their opponents over the head with it and move to the next stage. Last year they questioned some premises of capitalism and now Paul Mason, the economics editor of Channel 4 News (and Spectator diarist), is here to say that capitalism is in fact over.

Bad news from the continent.  In an interview with the German weekly Stern, Laurent ‘Riss’ Sourisseau, the editor-in-chief of Charlie Hebdo, announced that he would no longer draw cartoons of any historical figure called Mohammed. This follows his former colleague Renald ‘Luz’ Luzier saying a couple of months back that he would no longer draw Mohammed either. ‘Luz’ announced that he was leaving the magazine shortly afterwards. I don’t judge either of them for this decision. ‘Luz’ happened to be running late for work on the morning that the Kouachi brothers forced their way into the Charlie Hebdo offices and started shooting his colleagues.

Is being gay ‘left-wing’?  You wouldn’t have thought so.  If being gay is something which some people just are then there is no obvious reason why gays should not be of every political persuasion and none.  Why should the fact that you are attracted to members of the same sex mean that you are in favour of higher taxes?  Or entirely open borders?  Should being gay affect your attitude towards the European Union (in any case hardly a left/right question)? I ask because this weekend the annual ‘Gay Pride’ event happens in London and the organisers have tried to ban Ukip from attending.  The sweeping generalisation – not to mention political presumption – that this reveals is extraordinary.

Each year Anjem Choudary earns more in benefits than a soldier does starting off in our armed forces. This is a fact I never tire of pointing out – especially to Anjem’s face whenever we have the misfortune to meet. The follow-on point, which I think also worth continuing to make, is that there is something suicidal about a society that rewards its enemies better than it does its defenders. Choudary and his family rake in around £25,000 each year  and - as you can see from this newly-released video above  – we taxpayers now get even more for our money than we had previously thought.

Honestly. No sooner have I filed a piece than along comes Sayeeda Warsi to help prove my point. Yesterday morning she popped up because another three sisters and their nine children appear to have traveled from West Yorkshire to join the thriving Islamic State. Apparently Sayeeda knows one of the families. And of course she is blaming this latest example of jihadist emigration on the British authorities in general and this government in particular. She claims that the current government has 'disengaged' from Muslim communities. Now Sayeeda must know that this is nonsense. She must have some inkling of the precise and often thankless efforts to engage such communities. So this is just a pitch to get her old job back.