Douglas Murray

What is wrong with the now almost daily apologies about mass immigration? Today it is the turn of Jack Straw.  The former Home Secretary has just admitted that opening Britain’s borders to Eastern European migrants was a ‘spectacular mistake.’  He acknowledges that his party's 2004 decision to allow migrants from Poland and Hungary to work in Britain was a ‘well-intentioned policy we messed up'.  The Labour government famously predicted that a few thousand people would come, while the actual figure ended up being closer to a million. Of course apologies are normally intended to draw a line under a matter.  But how could that possibly occur when all three main parties are currently committed to making the exact same mistake again?

‘A historic catastrophe’ is how Martin Bright describes it. He is referring to the policy by which successive governments in the UK, Conservative, Labour and coalition, are accused of having promoted the worst people into the positions of Muslim community leaders. The specific case that sparks this reflection is the case of Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin. Since leaving Bangladesh and becoming a British citizen he has been at the very pinnacle of Britain’s interfaith and moderate Muslim industry. Here he is with Prince Charles at the Islamic Foundation in Leicester. Major politicians of all parties as well as numerous ‘faith leaders’ have rubbed shoulders with him.

One of the most amusing ideas of the dim (as opposed to decent) left is that fascism is a force from the right at constant risk of re-eruption. So widespread has this idea become that even members of the Conservative party often feel forced to describe themselves as ‘centre right’ just so as to make clear they aren’t ‘right wing’ because ‘right wing’ is just in from ‘far right’ and ‘far right’ basically means fascist. However, one of the strange things about these so-called ‘anti-fascists’ is that their fascist sensors seem completely befuddled whenever they meet anybody who behaves distinctly fascistically yet is thought to come from ‘the left’. For instance, here is an interesting one.

Last night the BBC screened a documentary called ‘When Tommy met Mo’. It was good television, challenging and thought-provoking in a way that public broadcasting ought to be, is often said to be, but too rarely is. I would urge you to watch it. The programme followed Tommy Robinson during the period in which he was stepping away from the organisation – the English Defence League (EDL) – which he founded. It showed Robinson travelling around the country with a Muslim ‘spokesman’ called Mohammed Ansar.

I rather like Ed Miliband, and for what it’s worth I don’t think he has inherited much, if any, of his father’s rancid political views. Nevertheless the fact that Ed Miliband has often referred to his father’s thought makes Miliband Snr fair game in a way that other politicians’ parents might not be. But in the row over the Daily Mail / Ralph Miliband affair two things remain to be pointed out. The first relates to war service. Contra Emily Maitlis (among others) on last night’s Newsnight, it is perfectly possible to fight for a country in a world war and still hold values (then or subsequently) inimical to the country you fought for. After all, Sir Oswald Mosley fought for Britain, and was injured, in the First World War.

Here we go again. A group of Islamist terrorists armed with guns and grenades head into a shopping mall in Kenya. They separate out the Muslims from the non-Muslims, let the former go free and massacre the latter. Cue the usual responses. The British Prime Minister, David Cameron, says: ‘These appalling terrorist attacks that take place where the perpetrators claim they do it in the name of a religion – they don’t.  They do it in the name of terror, violence and extremism and their warped view of the world. They don't represent Islam or Muslims in Britain or anywhere else in the world.’  I don’t think any sensible person would argue that the perpetrators represent all Muslims.

Steerpike’s photos from the Lib Dem conference make the affair look far more interesting than it could possibly have been. As I have written here before, the terms ‘Liberal Democrat’ and ‘party conference’, when put together, constitute probably the most soporific words in the English language. There are few ways to adequately summarise the pointlessness of this annual fandango of positioning and lies. Granted the other party conferences aren’t much better. But at least people broadly know — largely for historical reasons — why the Conservative and Labour parties exist. There is simply no point in the Lib Dems. They may once have been a useful outlet for a protest vote; now we have UKIP and the Greens for that.