Ed West

Ed West

Ed West writes the Wrong Side of History substack

The government needs to stop trying to legislate for manners and common sense

Is there such a thing as the Loony Right? The reaction of those on the Left to Peter Bone and Philip Hollobone's Alternative Queen's Speech selection of bills certainly suggested so. But what defines whether something is loony? Is it lunacy because it is unprecedented, out of step with other civilised countries, incoherent? Or just that no one you meet or read advocates it? I don’t support the death penalty, for instance, but in the case of murder it’s not wacky – most US states still practise it, after all, as does Japan. Some of the other suggestions are not just reasonable, but probable, such as withdrawal from the European Union.

Iraq’s Christian exodus

The Arabs once had a saying about the British: ‘Better to be their enemy, for that way they will try to buy you; for if you are their friend, they will most certainly sell you.’ For Iraq’s Christians it has proved to be sage advice. It is a lesson learned by a 25-year-old engineering student Wissam Shamouy, an Assyrian Orthodox Christian from Bakhdida in Nineveh province, who fled after jihadis gave him a second warning: leave or die. Shamouy’s mother paid a Kurdish smuggler to take him to Turkey and from there he made his way to England because he spoke the language, and was told Britain helped with ‘humanity protection’. Instead, he was arrested for arriving with false documents and imprisoned in Wormwood Scrubs for 122 days.