Jawad Iqbal

Jawad Iqbal

Jawad Iqbal is a broadcaster and ex-television news executive. Jawad is a former Visiting Senior Fellow in the Institute of Global Affairs at the LSE

Friday

Jawad Iqbal

The oppressor of Hong Kong should be banned from the coronation

The government is making a mistake in turning a blind eye to China’s plans to send a high ranking politician responsible for crushing democratic freedoms in Hong Kong to the King’s coronation. Han Zheng, who was appointed President Xi’s deputy last month, is due to represent China at the historic event on 6 May. In choosing him, Beijing is guilty of a calculated display of contempt for the values of democracy and freedom. The move should have been rebuffed in the strongest terms; instead the government has adopted a softly-softly approach that is tantamount to appeasing the Chinese leadership.

Wednesday

Jawad Iqbal

Why are so many Indian migrants crossing the Channel?

Indians now make up the second-biggest cohort of Channel migrants: 675 Indians arrived in small boats in the first three months of this year, according to Home Office figures. This amounts to almost a fifth of the total 3,793 crossings made in the first quarter of this year. The number represents a stark rise: only 683 Indians made the journey in the whole of last year. Albanians, yes, Afghans and Iraqis possibly – but the revelation that so many from India are making the dangerous crossing to England has taken many by surprise. The Indian government insists that the growth in emigration is linked to a rise in Sikhs fleeing the country because of a crackdown on the separatist movement in the state of Punjab.

Tuesday

Jawad Iqbal

Angela Merkel doesn’t deserve to be honoured by Germany

It must rank as some form of political satire that Angela Merkel has been awarded Germany’s highest political honour. Not least because the former Chancellor will most likely be remembered foremost for turning a blind eye to the security threat posed by Russia. The Grand Cross of the Order of Merit has previously been given to only two of Germany’s greatest postwar leaders. The first went to the Federal Republic’s first chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, who achieved the remarkable feat of reconciling West Germany with its former enemies, especially France, and, by supporting Nato, helped ensure his country became an integral part of the Western bloc. The other recipient is Helmut Kohl, who was responsible for German unification and created the European Union.

Saturday

Jawad Iqbal

Shame on those who abandoned Peng Shuai

No one really expects much in the way of principles or morality from those charged with running international sport. The Qatar World Cup was merely the latest, most blatant example of the iron rule that money and greed conquers all in sport. But for a brief moment — 16 months to be precise — the Women’s Tennis Association appeared to offer hope of something better. The WTA announced to the world in December 2021 that it would indefinitely boycott all tournaments in China over the regime’s treatment of tennis star, Peng Shuai, who vanished after making allegations of sexual assault against a senior politician.

Thursday

Jawad Iqbal

York doesn’t need Unesco world heritage status

The Unesco world heritage status award is a curious kind of international beauty contest in which historic locations vie to be anointed worthy of special recognition by a committee of UN cultural bigwigs. This supposedly brings with it some form of wider symbolic cultural validation through international acclaim. In fact what it really brings — indeed the only meaningful outcome — is mass tourism, often to the detriment of the winning locations as well as the people who live there. It is a mystery why anyone thinks this is something that requires obligatory celebration, no questions asked.  Why should anyone living in this great city, one of the great wonders of the world, care about being given Unesco heritage status?

Thursday

Jawad Iqbal

Is Elon Musk really a ‘free speech absolutist’?

Elon Musk, the Twitter owner, is in his own words a ‘free speech absolutist’. He promised to combat censorship and allow a broader range of voices on the social media platform as part of his pitch for acquiring the company last October. It is, then, hard to square his free speech bombast with recent events in India where the social media giant is playing corporate lackey to a government hooked on using censorship as a way of silencing political dissent and debate.  Twitter is facing a growing backlash after bowing to the latest official demands by prime minister Narendra Modi's government to block the accounts of government critics, including more than a 100 prominent activists, journalists and politicians in India and abroad.

Friday

Jawad Iqbal

Elon Musk is wrong to call for a pause on the AI race

On 2 August 1939, Albert Einstein – at that time the most famous scientist in the world – put his name to a letter addressed to President Franklin D Roosevelt. In it he warned that the Nazis might be developing an atomic bomb and could bring about a chain of events that would lead to the end of civilisation. Einstein urged the United States to begin work on its own atomic weapons to save humanity. His warning changed the course of history. The Manhattan project was born and the United States won the race to make the A-bomb. Self-awareness is not a strong point in these would-be Cassandras This week a group of tech sector luminaries, including Twitter owner Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, launched their own version of Einstein’s dramatic intervention.

Tuesday

Jawad Iqbal

Humza Yousaf and the myth about Britain’s diversity problem

Humza Yousaf, the new First Minister of Scotland after his victory in the SNP leadership election, deserves his moment in the sun. Yousaf is Scotland’s first ethnic minority leader and the first Muslim leader of the governing party. Legitimate questions about whether he is up to the job must wait while credit is given for the scale of his achievement in reaching the top of Scottish politics at the tender age of 37. Yousaf’s triumph heralds another significant milestone in the rapidly changing political complexion of the United Kingdom: the barriers to progress for those from non-white backgrounds are disappearing, a remarkable development that would have been implausible just a generation ago.

Friday

Jawad Iqbal

Pakistan deserves better than Imran Khan

Democracy and the rule of law have always struggled to take hold in Pakistan, a country in which no elected prime minister has yet completed a full term in office and where the military has been in power for nearly half of its history.  The latest antics of Imran Khan, the former prime minister, do little to instil confidence that rules count for much in Pakistan. There were violent clashes between Khan's supporters and police when they came to arrest him this week for failing to appear in court on charges of illegally selling state gifts during his four-year rule.

Wednesday

Jawad Iqbal

It’s time to end the City of Culture charade

It is something of a mystery why being named UK City of Culture is seen in some quarters as a great civic accolade, a glorious first step on the road to social, economic and cultural regeneration. The experience of Coventry (the winner for 2021) reveals the many downsides to winning this dubious cultural prize. It is a cautionary tale of financial incompetence, threats of legal action over unpaid debts and buck-passing over who is to blame. The UK City of Culture award has from its inception been little more than a joke at the public’s expense This fiasco has come to light with the collapse into administration of the Coventry City of Culture Trust.

Thursday

Jawad Iqbal

The trouble with ‘microaggressions’

Welcome to the divisive and somewhat sinister world of racial 'microaggressions'. Loosely defined as 'a subtle slight or action that leaves people from a minority group feeling upset, offended or uncomfortable,' the person who has delivered the insult might even be oblivious they have caused offence. The latest manifestation of its chilling effect on workplace relationships came in an employment tribunal case brought by Christabelle Peters, a black British academic.  Peters, a lecturer in American cultural and political history, sued Bristol University over a series of microaggressions. One of her complaints was that the nameplate on her door did not have her 'Dr” title on it.

Saturday

Jawad Iqbal

The many missteps of Humza Yousaf

The apparently irresistible rise of Humza Yousaf, the SNP politician seen as the frontrunner to succeed Nicola Sturgeon as Scotland’s first minister, reveals much about the dearth of talent at the very top of Scottish politics. Yousaf is a politician with almost no discernible achievements to his name despite almost a decade in senior ministerial roles. If truth be told — cruel as it may sound — many will consider Yousaf a serial political incompetent who has made a name for himself in Scottish politics for all the wrong reasons.  Even so, Yousaf certainly takes himself seriously enough. There he was on Monday launching his leadership campaign in Clydebank, a former shipbuilding town west of Glasgow.