Author: Matthew Smith

Desperate Tories, shameless lies

Today the Tories published on their Twitter/X account a video claiming that Sadiq Khan’s London was the model for how the country would be governed if Labour were to win the forthcoming general election,...

Women need the mosque

The issue of women’s access to the mosque and the inadequate space for women in many mosques in the UK has been a thorny issue in the community for decades, way back before blogs...

Earl Spencer and early boarding

Last Sunday the Mail printed extracts from a new book by Earl (Charles) Spencer, the brother of the late Princess Diana, on his time at a private boarding school in England called Maidwell School...

It’s Islamophobia, thank you

Over the past week, some of the same politicians and think-tankers who couldn’t hide their resentment at George Galloway winning a by-election and were accusing anti-genocide demonstrators in London of being controlled by extremists...

A picture of a demonstration for Palestine in London; banners include "Jews against genocide", "Jews for Justice for Palestinians", "not in our name" and a Palestinian flag.

Seething with anger

Since Brexit, there has been a particular theory about why people voted the way they did: that it wasn’t about immigration or racism, it was about something called ‘identity’. It was to do with...

Picture of Brianna Ghey, a young, white, female presenting teenager with long, blonde hair and glasses, standing in a wooded area wearing a white cardigan and tartan school skirt with her finger pointed out towards the camera.

Brianna Ghey and stable-door logic

A few years ago I wrote an article on what I called “stable-door logic”: the tendency, after a disaster or atrocity, to look for ways to make sure that said disaster could not have...

“Never such depravity”

Last week I listened to the BBC’s File on 4 programme about the murder of Brianna Ghey last year in a village outside Warrington after the two teenagers responsible had been sentenced. Brianna was...

Genocide shouldn’t be divisive

Last night the Green party group on Lambeth borough council in south London tabled a motion to the full council meeting calling for, according to My London (a website containing stories from local papers...

On the Epstein conspiracy theories

Since the suicide of Jeffrey Epstein, there is a body of opinion that will not accept that his death was indeed suicide and that others must have been involved. The thinking goes that Epstein...

Ask a loaded question …

Over the years, a frustrating phenomenon for anyone writing about the oppression of Palestinians and the upsurge in hostility to Muslims in the West following 9/11 was an established race relations industry that was...

A demonstration in London, with people holding banners with "Free Palestine" type slogans. Some new blocks of flats or offices are visible in the background.

I was there (at the demonstration)

Yesterday I went to my first Palestine demo in London since the start of the Israeli genocide in Gaza following the 7th October Hamas raids. The past week, or more, there has been a...

“The Arabs of the land”

The other day I came across a long tweet ‘explaining’ why there are still refugee camps in Gaza and other Palestinian territories and neighbouring Arab countries years after the wars that made them refugees....