Who’s really the “elite” here?
There was an anecdote I forgot to insert into my previous entry about the stereotype of the “liberal elite”. Back in the early 2000s I was working as a van driver for a major...
Category: Europe
Nothing ‘Priti’ about Patel’s ignorance
In an interview for today’s Times, the Brexiteer Tory MP for Witham in Essex said that a government report, leaked to the Times, which said that the economic impact of a no-deal Brexit could...
Against the “liberal elite” media trope
A favourite claim of the alt-right, populist right, whatever you want to call them, is that their liberal opponents (whether they be in the Labour party, the Lib Dems themselves, the pro-European wing of...
Why the Daily Mail’s “volunteer army” should be resisted
Today, the Daily Mail launched a campaign to recruit a “volunteer army” to “help” the NHS starting next Spring, in conjunction with a “new social movement called Helpforce”. The roles that volunteers are expected...
So, you don’t want to call “Tommy Robinson” a thug…
This morning the Today programme on Radio 4 covered the story of Gerard Batten, the new leader of UKIP, hiring Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, the former leader of the English Defence League, anti-Muslim agitator and self-styled...
Brexit, ignorance and lies
Last week, a draft agreement for Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union (EU) was published; it was some 500 pages long and, as could have been predicted, really pleased nobody. It prompted two Cabinet...
‘Normalisation’ is real and has consequences
‘Normalisation’ is the idea that if the media gives too much exposure to extreme views or those without any basis in fact or science, they become the political mainstream and will come to be...
Truckers blocking London? Get real.
This morning I saw a longish interview on the BBC Breakfast show with some guy called Richard Tice, who was identified only as a spokesman for “Leave Means Leave”. I didn’t hear most of...
What really lies behind Trump, Brexit and “national populism”?
During the post Iraq War days (when Iraq was effectively if not in name under occupation), the pro-war blogger Norman Geras ran an article on what it called the Single Transferable Article About Iraq...
Why Muslims should protest public insults to the Prophet
Geert Wilders (or Geert Hitlers as I call him), a far-right Dutch opposition politician, has cancelled an event he had been planning (or claimed to have been planning) this coming November, a contest for...
Rex Bob Lowenstein would make a bad politician
As I mentioned two posts back about the niqaab controversy, Boris Johnson found an ally in the former (and possibly future) UKIP leader Nigel Farage, who made a comment on BBC London radio to...
Corbyn and Anti-Semitism versus Brexit
The Labour anti-Semitism crisis has not disappeared from the headlines after yet another week. It is noticeable now that the issue has moved on from any specific incident of anti-Semitism by any Labour politician...
One big no, many small yeses
This week two cabinet ministers (David Davis, for Brexit, and Boris Johnson, foreign secretary) resigned, and a handful of junior ministers and parliamentary private secretaries also resigned over the government’s “Chequers” Brexit plan formulated...
How (not) to argue with Brexiteers
Last Friday Nick Cohen posted a series of tweets about what he described as the tendency of Labour Remainers to “snuggle down in the soft warm bed of conspiracy theory” in explaining why the...
Enough of the naivety about Putin
Last week the British prime minister, Theresa May, took most of the action she had promised to do after the Russian government did not answer for the attempted murder of a former spy and...
Corbyn stands no chance without a second referendum
With every week that passes, new disadvantages to this country from Brexit become clear: yesterday it was revealed that Theresa May had confirmed that the UK would not be part of the EU’s Digital...
Unite, but follow me
As a Muslim I have much experience of being lectured about ‘unity’ by certain people and most of it has come from people primarily responsible for causing the division. For example, almost every Ramadan...
“I’ve stopped fighting for Britain”
BBC Radio 5 live on Twitter: "“I’ve stopped fighting for Britain” Olaya has worked as an NHS nurse for fifteen years. Now she and her family are moving to Spain becaus… https://t.co/5X3puABDbN" An interview with...
The “Workers’ Brexit” delusion
Yesterday, there was a letter printed in the Guardian from one Sarah Ansell about the notion that many of those who voted for Brexit in June 2016 are now experiencing “buyer’s remorse” after Larry...
Catalonia: 2017 is not 1936
Yesterday someone I’d never heard of, but apparently gets TV show appearances in the US, posted a tweet containing a ridiculously irrelevant observation about the current situation in Catalonia, the province of Spain whose...