More on that flying pig poster

Last week Labour issued a poster with the heads of Michael Howard and Oliver Letwin (in case nobody knew or cared, they’re Jewish) superimposed on winged pigs, next to the slogan “The day the Tory sums add up”. It immediately kicked up a row with people saying the posters are offensive to Jews, given that pigs are unclean in the Jewish religion.

Others suspected that the real motive was to remind Muslims of anti-Semitism rather than actually make racist points. Norman Tebbit (I refuse to call him Lord), a former Tory cabinet minister under Margaret Thatcher, expresses this view in a letter in today’s Telegraph:

However, it is clear that Tony Blair’s war in Iraq has damaged New Labour’s plans to vacuum up Muslim votes by any means, fair or foul. Their proposed postal-voting-only elections were clearly designed to frustrate the provisions for secret ballots in homes where religious and social customs give greater authority to husbands over wives and daughters, and to headmen and religious leaders over families than is common in Britain as a whole. Unfortunately for Mr Blair, his assumption that Labour would be the beneficiary of this wholesaling of votes has become a casualty of his war.

The current Labour emphasis on the ethnicity of Michael Howard and Oliver Letwin is therefore not so much anti-Semitic, as merely designed to remind Muslim voters of it in the hope that they will return to Mr Blair.

I do hope people remind the Muslims that just because people think we are racist, that we should forget the war in Iraq, or Bliar’s proposed introduction of house arrest on the orders of the Home Secretary in the style of South African Apartheid. We are not interested in Jew-bashing, but only in making sure our people don’t become the subject of an official policy of state harrassment. (Oh, and if you’re not Muslim, remember that these banning orders could be used against any enemy of the state.)