Labour is indulging Muslim extremism, and Starmer won’t stop it - The Jewish Chronicle

It’s safe to say that Sir Vince Cable is more likely to be remembered for having taken part in Strictly Come Dancing than for his rapier wit. But the former Lib Dem leader was responsible for one of the more memorable lines about Gordon Brown, when he said that the then PM had “gone from Stalin to Mr Bean”.

Something opposite appears to have happened to Sir Keir Starmer. According to journalists Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund in their book Get In, Sir Keir’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, described the prime minister as being “like an HR manager, not a leader”. And yes, for most of his first six months in office he seemed to be about as convincing a national leader as, well, Mr Bean.

No one could say that now. In recent weeks – since President Trump, JD Vance and Marco Rubio humiliated Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office – Sir Keir has not merely found his groove but started to act as the de facto leader of the free world. He has not put a foot wrong, and seems to have understood completely the gravity of the current situation. But (there is always a but).

Superb as Sir Keir has been on the world stage, in at least one critical area of domestic policy he has shown that he has learned nothing, and is dangerously wrong. I refer to his and Labour’s Achilles’ Heel: its inability to tackle, indeed its willingness to work with, Muslims who hold what might be termed problematic views.

Last week, for example, Sir Keir held a reception for Ramadan at Downing Street. Quite right, too. It is one of our many strengths as a nation that we celebrate the contributions made by different faiths. But when you hold such an event, it is of critical importance that invitations are only extended to those who deserve to be lauded – and are not handed to those with views that need to be tackled. Certainly not to anyone who celebrated the October 7 Hamas massacre.

Yet at least one attendee, Liverpool imam Adam Kelwick, did just that, posting on social media four days later: "David beats Goliath!" and later urging fellow Muslims to "pray for victory" over Israel in the Gaza war. He has posted how he looks forward to Israel’s death, writing that it is “lashing out like a wild animal that thinks it’s about to die”, which is a “good sign” militarily.

This is not a one-off mistake but is emblematic of Labour’s approach to such people. Deputy prime minister Angela Rayner confirmed last month that she is setting up an Islamophobia commission to draw up a governmental definition chaired by Dominic Grieve. The former Conservative Attorney-General is just about the worst possible choice for the role, having written the foreword to the 2018 report by the All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims which proposed the definition which was then adopted by Labour. It states that “Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.” This is so all-encompassing as to classify almost any criticism of Islam as a religion as racist and which, were it to be enacted, would be in effect a blasphemy law – and one which singled out only Islam for protection.

Last November, Sir Keir responded to a demand by Labour MP Tahir Ali that he “commit to introducing measures to prohibit the desecration of all religious texts and the prophets of the Abrahamic religions” by saying that he would tackle “Islamophobia in all its forms”, describing “desecration” as “awful” and urging it to be “condemned across the House”. Three weeks later the government then said it would not introduce a blasphemy law. But such a statement is meaningless. No one suggests Labour would openly legislate to recriminalise blasphemy; the point is that the measures Labour does want to introduce – such as on Islamophobia – would amount to a blasphemy law.

The direction of travel is clear. Within weeks of taking office Labour started refunding Unrwa, supported the ICC arrest warrants on Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant and imposed restrictions on arms sales to Israel. In January, junior minister Sir Stephen Timms attended a Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) dinner, despite a government ban on engagement with the group which has been in place since 2009. He is still in post.

As for why: it is a combination of ideology and political demographics. Put simply, Labour needs the Muslim vote and is afraid of losing a significant chunk of it. At the last election, candidates who sought to appeal almost entirely and only to Muslims had a huge impact, with four independents winning seats along with Jeremy Corbyn. Labour’s vote fell by over 14 per cent in constituencies where the Muslim population is above 15 per cent. This matters: there are 37 constituencies with a Muslim population of more than 20 per cent, while a further 73 seats have a Muslim population between 10 and 20 per cent. The implications of this are obvious, and they are being played out in government now.

Sir Keir Starmer may now be a global statesman, but at home he remains a captive of his party’s need to court the Muslim vote.

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