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Opinion

Labour is indulging Muslim extremism, and Starmer won’t stop it

Sir Keir’s Ramadan reception last week featured an imam who celebrated October 7

March 17, 2025 13:11
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Sir Keir Starmer in Parliament (Image: Parliament TV).
3 min read

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.