Damian Thompson

Tony Blair and Lady Thatcher (Photo: Ian Jones)

I wonder how tomorrow's Margaret Thatcher Conference on Liberty, hosted by the Centre for Policy Studies and sponsored by the Telegraph, will address one of the indisputable facts of her premiership: that she was hated with an intensity without precedent in modern British politics. I was a student when she was Prime Minister; I'll always remember my tutor's wife spitting vitriol at the mention of her name. She wasn't popular in North Oxford, and what a delight it was to witness the dons' rage at her re-election. She wasn't popular in South Yorkshire, either, and that was understandable. Thatcher's policies devastated working-class communities which – thanks to the gutlessness of Labour in the face of trade union power – relied for their livelihood on dying industries propped… Read More

An ISIS photo purporting to show the execution of Iraqi Shias

The relationship between the murderous zealots of ISIS and the rest of the Muslim world is too complicated to sum up concisely. It goes without saying that hatred between Sunnis and Shias lies at its heart. They adhere to profoundly different versions of Islam: where radical Sunnis are disgusted by cultic practices or religious art that distract from the teachings of Mohammed, Shias embrace a messianic cult of martyrdom and ritual self-mortification – and claim a line of descent from the Prophet that Sunnis regard as heresy.

This fault line dates back to the early years of Islam and is familiar to anyone who knows the first thing about the religion. But to make sense of the new Iraqi civil war it's also necessary… Read More

Spare us, please (Photo: Getty)

David Cameron has told us that we are too “bashful about our Britishness”.

Oh, please.

If I were to construct a list of people I don't want to lecture me about Britishness, David Cameron comes pretty damn high on it. Really not that far below George Galloway.

I'm not saying Dave is unpatriotic. But it's hard to think of an MP who is more embarrassed by overt pride in "Britishness" (though he might make an exception for Danny Boyle's NHS-worship or Eton's Fourth of June). I reckon he has nightmares about being trapped in a saloon bar by blazer-waring Tory activists who have a soft spot for Nigel Farage or Lord Tebbit. But he also knows that these traditional Tories hold the keys to Number 10 – so, mirabile dictu, he's suddenly waving… Read More

Borrowed, it would seem, by the Catholic Archdiocese of Birmingham under the – sorely mistaken – assumption that they would make appropriate vestments.

Oxfam takes leave of its senses

Oxfam's latest ad campaign – "The Perfect Storm, starring zero hour contracts, high prices, benefits cuts…" – makes Owen Jones look subtle (H/T Tim Montgomerie). It's agitprop, pure and simple. If you're a Left-wing activist, you'll be happy. If not, and you currently support Oxfam, you might want to cancel your standing order.

Bliss for the BBC

The BBC are loving the Gove v May business – though, given their hatred of the Education Secretary's reforms, I wouldn't trust a word they say.

Here's a bit of background – a quick guide to the ambitions and political philosophies of these two senior cabinet ministers.

Michael Gove has set himself the task of challenging and reversing the mutilation of British education by "progressive" theorists and their allies in the public sector, the BBC/Guardian and the teaching unions. He has made a historical study of the manipulation of public institutions by unelected zealots – and, as a result, is the first Education Secretary to recognise that Leftists and Islamists share a modus operandi. His own lack of ambition to become Prime Minister has enabled him to tackle this problem more robustly… Read More

Schools should not become madrassas (Photo: Reuters)

"Students' understanding of the arts, different cultures and other beliefs are limited." That's one of the complaints about Birmingham schools made by Ofsted in their leaked report. It sounds like a relatively mild criticism.

Not so. What the Trojan Horse scandal has revealed is that leaders of the Muslim community in Birmingham have been creating a Wahhabi-inspired counterculture in secular, not faith, schools.

Put simply, the interpretation of Islam that's sweeping through the Muslim world, thanks to Saudi money, seeks to deprive children of any exposure to the arts, which it condemns as idolatrous. Even listening to music is haram, forbidden. The underlying teaching is that the arts, by seeking to create beauty, blaspheme by detracting attention from the only source of true beauty, Allah, which can be appreciated only… Read More

Ginger Rogers: Christian Science kept her on her feeet

It’s not the done thing to inquire into people’s religious beliefs, I was taught as a child. So, of course, I’ve developed an obsessively nosey interest in just that subject. Politicians and celebrities, especially. If they’re Anglicans, I want to know if they’re High or Low. If Catholics, are they practising or lapsed? If they’re Jewish, are they Orthodox, Reform or Liberal and how observant? And so on. The more unusual the religion the better.

Fortunately I have a friend who also enjoys these minutiae. It’s a sort of game. “Tell me,” I said the other day. “Who was the best known Unitarian MP in post-war British politics?” (Unitarians are Protestants who don’t believe in the Trinity – early Christian heretics disguised as nonconformists.)

He… Read More

Surely the master race should be able to spell

It really isn't that difficult to use correct spelling and grammar. Especially if you're a member of "the master race". Or so you'd have thought.

But it turns out that the spelling and syntax of supporters of the American Nazi Party leave a lot to be desired. Lots of references to "black's" and "Jew's", employing what we in Britain call the greengrocer's apostrophe, which vividly underlines the plural nature of nouns. Apple's. Pear's. You get the idea.

Hence the anguished tweet (above) from the American Nazi account, explaining that members need to be professional and thorough in everything they do for the cause.

Alas, as Slate magazine discovered, even the ANP's official literature falls short in this regard.
NS are certainly NOT "supremacists", rather we are SEPERATISTS -… Read More

Meriam and her husband Daniel Wani

There are reports that Meriam Ibrahim, the Sudanese woman sentenced to death by a Muslim judge for refusing to abandon her Christian faith, is to be freed. The BBC announced it thus:
Mother facing death penalty in Sudan for abandoning religious faith to be freed
No! That is a lie. Meriam was sentenced to death (as the Telegraph correctly reports) "for refusing to recant her Christian beliefs, and on Tuesday she gave birth to a daughter while she was in prison, and with her legs shackled".

This young mother is – and always has been – a member of the ancient Ethiopian Orthodox Church, an institution centuries older than Islam. The thuggish Sudanese ruled that she was an "apostate" because her father was a Muslim. What rubbish. It was her Christian mother who… Read More