Wake up call

robert whelan, 18 October 2006

Yesterday’s Telegraph carried a frank and unequivocal comment article by the Labour MP and sometime Foreign Office minister Denis MacShane. MacShane says that while Britain’s politicians have been sedated by the opium of multiculturalism and political correctness, radical Islam has been spreading in our midst. He is damning of a leftwing that has aligned itself with anti-Semitism in favour of Islamism, damning of the failure to prosecute or extradite known terrorists, and damning of both the Home Office’s and the Foreign Office’s censorship of the debate. In actual fact, MacShane has been speaking out intermittently on this matter for some time, but he has also been accused of saying different things to different people. It is notable, then, that his denunciation of government policy to date includes a swipe at Tariq Ramadan, the high priest of double-speak or taquiya, and that he has been willing to see it printed in the national press. As MacShane presents it, there can be no ambiguity: we have a choice between terrorism – and free, democratic societies maintained by the rule of law. He is all for the latter. Perhaps he has finally decided to nail his colours to the mast. Not just this, but now, what with the recent pronouncements of Ruth Kelly, Jack Straw and John Reed, there is a growing sense that the government has finally realised that if it has a problem then it has to confront this problem robustly. Hence, perhaps, the timing of Tony Blair’s pronouncement yesterday, that his government’s position on multiculturalism had changed, and that the priority is now integration. No doubt the usual suspects will howl with horror. We should be cautious in our optimism and manage our expectations. There is a long way to go yet. But, as a Telegraph leader says today, if this government is serious about reversing the separatist legacy of multiculti politics and challenging the lethal ideologies infiltrating the Muslim mainstream in Britain, then this new political posture can only be a good thing.
Nick Seddon