In his most outspoken remarks on Islamists, the former Prime Minister warns that Britain is in danger of losing the battle against terrorists unless mainstream society confronts the threat.
Blair's remarks, in which he also attacks some civil liberty campaigners as 'loopy loo', were made in a Channel 4 documentary recorded last Tuesday on the eve of his departure from Downing Street.
'The idea that as a Muslim in this country that you don't have the freedom to express your religion or your views, I mean you've got far more freedom in this country than you do in most Muslim countries,' Blair told Observer columnist Will Hutton, who presents the documentary.
'The reason we are finding it hard to win this battle is that we're not actually fighting it properly. We're not actually standing up to these people and saying, "It's not just your methods that are wrong, your ideas are absurd. Nobody is oppressing you. Your sense of grievance isn't justified."'
6 comments:
"I just have one question. Why did you not say this when you were still Prime Minister?"
Seconded. My instant reaction when I heard it was "would have been nice if the government had taken this line two or three years ago rather than dancing around with its hand on the MAB's ass."
Incidentally, I don't know whether you've been following the news, but the Tories have appointed Sayeeda Warsi to head up their Communities effort. This is a very disturbing development. I've seen Warsi in action on the television and frankly I find he views on a lot of the issues disturbing, not to mention ill-judged. Furthermore she's even more likely to coddle the likes of the MCB and the MAB than the government was previously wont to do. Beyond the rather two dimensional fact of her being Muslim, I'm finding it hard to understand what the Tories were thinking making this appointment. I only hope that just as Labour are beginning to see sense the Tories aren't going to start pedalling in the opposite direction.
I hadn't noticed that, no. Thanks for pointing it out. I'm not really familiar with her views. The race for next election looks interesting. Cameron's ineptitude is well proven. Brown's loathesomeness is undisputed. So it's a race for Cameron to catch up on loathesomeness before Macavity Brown demonstrates the full depths of his inability to actually govern.
Her record's mixed. Brief summary:
She's a self-made child of the Thatcher era. She's given up a very highly paid job in order to enter public service. She has done pro-bono work fighting forced marriage in Pakistan.
HOWEVER:
When she stood as a candidate last election in a marginal constituency, she caused a rum-pah-pah by equating homosexuality with child molestation and sexual predation (as some people in the party have noted - we aren't fast tracking fat old white men with those sorts of views any more, but apparently youngish ethnic minority women get a pass). Furthermore, her stance is basically the opposite of that expressed by Mr Blair since his Damascene conversion - she's mad on "engagement", not only of the likes of the MCB and the MAB, but of the extremists themselves. She seems to feel that were just have to live with them in the tent. Basically, I'm concerned that she's going to take things back to the very worst practices of the Bad Old Days. Furthermore, her comments on terrorism and Iraq have sometimes been fairly extraordinary - she's pretty much implied that Coalition operations in Iraq are analogous to Islamic suicide bombing. On foreign policy her views sometimes verge on the Chomskyite.
Now, I have my issues - serious issues - with the character of Coalition ops in Iraq or Afghanistan. But somebody who can't or won't see the difference between conventional warfare and British COIN ops on the one hand and blowing yourself up in a cafe full of women and kids in order to terrify people and make a political point on the other should not be a Tory shadow minister.
In the interests of balance, I ought to note that Prof Farrell's favourite, Iain Dale rates the appointment quite positively and he's gay and on the Right of the party, as well as being very much better connected than myself (he stood as a candidate in Norfolk at the last election, I resigned my party membership when Duncan Smith won the leadership election).
Coming to this discussion late etc and all that - but I had pretty much the same thought watching the Hutton thing on Blair: too right, I thought. Shame you could have been so blunt when what you said meant something.
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