Harry's Place

On the one hand, there are morally crapulant and/or unbearably light instinctive comments from Glenn Greenwald or Gary Younge who would appear to believe that empathy is negotiable and that their professed concern for non-American victims of bombs stops with those killed by American actions (or ones which they can make a vacuous case of [...]

This is a cross post by Phil at A Very Public Sociologist

UKIP may well be “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists” but they’re also riding high after last night’s by-election result. Farage must be kicking himself for not standing as just 1,800 votes separated his party (and it is his party) from the hapless LibDems. With his profile, [...]

First Prime Minister David Cameron sneered at Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney for running an Olympics in “the middle of nowhere.”
Then London Mayor Boris Johnson fired up a pre-Olympics rally by mocking “a guy called Mitt Romney.”
Now Jon Swaine, Washington correspondent for the conservative Telegraph, reports that Romney appears to have violated ethics laws as [...]

This is a guest post by Hasan Afzal
The Conservative Muslim Forum (CMF) was founded in 2005, as part of the Conservative Party’s ‘modernisation’ strategy, the group was formed “when the Conservative Party recognised that it needed to do more to appeal to Muslim voters”. The group uses an ‘@conservatives.com’ e-mail for all official correspondences.
The CMF [...]

Unless an independent inquiry establishes that Peter Cruddas was on a jaunt of his own, the Government should really fall over this.
Alec adds: Googling for the following image, waddayaknow, I used it before:

Omar Faruk is described on the website of the Tory peer, Lord Sheikh, as his “chief of staff“. He is the CEO of an organisation called EcoMuslim, of which his patron, Lord Sheikh is the Chair.
On 9 April, he is moderating an event called Muslim Question Time, at which the participants are as follows:
Ustadh Surkheel [...]

This is lovely:
He’d be one of the most colourful and eccentric British Parliamentarians of modern times. And one Tory MP once called him “as mad as a box of snakes.”
Rupert Matthews hopes soon to take over as Conservative MEP for the East Midlands, replacing the arch-Eurosceptic Roger Helmer, who last autumn announced his intention to step [...]

Of course antisemitism isn’t limited to Islamists, leftwing Israel haters, Texas state representatives or Montana teenagers (see post below). The Telegraph reports:
With two prime ministers and 13 cabinet ministers among its alumni, the Oxford University Conservative Association has become a conveyor belt for future leaders since it was founded in 1924.
But the student body, [...]

A rather confused article by Paul Goodman, entitled ‘It’s time to end the Tory war on multiculturalism’, can be found at ConservativeHome. The article is wrong from the very start, where Goodman writes:
Before settling down to write this article, I made myself a cup of tea.  In doing so, I carried out a multi-cultural act.
The [...]

This is a guest post by Harry Putther
It is outrageous for Marjorie Thompson who is the chair of the Conservative Cooperative Movement to besmirch Lord Janner by claiming that he had not signed up to the All Party Parliamentary Group looking into Islamophobia in good faith.
According to the JC, she said
“It strikes me that Greville Janner joined the [...]