Our Allahu Akbar elections

Here’s the situation: dozens of pro-Hamas fanatics have been elected to town councils in local elections last week. In Bradford, to name one city, nine of the 30 new councillors elected fit that judgemental but accurate description.

Most Muslim victors stood as independents affiliated with various organisations, several of which are being investigated for extremism. Some others represented the leftmost parties, such as Labour and Green, but these actually lost seats to independently fanatical Muslims. Practically all of the victorious candidates ran on a pro-Hamas and anti-Israeli platform, paying little attention to local issues.

Some of them wore rosettes in the colours of the Palestinian flag and dedicated their victories to the people of Gaza. A few shouted the celebratory cry of Allahu Akbar.

Meanwhile, the umbrella organisation, the Muslim Vote, has issued 18-point demands to the Labour Party, threatening to withdraw its support if any of them aren’t met. That was going Woodrow Wilson’s paltry 14-points four points better.

You can guess what those points are: no ties with Israel, recognition of the Palestine state, travel bans on Israeli politicians and academics, stop bandying the word ‘extremism’ about, adopt their definition of Islamophobia, adjust pension rules to Sharia law, apologise for failure to brand Israel as a perpetrator of genocide – I could cite all 18, but there’s no need. You get the gist.

The Muslim Vote threatened that this was a taste of things to come in the general election, where their supporters “would punish” candidates who still refuse to equate Netanyahu with Hitler. This isn’t an empty threat: according to the Muslim Council of Britain, Islamic votes can decide 31 marginal seats, enough to swing a close election.

“Labour are worried about their damned polling numbers… We are watching the casualty numbers. We will not support those who have failed to back a ceasefire,” explained The Muslim Vote, adding that they “are a powerful, united force of  4 million acting in unison.”

If you consider this situation normal, I suggest we shake hands and go our separate ways. If, however, you agree with me that a systematic attempt to turn Britain into an ally of, perhaps an adjunct to, Muslim extremism is an abomination, do read on.

Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg made an obvious point: “People are entitled to their views but foreign affairs is a matter for the House of Commons, not local councils.”

Yet this perversion is by no means new. In the early 90s I worked in the borough of Lambeth, across the river from the Mother of All Parliaments. When entering the borough, one was regaled with a sign identifying Lambeth as a “nuclear-free” zone. This essentially meant that the borough pursued a foreign policy different from one favoured by those toffs on the other bank of the Thames.

But fair enough, local politics under the aegis of the councils should be all about taking out the rubbish, sweeping the streets, filling in the potholes, that sort of thing – not about setting Britain’s policy in the Middle East. But the problem is much worse than just so many councillors going beyond their remit.

Modern politics is increasingly characterised by the factionalism of minority groups, so much so that one struggles to find even a hint of national unity. Different groups with divergent interests have always existed, but in the past they also shared something in common, enough of it to coalesce into what used to be called society.

That word has a distinctly obsolete ring to it. That’s why few people ever use it, and one can see why. After all, an English pub-crawler with a Union Jack sticker on his car’s bumper has nothing in common with his local councillor celebrating an electoral victory with ‘Allahu Akbar’. The politician represents not him but murderous sadistic ghouls out to exterminate our only true allies in the Middle East.

Such local politicians have no interest in making their towns cleaner, their roads smoother, their people more comfortable. They entered politics the better to blackmail the main parties into betraying our friends and strengthening our enemies.

In other words, we have at the heart of our body politic a malignant, malevolent presence of a sort of fifth column hiding machetes under flowing white robes. Such is the nature of identity politics, that darling of the dominant Left.

More and more people think of themselves as British a distant second, if that — increasingly not even that. Others are above all Muslim or transgender or planet-savers or feminists or homosexuals or animal-lovers, Scottish or Welsh separatists, or anything else you can think of.

Of these, the Muslims are probably the most united and definitely the most dynamic group. They are perhaps the only one that can make good their threat to hold the national government to ransom specifically because they indeed “act in unison”.

Millions of people voting as a bloc can dominate tens of millions, each voting his own conscience. Parts of Britain are already ruled by Sharia law taking precedence over the English Common variety. Little is common any longer, and it’s rapidly becoming even less. Our house is divided, just like that Islamophobic book prophesied, and it won’t stand.

Anticipating the lapidary British question, “What are we going to do about that?”, I can rack my brain, put my hand on my heart and honestly say I haven’t a clue.

Or rather I’m dead certain that there’s nothing we can do within the existing system, with its unqualified universal suffrage, indiscriminate commitment to religious freedom, compassionate welcome to the downtrodden of the world, enlightened liberalism, egalitarianism, diversity.

But for those immutable, in theory laudable, features of British polity, one could propose any number of remedies for the festering problem I’ve described. These would be so obvious I’m not even going to specify. Yet none of them is feasible because our system precludes their implementation. Our problem is systemic, and it’s only at that level that it could ever be solved. Which probably means never.

Here perhaps it’s appropriate to suggest that no political system should be a suicide pact. Polities evolve as protective mechanisms ensuring the organism’s survival, at least, and continued flourishing, at best.

When a political system is at odds with such desiderata, perhaps we ought to remind ourselves that politics is created for the people, not the people for politics. ‘Onwards and forwards’ is the wrong cry when a precipice beckons.

If we realise we are on the wrong road, travelling nowhere fast, the only wise thing to do is to backtrack and start again. Mercifully, Britain has somewhere to backtrack to.

Until the 20^th century, the British political arrangement had been the envy of the world. Even French proto-socialists, such as Montesquieu and Voltaire, couldn’t conceal their admiration for Britain’s perfectly balanced constitutional monarchy.

Hence we don’t need philosophical hand-me-downs from others. We have a wardrobe full of our own old but still wearable and perfectly styled garments. When Britain was thus clad, I doubt too many local politicians would have screamed ‘Allahu Akbar’ at the top of their voice – or threatened HMG with blackmailing sedition.

Alas, no one has taken enough care to keep those clothes from getting moth-eaten. So even if we know what to do, we can no longer do it. Instead of those custom-tailored political clothes, we are wearing a millstone around our collective neck. Or, less metaphorically, our politics only allows change for the worse.