Iggy Risu

@ManOfKent15 Let me take a wild guess - because they couldn't give a shit about anyone but themselves, and would sell their own grannies for votes?

Can someone explain to me why both the Greens and Labour are courting the Muslim vote if Muslims make up only 6% of the population? Labour has abandoned the white, working class, who I'm sure account for more than 6% of the population.

@AyoubKhanMP The head of state King Charles and most party leaders sent warm wishes to 6 million British Muslims, 40,000 of who are on the terror watch list. Charles needs to consider carefully which side his bread's buttered on and choose his words more carefully.

The head of state King Charles and most party leaders sent warm wishes to 6 million British Muslims …. yet the Conservatives and Reform stayed silent. And Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage want to lead a “United” Kingdom? The contradiction speaks for itself!

@OborneTweets I do believe you're having a hissy fit.

Kemi Badenoch's decision to throw her weight behind Nick Timothy is a defining moment. The Tory party under her leadership is a cesspit of Islamophobic hatred and racist bigotry. My new column for Middle East Eye: middleeasteye.net/opinion/nick-t…

@DalrympleWill You're the racist, if you can't tell the difference, William. Islamists.

Muslims make up just 6% of the population of Britain. Conspiracy theories currently being aired by right wing bigots that they are secretly plotting the Islamic domination of the country are the 21st century Islamophobes' equivalent of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and just as idiotic, and as dangerous

So. Yeah. Anyway. Ancestry says Judy Garland is my 8th half cousin. Rain on that parade, ghoul demons.

@AlisonMoyet NICE ONE! You get a fantastic "twofer" there, Alison - Liza Minelli as well, then :)

@PeterMcCormack Yep I'm happy to say there's probably not a lot of daylight between you and I regarding secure borders and public order. The rest is downriver of that.

Freedom and liberty should be the common ground, it is what can unite us. This is why libertarians don’t fit neatly into left or right. They’re trying to apply a consistent principle. If you are pro-freedom you align with the left on opposing stupid wars, defending civil liberties and opposing the prison industrial complex. If you are pro-freedom you align with right on free markets, sound money, property rights, low tax and limiting the size of government. The problem is both sides abandon freedom when it becomes inconvenient. If you are confused on your position, ask yourself if it progresses freedom or restricts it, if it’s the latter you are likely on the wrong side of history. If you actually believe in freedom, it has to be applied consistently. Happy Friday, off for a freedom beer.

The Trafalgar Square prayer session *was* straight out of the Islamist playbook. Nick Timothy is right about this. Anyone who knows anything about the Muslim Brotherhood should be concerned where Britain is heading, says Jake Wallis Simons buff.ly/ZN8Cqbq

@EdwardJDavey, you have misread the argument so comprehensively that one has to wonder whether it is deliberate. Nobody is objecting to freedom of worship. Nick Timothy did not say Muslims should not be allowed to pray. He said mass ritual prayer in a shared national civic space is an act of domination, and cited the former extremist turned scholar Ed Husain, who has spent his career documenting exactly this phenomenon. The Adhan, the call to prayer, declares there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger. That is by definition a theological repudiation of every other faith. When projected into Trafalgar Square, a national memorial to British sovereignty and independence, it is not equivalent to a celebration. It is a declaration. The distinction is theological, not political, and it is precise. You invoke freedom of worship as though Timothy had called for mosques to be closed. He did not. You invoke British values as though observing that the domination of public spaces is straight from the Islamist playbook is somehow un-British. It is not. It is documented, sourced and supported by scholars who have spent decades inside Islamist movements. This week, thousands of people gathered on the Embankment chanting death to America and death to Israel. Bobby Vylan led chants of death death death to the IDF, cleared by the CPS last year and back on a London stage doing it again. The Islamic Human Rights Commission, named in a Lords report as part of Iran's soft power network in Britain, addressed the crowd. Thirty six Labour MPs wrote to the Parliamentary Commissioner demanding the investigation of a man for pointing out what every serious student of Islamism already knows. The Attorney General deployed his Jewish identity to defend a declaration that, by its own theological logic, repudiates Judaism. And your contribution to all of it is a tweet accusing people who raise these questions of stoking fear, hatred and division. You lead a party that voted consistently to keep Britain in the European Union against the democratic will of the British people. A party that has positioned itself as the political home of progressive appeasement, that has never met an Islamist grievance it would not accommodate, and whose response to every act of cultural intimidation is to accuse those who name it of bigotry. The Liberal Democrats have no record of defending British values under pressure. They have a record of redefining British values to mean whatever is least likely to cause offence to the most vocal pressure group in the room. Freedom of worship is indeed a fundamental British value. So is freedom of speech. So is the freedom to observe, without being accused of racism, that a theological declaration of exclusive truth projected into a national monument is not the same as lighting a menorah or performing a Passion play. Nick Timothy exercised that freedom. The full weight of the parliamentary and political establishment descended on him within twenty four hours. That is the state of British politics today, Ed. And you are part of the problem, not the solution. "Nick Timothy didn't say Muslims shouldn't be allowed to pray. He said mass ritual prayer in a shared national civic space is an act of domination, and cited the former extremist turned scholar Ed Husain, who has spent his career documenting exactly this phenomenon."

@PCroydon165 Tis the black knight! The point is I dismantled your ludicrous argument.

@Tuftybeat Well yes. And your point is?

Lisa McKenzie is a gateholder for Working Class culture. She's a highly-paid academic and still claims to be a prole. Lewis Goodall - despite a working class upbringing - doesn't qualify for Perpetual Proletarianship because of, erm, Peter Mandleson AND Hartlepool. Confused??

Hands up if you’ve had your council tax bill for the next year and it’s going up! 🙌🏼 Mine wasn’t frozen, it’s gone up. Labour lied to get into power. “Labour would freeze your council tax” “Not a penny more on your council tax” “No ifs, no buts” Lies, lies, and more lies.

Very very sad. Far too young. Jenni was rare at BBC: an iconic Woman's Hour presenter who knew what a woman is. So they dumped her. RIP. With love and admiration.

One storm. One fallen tree. One field in the Lake District. ✏️ The entire global pencil industry. There is a field in the Lake District. Nothing remarkable about it. Fell sheep, grey sky, Cumbrian rain. Until one day a storm came through. It uprooted a tree and underneath the roots was something nobody had ever seen before. A black substance. Soft, dark, left a mark on everything it touched. The shepherds didn't know what it was, but they used it to mark their sheep. That was 1565. It was the purest deposit of graphite ever found on earth. The only one like it. Ever. 🌍 Word spread fast. The Crown seized the mine, put armed guards on the fell and flooded it between diggings to keep the price high. Stealing graphite became a criminal offence. Punishable by transportation to Australia. Because this wasn't just for marking sheep. It was perfect for lining cannonball moulds. It made England's cannonballs rounder. Faster. More deadly. ⚔️ England had a pencil monopoly for nearly a century. Every artist, every cartographer, every engineer in Europe. All of them wanted what was in that one Cumbrian field. Slowly, workshops appeared in nearby Keswick. Cottage industries. Families cutting graphite into sticks. Wrapping them in string. Then sheepskin. Then wood. The pencil was born. ✏️ In a Cumbrian field. Because a storm uprooted a tree. There is still a pencil factory in Keswick today. On the same site it has always been. Did you know that? These islands have thousands of stories the world has forgotten. We find them. We tell them. We put them in front of millions. You help us make that possible. Be Part Of Us. Be Proud Of Us. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇬🇧 proudofus.co.uk

The Free Speech Union is bringing a judicial review against Communities Secretary Steve Reed, challenging his decision to impose an official definition of ‘anti-Muslim hostility’ (Islamophobia). This is a Muslim blasphemy law by the back door, which will silence legitimate criticism of Islam and prevent people from speaking out on issues such as the grooming gangs scandal. The proposed definition is vague and subjective, and liable to be weaponised to shut down lawful debate about Islam, Muslims, and Islamic practices and history. Adopting such a definition — let alone appointing an Islamophobia ‘Tsar’ — breaches the ‘occupying the field’ doctrine in public law. Our lawyers have sent a Pre-Action Protocol letter setting out why the definition is unlawful, and have asked the Government to pause both its rollout and the appointment of the ‘Tsar’ until the case is resolved. Judicial reviews against Secretaries of State are costly, but this is a fight we must win. Blasphemy laws were abolished by Parliament in 2008 — let’s keep it that way. Read our letter and support our crowdfunder 👇

@BoveFromAbove @danny__kruger "We are not a Christian country, we are a secular democracy." Make some posters with that on, and stick them on the door of churches, and (checks notes) "secular democracy centres", counting each, as you go, and get back to me with the stats to back up what you just wrote. Cheers

We are not a Christian country, we are a secular democracy. I personally think all religions are nonsense, including the competing Middle East ones, but it doesn’t bother me to see Christians or Muslims celebrating their fairytale outdoors. In fact, I strongly object to favouritism over one mythology to another, and I’m appalled to see Christian wingnuts demanding the state discriminates against Islam.

Nick Timothy and Nigel Farage are right, and Sadiq Khan and Keir Starmer are wrong. Small groups of people, of whatever religion, praying in public places is fine. And as a Christian country we should allow a special privilege for churches to lead services in our national spaces, like the Palm Sunday celebration that happens in Trafalgar Square. What we don't want is mass ritual observances intended to claim the civic realm for another religion, or assert the domination of another culture over our own Christian traditions. What happens in our national spaces is not neutral. People use Trafalgar Square, for celebrations and demonstrations, to make a point about the kind of country they want us to be. The Palm Sunday pageant reminds us of who we are - not as individuals (many or most of us don't identify as Christians at all) but as a national community, with the roots of our institutions in the ground of the Bible and our most solemn communal moments, from coronations to funerals, mediated through the liturgies of the Church. A mass Adhan held there, or in any town square, is making a different point: that Britain is not a Christian country, and that - inshallah - one day it shall be Muslim. This is unacceptable to the British public and indeed incompatible with our constitution. As ever with these debates, the issue is partly one of kind and partly one of degree. There is an issue with Islam itself as a religion which in most interpretations does not admit of pluralism or freedom of conscience, and therefore is inherently aggrandising, including over territory. But with a bit of confidence and a bit of toleration we could handle that - if it were not for the issue of degree. It is the scale of Islam in Britain, and the ambition of its leaders for greater scale, that makes the problem. The numbers of people who assembled for the adhan in Trafalgar Square, clearly and openly claiming the territory for a faith with no connection (indeed, with strong doctrinal disagreement) with the model of Western liberal democracy that Britain has developed and exported to the world - that is the problem. The numbers, whether everyone there understood it this way or not (and I suspect many did), convey an explicit threat to the foundations of our country. Being relaxed about other people's religion is a good thing, a very British thing. I don't mind modern druids dancing around Stonehenge in my constituency (arguably, though the historicity is tenuous, they have a claim to the place). I don't mind small groups of Hindus or Buddhists or Muslims demonstrating the reality of Britain's religious toleration by worshiping in Trafalgar Square. But let's not kid ourselves about this adhan, or pretend that we're just seeing another harmless expression of Britain's religious diversity. We are seeing an abuse of liberalism, led by people who are not themselves liberal; or - let us imagine they are acting in good faith - who are themselves deceived about what they are doing. It should not happen again. And it would be good to hear the Church of England say so.

@booksncoffee786 @JMPSimor @JohnCleese @WestminsterWAG He must've been going senile since 1979 then, 'cos that's how long he's been calling out woke nonsense: youtube.com/watch?v=jlo7YZ…

@JMPSimor @JohnCleese @WestminsterWAG He's gone senile.

What I like about Diwali, Vaisakhi, Chanukah and Easter celebrations is that there is very little talk of beheading

@LordWalney "I’m not convinced Muslim prayer in Trafalgar Square is an act of dominance." Well, that makes one of us, but I agree with the rest of your comments.

I’m not convinced Muslim prayer in Trafalgar Square is an act of dominance. Islam is hardly unique in considering itself the one true religion.. But the fact the PM thinks Nick Timothy should be sacked undermines the claim we are all free to criticise Islam despite the new anti-Muslim hostility definition.

Starmer: the new definition of anti-Muslim hostility will not restrict the right to criticise Islam. Also Starmer:

Wilberforce got the statue. This man got the mud. Thirty-five thousand miles of it. His name was Thomas Clarkson. Born in England. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Cambridgeshire. 1760. He was twenty-four years old when Cambridge set him an essay question. "Is it lawful to make slaves of others against their will?" He knew nothing about slavery. So he started reading. Two months later he couldn't stop. He won the prize and rode home to London with something nobody had given him. A conscience he couldn't put down. Halfway there, on a quiet country road, he stopped his horse. Sat in the silence of the English countryside. The trade was real. He had just proved it. And somebody had to stop it. So he gave up the church and got to work. Bristol. Liverpool. Every slave port in Britain. Into the taverns, the back rooms, the ships. Asking sailors what they had seen below decks. Men who had been there. Who knew what happened on the Middle Passage. Some refused. Some were threatened. Some were bought. Clarkson kept riding. Thirty-five thousand miles. Ten years. Every testimony written down in longhand on the road. All of it handed to a young MP named William Wilberforce. Wilberforce went to Parliament and gave the speeches. Clarkson saddled up and went back out. In 1792 they put a petition together. Not from London. Not from the powerful. From ordinary men and women. Market towns, village squares, chapel steps across England. Four hundred thousand signatures. The largest petition in British parliamentary history. Parliament voted it down. So they went again. And again. Eighteen years of going again. 25 March 1807. The Slave Trade Act passed. Britain outlawed the trade and turned the Royal Navy loose to hunt the ships. History gave Wilberforce the statue. Coleridge called Clarkson the moral steam engine of the abolition movement. Clarkson lived to see slavery abolished completely in 1833. An old man of seventy-three, who had started this at twenty-four. He died in 1846. The last surviving founder of the original committee. He never held office. Never gave the famous speeches. He just got back on the horse. For sixty years. Did they teach you his name? Together we keep our history alive. proudofus.co.uk/support Be part of us. Be Proud Of Us. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇬🇧

'It wasn't carols being sung in Trafalgar Square that everybody could enjoy or some kind of spectacle or performance' On #BBCBreakfast Conservative Party chairman Kevin Hollinrake defended his colleague Nick Timothy, after the Prime Minister called for him to be sacked for describing a mass Muslim public prayer in central London as an "act of domination and division" bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…