Amazing disgrace

Last Sunday I started to write a post about something that had been mystifying me for some time. Of course, I didn’t finish writing it because, life.

Anyway, it turns out to have been spookily prescient. (Read your palm sir?)

The piece started off by expressing my disbelief and incredulity about how certain Labour MPs could sit there behind Jeremy Corbyn and not quit. About a dozen names came to mind, but the only one from my little list that turned out to be amongst the actual secret seven was Luciana Berger. I’d completely forgotten about Chuka Ummuna and I was barely conscious of the other six.

Surely these MPs have to do something, I thought,  even if only out of exasperation. How can they stay there? Hard, hard left; weak and woolly over Brexit. Another poll has found that everyone now realises that Jeremy Corbyn is antisemitic. So the Great anti-racist is a Racist. (Not that many people seem particularly bothered.)

I wittered on, stream of consciousness-wise, about splits. There are no winners, I mused.  Both factions are weakened; the main body is damaged and the breakaways struggle. Those who ‘stay and fight’ claim their over-arching concern is deposing the Tories.

There’s Brexit, and there’s antisemitism. The thing is, where does Monday’s long-awaited declaration of independence (Lexit?) (Cexit?) leave Labour’s remaining anti-Corbyn MPs? Desperately struggling to justify their position - but how?

For your information, here’s the list of MPs I got wrong. (with one exception) John Mann, Ann Clwyd, Joan Ryan, Wes Streeting, Liz Kendall, Anna Turley, Kate Hoey, Lisa Nandy and even Tom Watson. That’s not even counting Louise Ellman, Luciana Berger and Ruth Smeeth, the recipients of much of the abuse. 

How can they stay?

Anyway, that was Sunday. This is Tuesday.

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D’you wanna know the countries that have the worst record for persecuting Christians? 

Nigeria; Iraq; Uzbekistan; Lebanon; Pakistan; Egypt; Uganda; Indonesia; Saudi Arabia; Iran and last but not least, the UK!!.

Not Israel!!  Sarah Montague, Jonny Diamond and anyone who’s gullible enough to listen to them, put that in your pipe and smirk it.

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I heard Tim Stanley’s Thought For the Day this morning. It was about Shamima Begum. People who run away to join I.S. are following a perverse distortion of Islam, he opined. Hmm. He may have big ears, but he’s not listening. 

The best sense I’ve heard spoken in a long, long time on the BBC came straight afterwards, from an ex Jihadi bride who has found sanctuary in the US. Her interview with Martha Kearney contained the most sensible Thoughts for Any Day I’ve ever heard. 

The line wasn’t good. It was blurred and echoey. When ‘listen again’ is available I’ll listen again.

Meanwhile, here’s the gist of her wise advice: Shamima Begum has been brainwashed but she is intelligent and will mature in time. The Islamist belief - or should that be Islamic - (actually extreme versions of Christianity share this) is that this life is but a mere preparation for the eternal life to follow. They regard human life as of little importance (for the many, not the few, as the leaders’ longevity will attest.)

In many traditionally Islamic countries, extreme religiosity was beginning to decline, only to have taken up a bizarre resurgence in…Britain. 

Amazing disgrace. Extreme religiosity…. once was lost but now is found. It’s the families; it’s the communities; it’s Islam, stupid.