Get Goldsmith!

The World Tonight's Andrew Hosken followed up David Cameron's criticisms of Sadiq Khan in the House of Commons by interviewing Suliman Gani, the "ISIS-supporting" Muslim cleric mentioned by the PM. 

Even before that interview began Andrew Hosken told Radio 4 "there's not a huge of evidence at all" that Mr Gani supports Islamic State, thus pretty much dismissing the PM's charge from (before) the word go.

During the interview, Mr Gani sounded like moderation itself. He said: that he's never campaigned against homosexuality merely against same-sex marriage (just like some Christians and Tories); that he's never said that women should be 'subservient'; that he's always condemned Islamic State, "which is not part of Islam"; that he feels "betrayed" by Zak Goldsmith; and that he voted Conservative in Tooting at the general election rather than for Sadiq Khan....

...and Andrew Hosken, remarkably, didn't challenge him on any of this. He just asked him soft questions and allowed him to talk.

And then the BBC man ambushed Zak Goldsmith on the way out of an election meeting, and forcefully challenged him about Mr Gani and about whether he was smearing Mr Gani. Andrew Hosken man pressed the Tory candidate for evidence of the charges against Mr Gani and against Sadiq Khan. Mr Goldsmith floundered. He clearly couldn't remember any of the details off the top of his head. 

So this may have been a 'righteous' BBC stitch-up-job on Zak Goldsmith, but Mr Goldsmith's inability to back up any of his charges against either man didn't exactly help his cause either (to put it mildly). 

******

Others may wonder about different parts of Mr Gani's story, but I was curious about him saying that he voted Tory in the May 2015 general election.

His Twitter feed is curiously quiet around the date of the election (and nothing about who he's voting for - just a few anodyne tweets, such as calls for people to remember to vote), with long gaps between tweets in late April and early May (has he been busy deleting some recently?). But from June 2015 onwards his Twitter feed is full of 'Jeremy Corbyn for Labour leader' tweets.

So, if he's telling the truth (and not merely engaging in Taqiyya) he must have gone from being a Conservative voter in May to being an enthusiastic, anti-austerity Corbynista by June.

Hmm. I don't think I quite believe that. Or quite a few other things either.

Fanning the flames

There's a very powerful piece by Karen Harradine over at The Conservative Woman called Corbyn and his lackeys fan the flames of appalling anti-Semitism, which both Sue and myself would urge you to read - if you haven't done so already (and many have, judging by the deluge of comments there).

One of Karen's points...

Corbyn and his cronies have managed to achieve such cognitive dissonance between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism that they cannot comprehend why anti-Semitism is such an issue. Jew-hatred is insignificant to them in comparison to their fight against Israel.

...half-echoes a point made by Mark Gardner of the Community Security Trust on last night's The World Tonight (Radio 4): 

Jeremy Corbyn has strongly condemned anti-Semitism and people accept he's no anti-Semite. But what does he mean by 'anti-Semitism'? And how do most Jewish people perceive anti-Semitism? And I think it's the difference between those two understandings that gets to the heart of the current problem. For the Jewish community to have the trust that it wants to have in the leadership of the Labour Party at the moment those leaders need to come out and be more explicit in what they mean by saying 'We condemn anti-Semitism.' They need to specify that they mean contemporary anti-Semitism and not its 1930s variant. 

That World Tonight report (by Andrew Hosken) was welcome, if worrying. 

It gave voice to the concerns of several people from the Jewish community and the Labour Party, and, being the BBC, also gave a right to reply to a senior Corbyn supporter - who happens to be Jewish. 

The really curious thing about the report though was just how coy it was about giving specific examples. 

The specific examples I've been reading about elsewhere (as in a grim, detailed piece by Guy Adams in today's Daily Mail) build up a depressing, overwhelming case. There are just so many examples, and it's just astonishing that anti-Semitism is happening now, and on such a scale, in one of the UK's two main political parties. 

Being being so general and vague in its presentation of the problem, this BBC report would have given Radio 4 listeners very little sense of the sheer scale of the thing. 

Hopefully, there's a good reason for that - perhaps that the BBC didn't want to air some of the disgusting things that have been said. (I fear I'm being too charitable there).

The Muslim angle wasn't pursued either.