Douglas Murray is associate editor of The Spectator and author of The War on the West: How to Prevail in the Age of Unreason, among other books.
I am pleased that Peter Oborne concedes that his co-author David Morrison was ‘foolish’ and ‘clumsy’ in his statements. Perhaps Morrison was indeed attempting ‘to be as accurate as he could about what he understood to be the facts’. But that is a statement about the understanding of Mr Oborne’s co-author, not a statement about
It is more than ten years since I first sat down with members of the Syrian opposition. Back then they included real moderates, but even these didn’t predict a bloodless transition. ‘We will have to unite the country against the Alawites,’ I remember one saying, referring to the minority from which the Assad dynasty comes.
Dirty tricks against UKIP by the establishment are not a new phenomenon. Though in recent days the Conservative party have been found engaging in them, there are far more striking examples from the recent past. On 25 May 2001 the Spectator published a piece by Norman Tebbit that deserves to be far better known. Tebbit
Last week I recorded an edition of Hardtalk for the BBC which has gone out today. It is a discussion with Kate Hudson, the General Secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), on the future of nuclear weaponry. The discussion is available on iplayer here. A couple of observations. Firstly, I seem to have
Has President Ahmadinejad ever denied the Holocaust? David Morrison, co-author with Peter Oborne of a new apologia on the Iranian ‘government’, appears to think that he has not. In a bizarre and disgraceful interview with the Telegraph, alongside his co-author, Morrison recites the main claim of their book – which is that the Iranian regime
According to one of his family members Tamerlan Tsarnaev was, among other things, ‘angry that the world pictures Islam as a violent religion.’ His efforts to refute this charge included planting bombs in the middle of a family sports event in Boston, killing – among others – an eight year old boy. The case brings
I have been in the US over recent weeks, during the period of the Boston bombings and the hunt for the perpetrators. It may surprise some British readers to know that although American public debate is undoubtedly wider and more robust than in Britain, even America displays denial and deflection when it turns out that
The Philpott case has already turned into a row about media reporting. You can see why. It is so much easier to argue about a newspaper front-page than to talk about the terrible underclass this country has created. In a nutshell our problem is this. For hard-working couples, having children in 21st century Britain is
The right of gays to have a civil marriage in a non-religious service is once again an issue. There have been large and slightly violent protests in Paris as well as on-going judicial contortions in the US. I know my support for gay marriage appears to put me in a minority among conservatives. But perhaps
I trust everybody enjoyed the boat race this weekend Last week the editors of this magazine made me go through the purgatory of speaking with the person who disrupted last year’s race. Listeners may come away with the idea that, contrary to reports, Trenton Oldfield was coshed most terribly upon the head by last years’
Here is David Cameron’s problem in a nutshell. During his immigration speech on Monday he said: ‘Put simply when it comes to illegal migrants, we’re rolling up that red carpet and showing them the door.’ Just two days later it was once again made clear that the red carpet is firmly in place and no
If anybody doubts that free speech would be in danger after Leveson it is worth remembering what it is already like in this country. A couple of months back Julie Burchill wrote a column in the Observer about transsexuals. It was a response to complaints by transsexuals about a piece by a friend of Burchill’s,
Well, it was right not to expect much. The full text of David Cameron’s speech on immigration is here but it can be summarised in one sentence: ‘mass migration has brought some good things, but it has also brought problems so here is some tinkering we propose.’ There are so many problems when our politicians
The Prime Minister is giving a speech about immigration on Monday. I am sure we can all guess the content. If anybody is interested in a break from this — or indeed if the PM’s speech-writers are curious — perhaps I could humbly recommend this debate I took part in a couple of weeks ago
I have a piece in this morning’s Wall Street Journal (Europe) on our new press regulations titled ‘We have the newspapers we deserve’: ‘I have just finished studying a diagram aimed at explaining Britain’s new press laws. After having a lie-down, one single line keeps running through my head. Oddly enough it isn’t ‘recognition appointments
I won’t often say this, but there is a must-read article at the Huffington Post today. Titled ‘The Sorry Truth Is That the Virus of Anti-Semitism Has Infected the British Muslim Community’ it is a reflection on the recent anti-Semitic outburst by Lord Ahmed of Rotherham. It an admirably honest piece of writing the author says: ‘It
To my simple suggestion that Owen Jones apologise for claiming that an 11-month old child killed by a Hamas rocket was in fact killed by an Israeli ‘so-called targeted strike’, Owen appears to have answered ‘no’. He starts his reply: ‘In the last couple of years I’ve learned one thing: the right don’t like me
Last November, during another exchange between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza, the left-wing columnist Owen Jones appeared on BBC Question Time. Invited to comment on recent events, what he read out (or so it appears from the tape) was a catalogue of errors about Israel. Among them were big, sweeping incorrect allegations – such
I am delighted to say that my latest book, Bloody Sunday: truths, lies and the Saville Inquiry, has been jointly awarded the Christopher Ewart-Biggs memorial prize at a ceremony in Dublin. My co-winner is Julieann Campbell, author of Setting the Truth Free: the inside story of the Bloody Sunday justice campaign. The literary prize is
At last some leadership on Iran. And from the Conservative benches. After last week’s appalling Jack Straw piece in the Telegraph, the Conservative MP James Morris has a brilliant and blistering response in the same paper. ‘It is vital that we continue to pressure the Iranian regime through tough and sustained sanctions – and leave