To the authentically British backdrop of drizzle, a distant heckler and the piccolo patter of a Downing Street tree sparrow, Rishi Sunak confronted the ‘poison’ of Islamist and far-Right extremism. It needed saying and it needed saying well. Our Prime Minister did that.
Arc-lit by TV cameras as Friday afternoon slipped into evening, a deadly serious Sunak said: ‘This situation has gone on long enough. Our great achievement in building the world’s most successful multi-ethnic, multi-faith democracy is being deliberately undermined. There are forces here at home trying to tear us apart. We must not allow that to happen.’
‘Forces here at home trying to tear us apart.’ Those simple words were, when you thought about it, astonishing. Yet their truth was incontestable. This was a call to the breach in the walls, a Harfleur summons to fight enemies within. Yes, enemies within. We might once have associated such a phrase with despots. But that is where our passive laxness has landed us.
‘There are forces here at home trying to tear us apart. We must not allow that to happen,’ the Prime Minister said in an address at Downing Street on March 1, 2024
George Galloway speaks at a rally after his win at the Rochdale by-election
At the end of two fervid weeks when our body politic has been bent out of shape by sectarianism, much of it over a war hundreds of miles abroad, the head of our government was issuing a call to moral self-defence.
He was urging us to resist the self-haters and subversives, the professional moths who have been allowed to fray our nation’s self-confidence. And it all made serious sense. What was perhaps most striking about this speech was that it felt so timely, if not overdue.
It was a quarter to six when Mr Sunak strode firmly out of his official residence and stood at the lectern under lowering skies. No autocue.
He spoke off a four-page printed script. There was speculation shortly beforehand that the rain would force him to make the speech inside but, thank goodness, that did not happen. The value of standing outside that gleaming No 10 door was substantial. He was speaking for all of us – well, all but those who voted for George Galloway in Rochdale or those who beamed an anti-Semitic image on to Big Ben last week.
As a tableau, the scene was a mix of monochromes, the black of his suit, his eyebrows, the iron railings behind, the HM government crest and his imploring eyes contrasting with the gleam of the lights and the sheen from the rain. As he started, a protester at the bottom of Downing Street started putting up the usual blether of baloney, indistinct yet nonetheless irritating. Why must idiots with loud hailers always push their way in to everything? But then another sound: the chirrup of a friendly sparrow. Mr Sunak initially seemed distracted by the heckler but he soon found a steady pace and an unswerving tone.
‘You can be a practising Hindu and a proud Briton, as I am. Or a devout Muslim and a patriotic citizen as so many are. Or a committed Jewish person and the heart of your local community, and all underpinned by the tolerance of our established Christian church.’
Such forbearance was being imperilled by people advancing ‘a divisive, hateful, ideological agenda’.
He told the police to pull themselves together. Alleluia to that. He told the pro-Palestinian protesters to get their marches in order. Well, you never know, they might try.
People say Rishi Sunak may not be in office much longer. So be it. But this was the best thing he has done
Keir Starmer seen this morning following the Rochdale by-election. If the line ‘there must be leadership, not pandering or appeasement’ was a dig at Sir Keir Starmer, we were not told
And he told us all to defy the hate-brigades. We must parry the extremists’ lies. Apart from a flick of contempt when he mentioned the British National Party, the whole speech was delivered in a tone of sustained, insistent, very Rishi-ish decency. It was done without shouting and without party rancour.
There has been too much of all that from parts of our political class, both in and beyond Westminster, in recent weeks. If the line ‘there must be leadership, not pandering or appeasement’ was a dig at Sir Keir Starmer, we were not told.
People say Rishi Sunak may not be in office much longer. So be it. But this was the best thing he has done.
And as he finished, defiant and deadly serious, the heckler was heard no more. But the little sparrow hopped and sang. Harmony had won, and so it must.
Galloway the ‘MP for Gaza’ back in power
by James Tozer and Martin Robinson
For some, George Galloway is best remembered for his bizarre appearance pretending to be a cat on Celebrity Big Brother, purring as he licked pretend milk out of actress Rula Lenska’s hand.
Others can never forget his warm words for dictators, saluting Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein for his ‘courage’, ‘strength’ and ‘indefatigability’ and praising ‘Butcher of Damascus’ Bashar al-Assad.
After being down – and seemingly out – thanks to a decade of failed bids, the crisis which followed the Hamas attacks on Israel has once again propelled the four times married father-of-six back into the corridors of power, where he was already being dubbed ‘the MP for Gaza’.
It is a shock return to frontline politics, Dundee-born Mr Galloway, 69, has now been elected to Parliament seven times for three different parties.
But the ex-Labour MP’s track record of sowing discord and division has sparked fears about his polarising impact on the debate over Israel’s actions in Gaza.
In the 1970s Mr Galloway was campaigning for Dundee to be twinned with Nablus, a city in the West Bank, and later said it was in 1977 he pledged to devote his life ‘to the Palestinian and Arab cause’.
The new Workers Party Member of Parliament for Rochdale, George Galloway poses for a photograph outside his campaign headquarters in Rochdale, northern England on March 1,
George Galloway has said he ‘respects the right’ of Hezbollah terrorists to operate in Lebanon
Mr Galloway was chairman of the Scottish Labour Party at just 26 and became MP for the Glasgow Hillhead constituency in 1987, defeating the SDP’s Roy Jenkins.
Soon afterwards he earned his nickname ‘Gorgeous George’ following a conference in Greece where he boasted he had met many women during the trip, ‘some of whom were known carnally to me’.
After the first Gulf War he described Kuwait as ‘a part of the greater Iraqi whole’ and in 1994 met Hussein, notoriously telling him: ‘I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability.’
In 2003 he was expelled from Labour after he called on British troops serving in Iraq to ‘refuse to obey illegal orders’.
But he retaliated by helping form the anti-war Respect Party and beating Labour’s Oona King in Bethnal Green and Bow in the 2005 general election.
However it was his appearance on Celebrity Big Brother in 2006 which earned him enduring ridicule.
He failed to win a seat at the 2010 general election but two years later returned to Parliament after a by-election in Bradford West.
After failing to defend the seat he came third in the 2021 Batley and Spen byelection following a campaign marred by claims of intimidation and homophobia, Mr Galloway instead concentrated on his media career, presenting on Russian and Iranian TV channels broadcasting in the UK and regularly being reprimanded for failing to meet Ofcom rules on impartiality.
He has also been pictured with two heads of Hamas, including with current leader Ismail Haniyeh in 2009.
