Islam: Farage’s Achilles Heel

As a longstanding supporter of Nigel Farage, I think it’s not only reasonable but incumbent on me to highlight whenever he strays off the reservation. Generally speaking, Farage deserves enormous credit: he’s been on the right side of history for most issues throughout his political career (Brexit, Trump, immigration, Covid [albeit belatedly], Net Zero etc), and for a considerable time has arguably been the sole voice for genuine conservatism (if not sanity) within the Westminster bubble.

No one gets it right all the time of course, and Farage is no exception. He famously (or perhaps infamously) backed Tony Blair to be Britain’s vaccination Tsar, and recently confessed he wouldn’t attempt the mass deportation of illegals if he were in power. There is one major issue however on which he has fallen woefully short in the past, present and (dare we assume) future - and one he cannot be given a pass on; that issue is Islam. Always happy to throw fellow ring-wingers under the bus to keep the current Farage brand ‘respectable’ (e.g. Ann Marie Waters, Tommy Robinson etc), he recently replaced Reform Chairman Richard Tice with relative unknown Zia Yusuf; a manoeuvre hard to interpret as anything other than naked courting of the Muslim vote.

While straight-talking is Farage’s stock-in-trade, Islam has historically proved something of an Achilles heel for the Reform leader. Having stayed mostly silent on the issue for the past decade and a half, Farage made the pre-election decision to come clean on the religion of peace. Ensconced on the Sunday sofa with Trevor Phillips, Farage let him have it with both barrels:

We have a growing number of young people in this country who do not subscribe to British values. (Who) in fact, loathe much of what we stand for. I think we see them on the streets of London every Saturday.

Asked whether he was referring to Muslims, Farage confirmed he was:

I am afraid, I found some of the recent surveys saying 46 per cent of British Muslims support Hamas, support a terrorist organisation that is proscribed in this country… What is interesting is that this prime minister is building up far more of that population than anybody before in history.

I gave Farage credit for this at the time, but it seems the volte-face was not to last. In a recent hour-length interview with Winston Marshall, Farage covered a range of topics - including Southport and Islam. Pitched as a ‘bombshell’, Farage’s comments were certainly revealing - but quite possibly remarks that may come back to haunt him:

The interview is definitely worth a watch, but if you’re short of time I’ll cover the salient points.

Southport

• (On Muslim loyalty to Britain) “I said the party would be about family, community and country. We are a values-based political party - that is who we are, these are the things we believe in and I think the vast majority of the Muslim community certainly believes in the first two,  and we have to encourage them to believe in the third as well.”

• (On the Southport murders) “On Southport, all I can say to you right now is I know a hell of a lot more than the British public know; a hell of a lot more. I've been completely silenced. I dared the day after Southport to do a video to say, “can we please know who this man is? Was he known to the authorities? Why do I feel we're not being told the truth?” The level of demonisation I came under for that from both front-benches was astonishing; from media commentators, demonisation on a level that I'd never even experienced. Now I'm told (by) the Speaker of the House of Commons I can't ask questions about it in the House of Commons. Parliamentary privilege is out of the window. (There are) even rumours today that the court case which is due in January - every effort is being made to defer it. Right, yeah this is what's going on - we are witnessing one of the biggest cover-ups we've ever seen in our lives.”

• (On Starmer’s handling of the situation) “But you know you can only kick the can so far down the road. Yeah, when the truth comes out about this I believe his reputation as Prime Minister will take a dent of enormous proportions.”

What this tells me is that Farage (at least subconsciously) acknowledges that Muslims feel no allegiance to Britain, and need to be ‘encouraged’ to do so - that in itself is not insignificant. On Southport, Farage is clearly not bandying around the statement ‘one of the biggest cover-ups we've ever seen in our lives’ - evidently he believes the situation is even worse than we imagine. When you consider the rumours are that Axel Rudakubana is attending the mosque in prison, and that Starmer himself is directly implicated in the cover-up, this makes me wonder whether we’re talking about something as enormous as full state capitulation. I say this in particular, because of Farage’s quip about ‘kicking the can down the road’ - does he mean Southport specifically, Islam more generally, or the revelation of government acquiescence to Mohammedanism?

Naturally on the question of rumour, the Prime Minister’s spokesman (Lord Alli presumably, since we’re dealing with dirty laundry?!) has claimed Starmer’s alleged representation of Rudakubana’s Rwandan father in an asylum case is ‘untrue’ - but then, a lot of things are untrue these days. If you recall, it was certainly ‘untrue’ that Axel was a Muslim; definitely ‘untrue’ that there was any terrorist involvement, and unquestionably ‘untrue’ that the government was involved in a cover-up - obviously the Old Bill only considered checking under Axel’s bed on the eve of the Budget.

The intricacies of Law are clearly well above the pay grade of a pleb such as myself, but I don’t recall the ‘far-right thug’ rioters getting the benefit of reporting restrictions on their cases. Neither did Tommy Robinson come to think of it, as he took the VIP express lane to Pentonville, What precisely entitles Axel Rudakubana to nationwide anonymity? My Latin’s hazy at best, but I don’t remember our Classics Master translating sub judice as ‘thou shout not blaspheme against Islam’.

Islam

Next up was the subject of Islam - which is obviously the reason we are not allowed to know anything about Southport. This is where I was most disturbed by Farage’s comments:

• (On tolerance and religion) “I think a degree of tolerance is a vital part of Britishness, of Englishness, which means we can have different religions - provided that is to do with private observance and not continual public utterance, (that) can work. I think (that is) why the Jewish community have done so well in Britain. You know whether they came from Russia or Austria or Germany, many of the Jewish people kept their own private observance but you’d barely know in public, because they integrated and their kids played football at school with everybody else or whatever it may be.”

• (On Muslim perceptions of extremism) “They’re more concerned than us, because it’s more likely to affect their lives. I mean, if you’re a Muslim family and the news is all about radical Islamists committing heinous acts, you know you’re going to think ‘Wow, my neighbours may well be prejudiced against me because I’m Muslim. So I think they’re even more concerned than we are.”

• (On Muslim attitudes) “There is a growing number of young Muslim males who loathe who we are, but the vast majority live peacefully, even if their sympathies lie in a slightly different direction - and we all have sympathies in terms of our own tribe, our own family when at times it may not be rational. I am concerned about the Hamas stuff of course I am, but the nub of it is we have a Muslim population in Britain growing by about 75% every 10 years right, that’s just where we are. If we politically alienate the whole of Islam, we will lose; we’ll lose. By 2050, goodness knows what kind of a terrible state we’re going to be in… we have to try everything we can to bring the majority with us. They will have private observance, they will have slightly different ways of how they live their lives perhaps to you and me, but they will be part of the club overall. That is what we have to strive for.”

This is the first time I have heard Farage openly discuss the longterm consequences of Islam in Britain, and I think his comments are absolutely extraordinary. First he makes the non-sequitur of Jewish private observance, as though the increasingly dominant public displays of Islam could be somehow ‘brought into the fold’. Then he claims Muslims are more concerned by extremism, when he has previously quoted the very figures which contradict him. He egregiously downplays the incompatibility of Islam and western values, with the trite observation ‘even if their sympathies lie in a slightly different direction’.

Worst of all however, is the abject capitulation (I’m sorry, there’s no way to sugarcoat it) expressed in the astonishing line:

If we politically alienate the whole of Islam, we will lose.

“We will lose” - in other words, concessions have to be made. You can of course make the case for capitulation to Islam (not one I would ever advocate myself), and indeed it would seem many of our MPs have done so in all but name. But I believe if you do so, you must do so honestly. If Nigel Farage were not a figure of consequence, then perhaps such comments would be trivial. But if Nigel Farage genuinely represents the Britain’s last stand before we reach the demographic tipping point, then this is worrying stuff indeed.

Whatever the truth about Southport, it is symptomatic of the widening gulf between reality and what the authorities allow us to know: whether it’s grooming gangs, crime, immigration or the bare-faced slaughter of little girls. As for Farage, he’s either underestimating the danger of Islam or he’s being dishonest - choose your poison!

(Photo: Laurie Noble, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

Frank Haviland is the Editor of The New Conservative, and the author of Banalysis: The Lie Destroying the West.

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