York co-owner calls for immediate reform of National League promotion structure
York co-owner Julie-Anne Uggla has called for an immediate reform of the promotion and relegation system between the EFL and the National League which would see her club promoted to League Two.
The Minstermen missed out on a return to the Football League as they lost in the play-off semi-finals to Oldham, having finished second in the league table behind champions Barnet, 28 points clear of the final play-off position.
In February, the National League launched the '3UP campaign' with the aim of securing three promotion places to League Two for the 2025/26 season.
But Uggla has called for 'an immediate review, temporary relief measures, or an accelerated implementation of the '3UP' model' with the intention of York earning instant promotion to League Two.
In an open letter to the National League and the EFL chief executive Trevor Birch, she said: 'I am writing to express my deep concern and disappointment at the current promotion system between the National League and League Two, following a season where York City FC, despite finishing 28 points clear of seventh place and winning 12 more matches, were denied promotion.
'Such a glaring imbalance not only undermines sporting merit but erodes the very foundations of fair competition.
'To dominate a league campaign so comprehensively (Barnet the only exception), only to be forced into a play-off lottery, is structurally unjust.
'It penalises excellence and rewards inferiority in a way no professional league system should condone.
'While I am aware of the historical basis for the two-up structure, it is no longer fit for purpose.
'The gap between the top National League clubs and the lower EFL clubs has narrowed, and in many cases reversed, making the case for three-up promotion beyond compelling.
'The '3UP' campaign rightly reflects the sentiment of every National League club and countless supporters.
'But waiting until 2025–26 only deepens the injustice for clubs like York City, who have already paid the price for a system built on outdated assumptions.
'I urge both governing bodies to urgently consider transitional reform, whether via immediate review, temporary relief measures, or an accelerated implementation of the '3UP' model.
'At the very least, this season's outcome should provoke an honest re-evaluation of what fairness in football truly means.
'For clubs, fans, and the integrity of the English football pyramid, it is time to reward merit and restore credibility to the system.'
Oldham returned to the Football League after they beat Southend 3-2 after extra time in the play-off final at Wembley on Sunday.
Uggla added: 'I would also like to point out that writing this letter should not undermine the achievements of Oldham Atletic from their victory at Wembley yesterday, and to Southend United for making the final. Their accomplishments should not go unnoticed.
'Too many great clubs, including Oldham and Southend, have fallen into this league with little chance of redemption due to the lack of promotion places.
'The current system is simply not sustainable anymore.'
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Telegraph
41 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Jeremy Hunt vs Allister Heath: ‘Starmer's EU sell-out is Gordon Brown's gold scandal on steroids'
I've visited plenty of poky parliamentary offices in my time, some little larger than cubby holes and designed without any interest in ergonomics. Jeremy Hunt's digs are something else. They are palatial, as befits a former holder of two of the greatest offices of state, and a runner-up in the contest to become Tory leader. A Spectator magazine cover takes pride of place on the wall. I can't avoid doing a double take. The cartoon depicts a triumphant Hunt and a defeated Boris Johnson, with the headline marvelling at the political upset of the century. Hunt notes my surprise at this extraordinary historical revisionism. He explains that it was an unpublished draft produced just in case and gifted to him by the Speccie's former editor Fraser Nelson, following his defeat in the 2019 Conservative leadership contest. I like Hunt, even though we have jousted over the years and despite his conviction that I'm an incorrigible purveyor of declinism. A former chancellor, foreign secretary and health secretary, he is now on a mission to convince Britain not only that our country can be great again, but that we retain far more power, wealth and influence than we realise. He believes the world needs us to be successful and engaged, fighting for free trade, defence, the environment and human rights. I wanted to read Hunt's new book to find out which kind of optimist he is. The good news is that he is no Panglossian, convinced, like Candide's glib tutor in Voltaire's masterpiece, that all is already for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Centrist dad types often fall into that delusional category, citing long-run GDP figures or life-expectancy data to lecture us that we have no right to moan about anything. Instead, Hunt can best be described as a rational optimist, to adapt a phrase coined by British writer Matt Ridley, somebody who accepts that the world is in a bad place but who is aware of what is still going right and believes that what has gone wrong can be repaired. His book, Can We Be Great Again? Why a Dangerous World Needs Britain, is extremely readable, and an excellent, nuanced contribution to what the UK's role should be in today's multipolar world. 'Because I put up taxes, there was this view that I was happy for taxes to go up' Given that title, I point out, if Britain isn't great today, that must in part be the fault of his government. 'If I was going to look back over 14 years, were we as transformative as Margaret Thatcher?' Hunt responds. 'No, but in our defence, we had to deal with three global shocks: the financial crisis, Covid and a 1970s-style energy shock. We did the one thing everyone expects from Conservative governments, which is to take the tough decisions to right the economic ship,' he says. As a result, 'There were lots of other things that we didn't do.' He is proud that, during his tenure as Chancellor, inflation fell back dramatically, and that he managed to increase defence spending. He also has regrets: 'My biggest disappointment was that we didn't go further, faster on welfare reform and getting taxes down. My biggest personal failure was not getting a message across that the Conservatives really did want to bring down the tax burden. Because I put up taxes, there was this view that I was happy for taxes to go up.' That is to profoundly misunderstand his belief system, Hunt maintains. He highlights his reductions to National Insurance, and his introduction of full expensing for corporate capital spending. 'I am a small-state conservative for principled reasons to do with the fact that governments should expropriate the minimum possible for its citizens, but also because of the practical reason that the fastest-growing economies are the ones with the lowest tax rates.' The language is noteworthy: many of his colleagues aren't interested in political philosophy, and have become unused to talking about economics, preferring to focus exclusively on culture wars. Unlike many Tories, Hunt isn't scared to argue that the better off should be levied less too. 'I would like to bring down all levels of tax. I'm very worried about the flight of millionaires,' he says. He highlights the absurdity caused by the tapering of the personal allowance on incomes between £100,000 and £125,000 a year, an unfashionable cause but one that is hammering the incentives of professionals. 'There are lots of anomalies in the tax system, such as having [an effective] marginal rate of tax of 62 per cent over £100,000 a year. People on lower incomes also need to see that their tax bill is going down. Nigel Lawson brought down everyone's taxes.' Many on the Right – Tories, as well as, increasingly, Reform – are scared to discuss cutting spending, partly because of the realignment that has sent so many lower-income voters their way. Not so Hunt: 'Welfare reform and lower taxes are the only way that we are going to change this country, culturally, economically and fiscally.' Spending could be cut drastically. 'There were lots of problems in the benefits system in 2019, but even if we just turn the clock back five years for working-age adults, getting the benefits bill to where it was before the pandemic, we would save just under £50 billion a year.' He believes Rachel Reeves should have focused on a comprehensive reform of the benefits system rather than on the now-derailed attempt at removing pensioners' winter fuel allowance. 'The Government has used up all the capital that it might have had on what is, in Treasury terms, a relatively trivial amount of money, [saving] around £1 billion, when they could have taken the same hit for £50 billion, and would have improved work incentives.' 'We need to start trying to be the country that I know we can be' Hunt is a born-again Brexiteer, and embraces an open, Singapore-style future of globally competitive businesses and free trade. 'I didn't vote for Brexit, but I've never had any doubt that we can make a huge success of it. I see no reason why we couldn't be a completely independent, sovereign country like Canada or Australia.' He believes Keir Starmer's 'reset' was a political catastrophe. 'I cannot understand why the Government is agreeing to pay money into the EU. The Government cunningly didn't tell us how much they're going to pay, but it's going to be billions. They're going to have to justify cutting benefits for pensioners at the same time as increasing payments to the EU.' Starmer's sell-out will have cut-through, Hunt believes. 'It is going to be Chagos on steroids, Gordon Brown's gold scandal on steroids. It's a very big political mistake. Why would a sovereign country pay to do a reciprocal trade deal? Canada wouldn't do that. Australia wouldn't do that. The United States wouldn't do that. It betrays a mentality that we are the junior partner.' This is where Hunt's rational optimism shines through. 'We have the top military in Europe, the top universities in Europe, the top tech sector in Europe. We have more hard and more soft power than any other European country. We are an equal partner.' This goes to the heart of Hunt's thesis. 'We need to get back our self-confidence. The world is in an incredibly dangerous state. We've got Ukraine, Taiwan, we've got an unpredictable president in America. We've got a migration crisis. We've got so many things that are going wrong. Countries that have power or influence need to use it. Do we just hold our hands up and say we're screwed and there's nothing we can do about it because we're such a weak and ineffective country, or do we look at the facts, which are that on every single major global issue, we are one of the top 10 most powerful countries on the planet, and if we choose to, we can have a decisive influence in solving problems? We need to start trying to be the country that I know we can be.' Hunt thinks defence spending should increase. 'Three per cent is the minimum. America spends 3.4 per cent, so you probably want something along those lines.' It is usually a cliché to describe somebody as irrepressible, but that is Hunt. Nothing seems to drag him down, even irritating journalists such as myself, who spent 15 years accusing him of being too Left-wing. He always bounces back, and can take almost any criticism. He is energetic, repeatedly running the London marathon. He tries to marshal reason and facts to convince his critics, a counter-cultural approach in an era of social media attack dogs and demagogues. The son of an admiral and a father of three, 58-year-old Hunt attended Charterhouse School and was president of the Oxford University Conservative Association during Thatcherism's heyday. He had a buccaneering streak and, after a couple of years in consultancy, headed to Japan, where he learnt the language and taught English. On his return, he founded several businesses, making millions. His eyes bulge when he makes important points, a trait his enemies have mocked but that, in private, merely underlines his earnestness. Many critics of the historic catastrophe that was Britain's Covid lockdowns point to Sweden or Florida as role models. Hunt looks instead to Korea and Taiwan. 'Korea had a much more effective test and trace scheme, and quarantined people who had the virus quickly. They avoided any lockdowns at all in the first year, all the restaurants stayed open for the whole of the first year, and there was much less economic damage.' He doesn't believe lockdowns reduced the number of deaths and blames them for destroying the work ethic. This is a core Huntian value: he believes in hard work, in self-reliance, in upward mobility and in ensuring tax and red tape don't discourage it. 'The real problem with lockdowns was a cultural one. They got us out of the habit of hard work. Working from home has become a virus which is incredibly damaging to our work ethic,' he argues. He adds of lockdowns, 'They created a mentality that if there's any big problem, the state will always step in, and we are still paying the price, and the worst place of all we're paying that price is the benefits system.' He's a fan of Iain Duncan Smith's welfare reforms. The issue is that at around the same time, 'Britain passed a law saying there had to be parity of esteem between mental and physical health. This was a good thing for the NHS, because it needed to treat mental illness more seriously. But it was a terrible thing for the benefits system, because people realised they could increase their points and therefore their likelihood of qualifying for disability benefits or higher levels of Universal Credit. By drawing attention to mental illness, we create an incentive, not just for people to use mental illness to qualify for benefits, but for people not to get better.' Hunt is passionate about the scandal of Britain's exploding numbers of adults on out-of-work benefits. 'It is not just economically barmy. It is immoral. About half the people who are signed off having to look for work are now done so primarily for mental health reasons. If you are mentally ill, one of the most important things is social contact. The last thing you want is to condemn them to a life of daytime TV. If you have mild depression, it is likely to make it severe depression and far worse. We are doing a massive disservice to these people.' 'Which EU country would dare oppose reforms that give people control of their borders? There is a point in the life of a Tory politician when they undergo a metamorphosis. They go to bed one evening as an ex-Cabinet minister and wake up the next morning as a grandee. Hunt has completed that process, though he may not have realised it yet. Being a grandee confers a number of advantages upon the beholder. They are given a fairer hearing, and that is something Hunt certainly deserves. He was treated abominably when he was health secretary, demonised by imbeciles who should have known better. The NHS will never be well managed – it is impossible for anybody to effectively run a gigantic socialist behemoth – but it was vastly better when Hunt was at its helm than it is today. I ask him whether the NHS can still be saved as a universal, state-owned, taxpayer-funded system that is free at the point of use. 'There are a lot of social insurance systems in Europe that have better outcomes and sometimes for less money than the NHS costs us,' Hunt says. 'But I don't believe that any party will ever persuade the British people to switch to it, because the principle of the social insurance system is that everyone gets bronze-level insurance, and that's paid for by the state. But those who can pay [can opt for] silver- and gold-level insurance.' I put it to him that the NHS is in fact a bronze-level system already. He deflects my trouble-making, offering two suggestions to ensure we 'get as good a result as they get in the Netherlands or Israel on our system'. First of all, 'We've got to get rid of these national targets that have made the NHS the most centralised, micromanaged healthcare system in the world. Stalin would be proud.' His second reform would be to regionalise the NHS, making it report to locally elected mayors. More generally, Hunt's solution for economic rebirth is radical devolution. The current model hands some spending power to local authorities but does not make them responsible for raising funds, creating mismatched incentives. Power must come with accountability. 'It needs to be about local empowerment, civic leadership, giving local mayors and elected authorities the power to pull themselves up by the bootstraps.' Hunt 'favours elected mayors with four-year terms' in place of local authorities. He does not want to spread the 'grievance model' promoted by the SNP in Scotland or Sadiq Khan in London. He describes himself as a 'passionate supporter of free trade'. He says, 'Britain basically invented free trade, and the British Empire laid the foundations of the global free trade system. But we didn't make sure the benefits were spread evenly. The average wage in Manchester is some £10,000 pounds lower than the average wage in London. Boris was absolutely right to champion levelling up. The bit that was missing is that levelling up should not just be about Westminster doling out cash to left-behind regions.' Hunt, whose wife, Lucia, is Chinese-born, has a nuanced grasp of the immigration debate. 'Immigrants living here are among the strongest voices for controlling migration, partly because they are worried about social instability,' he points out. Hunt agrees the Conservatives proved too liberal on immigration. 'We allowed companies to increase their workforce by hiring cheap foreign labour, which allowed them to ignore the six million adults of working age in the UK who are not in work. That is expensive for the state and a morally bankrupt position.' His views on asylum and refugees have shifted. 'The ECHR and the 1951 Refugee Convention were written for a different age and urgently need reform, because they make it too hard to stop people coming here and too hard to get people out who shouldn't be here. Keir Starmer, a human rights lawyer, could do that with extraordinary credibility. Which European country is going to dare to oppose reforms that give people proper control of their borders? It is that kind of energy we need to see when it comes to Britain's place in the world.' In the absence of reform of the ECHR and Refugee Convention, withdrawal is the only solution. 'In the end, if we can't reform them, I would support leaving them. But the trouble with just leaving them is that you don't stop thousands of boats crossing the Mediterranean, let alone the Channel.' Ever the optimist, Hunt isn't one of those who think the Tories are about to be supplanted by Reform: 'I don't believe the Conservative Party is extinct. Our share price is low at the moment, but we'll come back because we are the only party that really understands and cares about wealth creation.' I wonder whether Hunt, who chose to step down from the shadow cabinet, may yet feel the hand of history tapping on his shoulder one more time, especially if the Tory party were to implode after next May's elections. Stranger things have happened, including when Hunt, who was preparing to wind down his career, was contacted out of the blue by Liz Truss. A message from an unrecognised number stated simply, 'Liz Truss here. Please can you give me a call.' He thought it was a trick. 'Was the prime minister really trying to contact me? Surely not. It was mid-October 2022 and she had been in Downing Street for a little over a month,' Hunt recalls. He told Lucia, 'Someone just tried to message me pretending to be Truss. I can't believe how naive people think I am. It's probably a radio show host trying a hoax call.' It was indeed the prime minister, and he was appointed Chancellor the next day. Ultra-experienced politicians who pen policy books are rarely content with becoming pundits shouting from the sidelines. Hunt is highly supportive of Kemi Badenoch and was effusive about her performance at Prime Minister's Questions on the day we met. I don't doubt his sincerity. Yet Hunt wouldn't be human if he didn't think that maybe – just maybe – he could still have something valuable to contribute to his country at the highest level.
Telegraph
42 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Pro-Palestinian protester in two-tier police row is Islamist refugee
A pro-Palestinian activist who evaded terror charges in a two-tier policing row is an Islamist propagandist granted asylum in Britain, The Telegraph can reveal. The demonstrator, who avoided prosecution after chanting ' I love the 7th of October ' at a London rally last year, can now be named as Mohammad al-Mail, a 27-year-old Kuwaiti national granted refugee status in the UK in 2017. In May, The Telegraph published footage of Mr Mail glorifying the Hamas massacre and shouting, 'I like an organisation that starts with H' through a megaphone at an anti-Israel protest in Swiss Cottage, north-west London, last September. He was later arrested on suspicion of terrorism offences but never charged. By contrast, a Jewish man who attended a counter-protest on the same day and briefly held a placard mocking Hezbollah's leader was charged after police claimed the sign could cause 'distress' to terrorist sympathisers. It took eight months for the Crown Prosecution Service to admit there was insufficient evidence to prosecute. The Telegraph can now reveal that Mr Mail claimed he avoided prosecution by telling counter-terrorism officers that the 'H' in his chant stood for the Home Office, rather than Hamas. In footage obtained by The Telegraph – which police confirmed they had not seen – Mr Mail appears to boast of misleading investigators. In an Arabic-language podcast aired in March, he said the case 'fell apart' after he gave what appeared to be a knowingly false answer when asked: 'Who do you mean by the letter H?' He said: 'Immediately, I answered, 'It could be the Home Office', you know, the ministry of the interior. 'I love the ministry of the interior', and so on. 'Truly, as the saying goes, 'The worst calamity is the one that makes you laugh'', he joked, adding that officers 'wanted to delve into the depths of my conscience to know what I truly believe'. The Metropolitan Police twice referred his case to the CPS but he was never charged. A source familiar with the case said prosecutors declined to bring charges, fearing it would be 'speculation' to infer support for a proscribed group from his chant. The Telegraph can also reveal that Mr Mail's support for terror groups was not limited to the Sept 20 protest. Since being granted asylum, he has used the Upper Hand Organisation, his campaign group, to promote an Islamist ideology fundamentally at odds with British democratic values. In the same podcast, he urged supporters to 'seize opportunities' created by the October 7 attack – the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. 'Not every day is like October 7,' he said. 'If an opportunity arises, we must fully exploit it. If you strike, make it hurt.' His website hosts a string of Islamist manifestos and incendiary texts. He has criticised Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and HTS, the Syrian group, for being too pragmatic and failing to advance global jihad. He wrote that such groups have 'ultimately succumbed to the international system and failed to bring about significant change to the concept of jihad itself – jihad, which is understood as a struggle to establish Sharia on earth'. Mr Mail has promoted the jihadist cause online and distributed leaflets and stickers at protests. On Aug 17 2024, the Upper Hand Organisation issued a pamphlet titled Wake Up! Protect the Honour of Islam, which portrayed the Israel-Palestine conflict as a 'war of faith'. It glorifies jihad, urges mobilisation, and repeats the slogan 'a new Khaybar awaits' – a phrase often used to incite violence against Jews. The document claims his group is 'committed to channelling resources toward strategic projects to achieve Islamic dominance'. On Nov 11 2024, Mr Mail announced he would surrender to police over his chants but told supporters to 'continue the path of jihad'. He described peaceful Muslims as 'slaves and dwarves' and issued a warning to Britain: 'What is coming to you is terrifying – either our annihilation or yours.' In recent months, he has used his platform to lobby Parliament to de-proscribe Hamas and divert taxpayer funds to sharia courts. He also opposes the banning of child marriage, arguing it discriminates against 16 and 17-year-old Muslim girls. In a statement to The Telegraph, the Met said it was unaware of Mr Mail's apparent admission and record of Islamist advocacy until contacted by this newspaper. A spokesman said the force 'does not believe the material provided to us was known to officers at the time of their initial investigation. It did not form part of the case put to the CPS'. 'Officers will carefully review it to identify any offences so the appropriate action can be taken.' The case has been condemned as an example of two-tier policing, deepening embarrassment for Scotland Yard and raising concerns over national security among senior politicians and extremism experts. On Friday evening, Chris Philp, the shadow policing minister, said that, in light of The Telegraph's latest revelations, 'the police must urgently re-investigate the incident with a view to re-arresting the man concerned'. He added: 'I am deeply worried that someone came here, was granted asylum and then abused the UK's generosity by expressing extremist views. This is why our human rights and asylum laws need to be changed.' His comments were echoed by Lord Walney, the Government's former extremism tsar, who described the latest evidence uncovered by this newspaper as 'disturbing and raises serious questions for the Metropolitan Police'. 'The fact officers were apparently unaware of this open source material when they submitted the case to the Crown Prosecution Service suggests an alarming lack of rigour in their initial investigation,' he said. 'In light of this, it is vital that the police reopen the case to ensure national security can be protected.' The Jewish counter-protester, who was charged for 'causing distress', said the revelations were yet more evidence of 'two-tier policing'. The CPS dropped the case against him last month, eight months after he was first arrested. 'The police were sufficiently well-resourced to know I'd be at the counter-protest the following week and to circulate my photograph among officers on the ground so they could arrest me. Yet counter-terror police were apparently unable to carry out a basic Google search on this man before interviewing him,' he said. The CPS said it is urgently reviewing its decision not to press charges against Mr Mail. The Upper Hand Organisation, which he founded in 2012, was already active in Kuwait when Mr Mail arrived in Britain. During his studies, he was convicted in absentia of 13 offences by the Gulf state, including defaming the Emir and spreading subversive ideas, receiving a combined sentence of 53 years. He said these were politically and religiously motivated and was granted asylum in the UK on May 5 2017. He later received a partial pardon but remains in the UK. A Home Office spokesman said: 'Supporting a proscribed organisation is a serious criminal offence. The investigation and prosecution of criminal offences, including determining whether an offence has been committed or not, is a matter for the police and Crown Prosecution Service, who are operationally independent. 'It is our longstanding policy not to comment on individual cases.'
Telegraph
42 minutes ago
- Telegraph
We shall not remain a free country if we continue to submit to radical Islamists
It shows in what strange times we live that it is the chairman of Reform, of all parties, who resigns over the question of banning the burka. Surely his party is the likeliest to favour a ban or – at least – to be able to contain internal disagreements on the subject. Probably Reform's chairman, Zia Yusuf, had other reasons to go. He is not the first person to find it challenging to work closely with Nigel Farage. In a spooky way, Reform tends to act as a mini-Maga, mirroring Trumpery in its highs and lows. Over there, Donald Trump and Elon Musk explode with a cosmic bang; over here, Farage and Yusuf then go off with a smaller pop. For this reason, I suspect that when Maga falters, as it eventually will, so will Reform. Nevertheless, Mr Yusuf is a Muslim. Partly for that reason, he was a recruitment coup for the supposedly 'Islamophobic' Reform. On Thursday, he said his party's newest MP, Sarah Pochin, had been 'dumb', at Prime Minister's Questions, to call for a burka ban; then he resigned. Let me take two other recent examples of where attitudes to Islam raise knotty problems. On Monday, Hamit Coskun, an atheist Turk, was found guilty of a 'religiously aggravated public order offence' and fined. He had burnt a copy of the Koran outside the Turkish consulate in London. In an article in this week's Spectator, Mr Coskun says he was protesting about President Erdogan of Turkey changing his country from a firmly secular state to 'a base for radical Islamists while trying to create a sharia regime'. The magistrate, however, decided otherwise. Mr Coskun had been 'motivated at least in part by hatred of followers of the [Muslim] religion', he said, and so he was a criminal. My other example comes from events outside Parliament on Wednesday. A noisy mob of anti-Israel demonstrators blocked, insulted and intimidated MPs and peers trying to enter. The protesters proudly announced that they were drawing a red line round the premises, as if they had that right. A disabled peer I know who travels by wheelchair, found it frightening to get through the crowd, though he determinedly persisted. He complained to a police officer, and got the airy reply, 'It's free speech, isn't it?' It indicates the sense of vulnerability such situations arouse that the peer asks me not to print his name. Another peer, Lord Moynihan, was surrounded near the Tube station entrance by black-clad youths who subjected him to an involuntary interview, which they filmed, including the question: 'Do you condemn the massacres of Gazans?' 'I do indeed condemn the terrible shootings by Hamas of their own people,' he bravely answered. It was noticeable – and has happened before – that when there are Gaza marches the police and the parliamentary authorities are lax about ensuring legislators can enter freely and protesters are kept at a distance. They seem not to acknowledge the vital difference between free speech and threatening behaviour. Obviously, the greatest passion behind the Gaza marches comes from Muslims (though the secular hard-Left is also involved). Have the police made a covert bargain with the march organisers? The fear of being called 'Islamophobic ' seems to disable the police's judgment. They do not properly enforce public order or protect the right of MPs, peers or staff, to reach their place of work unimpeded. Nor do they protect the right of ordinary citizens to enter Parliament without fear. They act as if the 'right to protest' allows parliamentary democracy to be made subject to a picket line. Yesterday, with many other peers, I signed a letter to the Lord Speaker, organised by Lord Walney. One of our points was that, on top of normal public-order legislation, there are at least four other laws which specifically protect Parliament from such attacks. Why are these not enforced, we asked, and why do the parliamentary authorities not take a stronger line to insist that they should be? One of the attractions of Britain to immigrants is that we are a free country, treasuring free speech. In many cases, immigrants enhance our freedom. Now that immigration is on such a vast scale, however, we suffer because many immigrants do not come from freedom-loving cultures. To the extent that immigrants can be grouped by religion, the largest single group are Muslims. For complex political, economic and cultural reasons, Islam is in global ferment. In that ferment, freedom is often scorned, except the freedom to advance interpretations of Islam, often the most extreme ones. Such Islamists have punitive, sometimes violent attitudes to promoting their version of their faith. At worst, this takes the form of terrorism. The words 'Allahu Akbar!' ('God is great!') have become the war-cry of an imminent explosion or attack. Even without actual violence, Islamism often involves naked anti-Semitism and unreasoning hatred of Israel. Militant Islam also tries to assert its power against the sort of freedoms which the rest of us (including, do not forget, many Muslims) cherish. Examples include forcing women and girls to cover their heads and even their faces, prohibitions on school swimming or singing, protests against being served by women in the public services and the banning of certain books and films. A leading Islamist demand is for a blasphemy law, although its supporters use other words to describe it. Most Muslims are highly sensitive to any perceived insult to their prophet, Mohammed, or to the Koran. Because they regard the Koran as 'the unmediated word of God', some take the view that disrespect to the physical object, the book of his word, is a direct attack on him, and therefore must be avenged. Belief in the sacredness of religious scriptures should be respected by non-believers, but it must not be defended by law, no matter how much transgressions may offend Muslims. It is unpleasant and foolish to burn the Koran in public, just as it was – which often happened in Britain until quite recently – to burn effigies of the Pope. But the only conceivable justification for banning would be in special incidents – burning a Koran in front of worshippers entering a mosque, for example – which would amount to an incitement to violence. The offence here should not be because the act was 'religiously aggravated'. A modern country should not adjudicate between the sincerity, truth or competing ardour of different religious claims. All it can judge is that some things in some places breach civil peace. In all the cases cited above, you can see politicians and public authorities tiptoeing round the subject. Surefootedness is certainly better than clodhopping where religion is concerned. But there is a growing, justified fear that we shall not continue as a free country if we defer to the angriest Muslim voices. Two concepts need to be faced down. The first is the idea of 'Islamophobia', to which this Government wants to give legal shape. The word 'phobia' suggests psychological abnormality, yet surely people are entitled to be frightened of any religion, especially of Christianity and Islam, which aims for conversion and claims universal truth. Such fears may be misplaced, but they are not criminal. The other concept embedded in public policy, thanks to the Equality Act, is that of 'protected characteristics' – one's religion, sex, sexuality, age, disability, race etc. These are intended to defend people against persecution, but in practice they drive us into warring categories. The only protected characteristic anyone should need is to be a British citizen. That unites. Everything else divides.
