02 October 2016

The ‘academics’ criticising the Prevent strategy are nothing of the sort

This is how the madness spreads. While some politicians of the left continue to pretend that the situation in the Labour party and on the British left in general is salvageable, they seem not to realise that all their sluices are up.

Take a piece in Thursday’s Guardian written by Alice Ross. The headline is ‘Academics criticise anti-radicalisation strategy in open letter.’ Of course only in the Guardian does an ‘open letter’ by such ‘academics’ as these merit a newspaper article. For only in the Guardian would the reporting be so piss-poor that the ‘academics’ in question would include people who are not even academics.

.... Now as I have often said, I am far from being the greatest fan of the Prevent strategy which I think has all sorts of flaws and is arguably too limited in its range and ambition. But it is something.

And it is striking that in the past the people who have sought most publicly for the policy to be scrapped are those who quite simply do not want Britain to have a counter-radicalisation strategy because they themselves favour the radicals or are radicals themselves. Only now that the left’s ability to exercise the most basic hygiene has reached its current level could a Labour shadow home secretary join such people. [The Spectator] Read more