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Category: Britain

insanity Britain 

Rudderless over immigration in Brexitland

Melanie, , ,

What a mess the British government is now in over immigration — a mess that the arrival of the new Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, is unlikely to clear up. Consider. Amber Rudd resigned as Home Secretary through misleading Parliament over whether or not the government had “uncompassionate” targets for removing illegal immigrants. This followed the revelation that the government had treated appallingly Caribbean “Windrush” immigrants who arrived in the sixties but who were threatened with deportation decades later. These Windrush immigrants, however, were in Britain legally. Doesn’t the fact that…

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Britain Israel USA 

Three islands of exceptionalism in west’s darkest hour

Melanie, , ,

On a plane to New York this week, I watched the movie Darkest Hour for the second time. If it packed a punch the first time, on second showing it seemed even more apposite to our current nail-biting era. The movie is about the traumatic period in May 1940 when, as the Nazis swept across Europe, Britain was staring at the prospect of defeat and invasion. Darkest Hour points out the catastrophic error of trying to negotiate with a regime whose agenda brooks no compromise. Britain didn’t acknowledge this until…

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cox Britain 

Betraying Brexit voters spells constitutional crisis

Melanie, , ,

The constitutional crisis bubbling just below the surface ever since Britain voted to leave the EU is now at the point of eruption. That crisis is the prospect of parliament pitting itself against the people. Remainers and EU negotiators are ganging up in a push to reverse Brexit through the back door. The House of Lords passed an amendment last week committing the government to outline its moves to enable the UK to remain in a customs union with the EU. The Commons will have a symbolic vote on this…

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Jews Britain Europe 

In Britain and Europe, antisemitism’s ugly history repeats itself

Melanie

Violent Islamist attacks on Jews in mainland Europe are causing acute concern. But fanatical religious belief which creates the impulse to murder Jews in the service of God, however appalling and terrifying, is not hard to grasp. What is even more unsettling is that people from the European mainstream, who have gone to great lengths to show they have learned the lessons of the Holocaust, or who display affection for the State of Israel, or who are obsessed with anti-racism and human rights – that such people are now coming…

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judges Britain 

Justice in the dock

Melanie

The justice system is in deep trouble. Two developments suggest at least the beginnings of an attempt to rescue it. First, the Director of Public Prosecutions, Alison Saunders, is to stand down at the end of her term of office. This has been marked by a series of controversies and disasters at the Crown Prosecution Service. The second welcome development is the level-headed approach being taken by the Metropolitan Police commissioner Cressida Dick. She will abandon the Met’s policy of automatically believing people who claim they are victims of crime,…

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Labour party antisemitism Britain 

Giddy at their boldness – but Corbyn didn’t cause Labour antisemitism. He’s its product

Melanie, , ,

Giddy from having put its collective head above the parapet for the first time ever, Britain’s Jewish community leadership is telling itself that it has managed to change the political weather. Earlier this week, the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council published a blistering attack on Labour’s leader Jeremy Corbyn for facilitating antisemitism in his party. A demonstration they called outside Parliament, which brought around 2,000 mainly Jewish people onto the streets, produced the extraordinary sight of dozens of Labour MPs turning up to express solidarity against their…

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Labour party antisemitism Britain 

Open and shut case

Melanie, , ,

An open letter backed by more than 2,000 supporters of Jeremy Corbyn has claimed that the Jewish community’s protest against antisemitism in the Labour Party was the work of a “very powerful special interest group”, the Independent reports. Some 2000 people turned up at Monday’s demonstration. There are around 65 million people in the UK. The Jewish community numbers about 270,000. There are an estimated 2.8 million British Muslims. The letter says the organisers of the demonstration had mobilised its “immense strength” to “employ the full might of the BBC” in order…

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Labour party antisemitism Britain 

Mouse roars. Look what happened

Melanie, , ,

The Jewish mouse finally roared – and just look what happened. For the first time in its history the congenitally nervous Board of Deputies of British Jews, along with the Jewish Leadership Council, publicly denounced the leader of a mainstream political party over his support for antisemitism. They published a blistering letter yesterday denouncing the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn for facilitating antisemitism in his party. Then they organised a demonstration outside Parliament. This was supported by dozens of Labour MPs along with other parliamentarians. These joined the Jewish community in…

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synchronised Britain 

The Corbyn uproar

Melanie

I shall be writing about the uproar that has exploded over Jeremy Corbyn and UK antisemitism in this Friday’s Jerusalem Post. In the meantime, you might like to know that I will be setting all this in a broader context next month when I am due to deliver the Simon Wiesenthal lecture in London. My title is Time to Leave? Jews in Britain and Europe. Details on the flier below.

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Guardian Angel

Melanie

My personal and political memoir Guardian Angel was published a few weeks ago. To whet your appetite, here’s an extract. When I started writing about the baleful effects of family breakdown, I was accosted angrily by someone I had previously thought of as a friend. “How can you possibly say that family breakdown hurts children?” he spat out at me. “The worst damage to a child is always done by the traditional nuclear family!” I could only gaze at him, defeated by the sheer impossibility of conveying the stupendous shallowness…

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