How the left views Ken Clarke

A propos the Ken Clarke furore in which he appeared to denigrate the seriousness of rape, it is amusing to see the knots in which some of our more enlightened friends are tying themselves up. As illustrated by Andy McSmith of the Independent speaking on the Today programme this morning, certain progressive folk are horrified that one of their own -- for so they see Calamity Ken, whose Conservative affiliation can be forgiven because his pro-Europe, socially liberal views allow him to be accepted as a human being – has got himself into such a mess.

Thus McSmith defended Ken as an all-round good egg, while carefully saying that his remarks yesterday had been ‘pretty bad’ --  and had provided ammunition, moreover, for the ‘nasty party’ (horrors!) who were rejoicing in his difficulties (but who by definition were also...

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Ken Clarke and I go to prison...

I am due to appear on BBC TV’s Question Time this evening, which is taking place in Wormwood Scrubs prison in London. Through amazingly prescient planning, my fellow panellists include the embattled Justice Secretary Ken Clarke, who will have another chance to enlighten us about his views on the seriousness of rape, as well as the Labour politician Jack Straw and Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty.

Wonder if Ken’s Downing Street leash will be showing...

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Does the BBC view Israel's existence as a legitimate 'grievance'?

Yesterday, there was an organised attempt by Arab mobs to storm three of Israel’s borders with Syria, Lebanon and Gaza, along with violent rioting and other incidents in east Jerusalem. The trigger for this attempted invasion, which appears to have been organised by Syria and Iran, was ‘Nakba day’, the annual statement of the Arab belief that their failure to wipe out the nascent State of Israel in 1948 was a ‘catastrophe’ which must be reversed. This year, ‘Nakba day’ was the pretext for a well-trailed assault upon Israel’s sovereignty.

You would have learned little of this from a report on yesterday’s events by the BBC’s Middle East editor, Jeremy Bowen, broadcast on BBC Radio Four’s Today programme this morning.There was no mention of ‘Nakba day’. No mention therefore of the actual goal behind this violence, the destruction of...

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Appropriate activity for Genocide Day

Today Israel faced invasion from three borders: thousands tried to storm the borders from Syria,  Lebanon and Gaza, along with Arab rampages in east Jerusalem.

 A number of people on the Syrian and Lebanese borders have been killed in these violent clashes, although in a still confused situation the IDF say at least some of these were killed by Lebanese forces. In addition, one Israeli was killed and several others injured in Tel Aviv, as an Arab truck driver smashed his vehicle into a bus and several cars. And in East Jerusalem, two policemen were run over and two Arabs injured when the police stopped a number of Arabs to check their papers.

The reason for this concerted onslaught was that today was the anniversary of what Arabs call the 'nakba or ‘catastrophe’,...

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The Lords defend the thin blue line

Well done the House of Lords, which once again has proved the last redoubt for common-sense and the defence of the singular British concept of civil society. Last night, Lib Dem peers along with the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Lord Blair -- who sits as an independent -- destroyed the flagship Tory bill to introduce elected police commissioners who could hire and fire chief constables.  

As I have said here before, this proposal was fundamentally misconceived: the wrong solution for a very real problem. The problem is that the police have in large measure lost their way and do not provide the service that the public wants and expects. That is because something has gone badly wrong with the whole culture and ethos of policing in Britain.

Part of that story – although only one part – has...

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'Speak up -- my other ear is wired to the Guardian'

The British Universities Minister, David Willetts, is famously known as ‘Two Brains’ on account of the superiority of his intellect. After what has happened today, however, he may find himself unfortunately saddled with the soubriquet of ‘no brain’.

This morning, we awoke to a puzzling interview he gave on Radio Four’s Today programme, following an equally puzzling front page splash in the Guardian.

This story told us that Willetts was putting forward a proposal -- to be fleshed out in a White Paper to be published this summer -- to allow students from wealthy families to pay for places at the most prestigious and over-subscribed universities.

Such places, we were informed, would be over and above the ‘quota’ of the universities’ publicly funded places. Students who took up such places would not be eligible for publicly funded student...

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