Nick Timothy: ‘Multiculturalism has turned Britain into a country that doesn’t treat people equally’
The shadow justice secretary on tackling Islamist extremism, reforming the ‘Blairite state’ and putting the Tories back on the path to power
The shadow justice secretary on tackling Islamist extremism, reforming the ‘Blairite state’ and putting the Tories back on the path to power
In his first interview since he took over the shadow justice role, [Nick Timothy] is eager to discuss the rise of communalism – in other words, an allegiance to an ethnic group rather than wider society.
In particular, he believes Britain has become a country which no longer treats all people equally in the eyes of the law. Tackling Islamists and criminal gangs from ethnic minorities has been confined to the too-difficult pile by those who fear a backlash.
“It’s incredibly corrosive to the kind of country we are and our whole way of life,” he says, as his frustration with the state of the nation comes tumbling out.
“In a free, open and democratic society, we judge people as individuals, who are equal before the law, who have equal social and political rights, who participate in elections as candidates or as voters.
“With the politics of communalism, it’s all based on racial or religious identity.”
The result, he says, is a fear of tackling ethnic minority rape gangs, Sharia courts, female genital mutilation and honour-based crime, among other things.
The ban on Israeli fans attending an Aston Villa v Maccabi Tel Aviv match last year was a case in point. Thanks in no small part to Timothy’s dogged pursuit of the West Midlands Police and the Birmingham city council, it emerged that police had ignored warnings that Muslim extremists were planning to arm themselves, and instead used bogus AI-generated “intelligence” to portray the Israeli fans as the likely aggressors.
The police and a council-run safety advisory group had come under pressure from Muslim councillors and local mosques to ban the Israeli fans.
Timothy says: “West Midlands Police took the wrong decision for the wrong reasons. They did it because they feared losing control of the streets, and they didn’t want to admit that.
“Do I believe that the chief constable of West Midlands Police was anti-Semitic or anti-Israeli? Of course I don’t, but his force ended up adopting the position it did, I think, out of fear and out of a habit that must have been built up over years of compromise and appeasement with people who need to be faced down. I think that logic applies to lots of parts of the public sector, including in the criminal justice system.”
Timothy believes multiculturalism, which has been promoted by the political class for decades, has given rise to communalism. He is not short of examples of it seeping into the wider criminal justice system.
He says: “We know that the Crown Prosecution Service has appointed people who are known supporters of Hamas as advisers.
“We know that in prisons, governors basically cut deals with so-called ‘emirs’, who are quite often terrorism offenders or serious violent criminals, and control of the prison wing is sometimes effectively handed over to them.
“We know that the primacy of the law is being challenged by Sharia courts, and as a result, lots of women are left in highly vulnerable situations.
“We know that the director of public prosecutions [DPP] is appealing against the decision to overturn the conviction of Hamit Coskun [who was originally convicted of a public order offence for burning a Koran]. The DPP is using public order legislation to criminalise protest against Islam and saying things that are offensive to Muslims.
“We have to expose all of these things. We have to return to what had always been a very widely accepted view of how a country like Britain operates, which is that we’re all equal before the law.
“We need to be free to talk about these things. We need to be very strong on getting these questions of free speech right. But we have to adopt a much more self-confident posture.”
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