Islam versus Europe

The Observer reports on an epic tussle at the heart of government:

David Cameron will emerge as the victor from a bitter cabinet battle over multiculturalism this week as the government unveils a hardline approach to tackling Islamist extremism.

But what is this new "hardline approach"? Rounding up subversion-minded Muslims? Torturing or executing them? Deporting them from the country? Er. no. The new "hardline approach" is to stop giving money to them. That's what passes for hardcore defence of your country these days. You stop paying the wages of the enemy soldiers trying to destroy it.

Apparently even this mild step provoked tremendous dissent. Nick Clegg and the Muslim traitress, Baroness Warsi, were not happy:

Clegg has been joined by the attorney general, Dominic Grieve, the Tory chairman, Baroness Warsi, and others including Charles Farr, the head of the office of security and extremism. They argue it is crucial to maintain a distinction between violent and non-violent extremism and that it is necessary to engage rather than alienate.

Warsi, who sits on the cabinet subcommittee dealing with integration, is understood to disagree strongly with the new direction of Prevent but has been dissuaded from publicly criticising the strategy.

No one asks the question of why any of these groups are receiving public money at all. The fact that a government just hands out public money to various interest groups is simply taken for granted. This is the Sovietisation of Britain. It opens the door to taxpayer-funded propaganda. The government simply doles out money to third-party interest groups that either represent or appproximate its own point of view. These organisations then engage in public political debate. The Labour party were the masters of this practice under Blair. Various charities would spring up, with names like "Justice for Lesbian Asylum-seeking Volleyball Players", often one-man bands led by someone with past or present connections to the Labour party. Then, every time the BBC covered the topic of asylum seeking, there the spokesman from "Justice for Lesbian Asylum-seeking Volleyball Players" would be, supporting the government position or outflanking it to the left to make it seem even more reasonable.

One other thing is worth noting in this article: the repudiation of the promise to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir.

The strategy, however, will shy away from naming groups, effectively dismissing speculation that the initiative will proscribe non-violent, extremist Islamist groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir, a step which Cameron has publicly supported but which legal sources advise is not possible.

The Conservative manifesto named Hizb ut-Tahrir as a group it wanted to proscribe; in 2009 the then shadow home secretary, Chris Grayling, promised to "immediately ban" the group if the Tories were elected.

Legal sources advise it is "not possible"? How can it not be possible? The essence of the British constitution is the notion that Parliament is supreme. Parliament can do whatever it wants. It could ban Hizb ut-Tahrir by name if it wanted to; it could order everyone involved in it to be strung up from lamp-posts. But in our times we have seen the increasing encroachment of bureaucracy upon democracy. The notion that judges can deem certain laws passed by Parliament or decisions made by government to be unlawful now seems to be so generally accepted that it passes without comment. Of course our elite are mesmerised by the American example in which judges have traditionally been able to strike down laws. However, this was not the way it worked in Britain and the gradual evolution of this practice should not have been and should not be accepted.

The Human Rights Act gives judges the basis to declare laws unlawful and the ever-extending concept of judicial review allows them to strike down government decisions. Public agitators and propaganda outfits masquerading as charities are now using the practice of judicial review to challenge almost everything a government does. The Independent reports on this today:

After angry street protests and political lobbying failed to halt the swing of the axe to public services, growing numbers of campaigners are turning to the courts to prevent the loss of popular – and often essential – services. An alliance of authors, carers, bus passengers, drivers and solicitors are now waging a legal war through the High Court against the coalition's spending cuts.

From cuts to disability support in Argyle and Bute to the doubling of parking costs in Barnet, from threats to social care in Lancashire to the loss of children's centres in Hampshire, judges are dealing with an unprecedented number of judicial reviews attempting to reverse council decisions.

This increase has prompted critics to question the extent to which judges are interfering in decisions made by elected representatives. Spiralling legal costs – in effect, the taxpayer funds both sides of any case – have also prompted opponents to demand a review of the system.

This has to be recognised for what it is: a threat to our democracy. If a sane government with Counterjihad inclinations ever comes to power, among its top priorities will have to be the curbing of judicial arrogance.