*UNDER CONSTRUCTION* Signal-boosting #ToryBritain truths to the nation. Helping YOU be part of the fightback.
From The Independent: Boris Johnson reportedly accused the French of being “turds” over their Brexit stance in a remark that was removed from a BBC documentary while he was foreign secretary.
From The Guardian: Nearly half of Conservative Party members would prefer not to have a Muslim prime minister, a survey into the scale of Islamophobia in the party has suggested.
The poll, carried out by YouGov for the anti-racism group Hope Not Hate, also found that more than two-thirds of Tory members believe the myth that parts of the UK are under Sharia law, and 45% think some areas are not safe for non-Muslims.
Half of the party’s members think that Islamophobia is a big issue, but only 8% believe it is a problem within the party, the survey found.
In the online survey of 864 Conservative members, 39% said they agreed that “Islamist terrorists reflect a widespread hostility to Britain amongst the Muslim community”, and 40% think there should be a reduction in the number of Muslims entering Britain.
From The Guardian: Boris Johnson does speak to Steve Bannon, Nigel Farage has said, increasing the pressure on the Conservative leadership frontrunner to explain his links to Donald Trump’s controversial former campaign manager.
“Steve likes to be seen at the centre of the action. He knows Boris, he speaks to Boris. Steve speaks to virtually everybody,” Farage told a press conference when asked what he knew of Johnson’s links to Bannon. “I’ve known Steve Bannon since 2012. There’s no great secret about that. Boris, of course, got to know Bannon when he was foreign secretary, when he was visiting Washington and going into the West Wing, and that’s how those two got to know each other.”
Farage’s comments follow the emergence of video footage in which Bannon speaks about his relationship and contacts with Johnson, and says he helped him put together his first speech after his resignation as foreign secretary, in which Johnson condemned Theresa May’s Brexit strategy. One clip shows Bannon reading a story about Johnson’s speech, before he says: “I’ve been talking to him all weekend about this speech. We went back and forth over the text.”
When reports emerged last year of links between Johnson and the far-right activist, who has tried to build up a network of populist movements across Europe, Johnson called them “a lefty delusion whose spores continue to breed in the Twittersphere”.
From The Independent: Two-thirds of Conservative Party members believe parts of Britain operate under sharia law, a new poll has shown amid a mounting Islamophobia scandal.
From the Independent: Bruised and still shaken, Janet Barker is incredulous at the violent reaction of the Foreign Office minister Mark Field to her peaceful protest with fellow Greenpeace activists at the chancellor’s Mansion House speech.
From The Independent: Conservative MP Mark Field has been filmed manhandling a climate change protester who interrupted Philip Hammond‘s Mansion House speech.
From The Independent: Jeremy Hunt has sided with Donald Trump over his attacks on Sadiq Khan, despite the US president endorsing the racist term “Londonistan”.
From Business Insider: Boris Johnson launched his campaign to become prime minister stating that he was best-placed to “unite” the United Kingdom, following the divisions over Brexit.
However, when Johnson was editor of the Spectator magazine in 2004, he sparked outrage in one part of the UK, when he authorised the publication of an apparently satirical poem describing Scottish people as “a verminous race” who should be exterminated.
The poem, which has since been removed from the magazine’s archive, was written by its then staffer James Michie.
It described Scots as “tartan dwarves” who were “polluting our stock” and suggested that the country should be turned into a “ghetto” with the inhabitants submitted for “extermination.”
Reacting to the poem at the time, Maureen Fraser, director of the Commission for Racial Equality in Scotland, described it as “very offensive and the language is deeply inflammatory… Some of the language, such as ‘comprehensive extermination’ and ‘polluting our stock’, is completely and utterly unacceptable. It cannot be tolerated.”
From Business Insider: In 1996, while a journalist for the Telegraph, Boris Johnson went to the Labour conference and wrote a piece reviewing the quality of “the hot totty” who were present.
“The unanimous opinion is that what has been called the ‘Tottymeter’ reading is higher than at any Labour Party conference in living memory,” he wrote.
He added that: “Time and again the ‘Tottymeter’ has gone off as a young woman delegate mounts the rostrum.”
He concluded that the real reason women are turning to Labour is because of their natural “fickleness.”
From The Independent: Britain’s largest Muslim organisation has called for a formal investigation into Islamophobia in the Conservative Party.
The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) sent more than 20 pages of evidence to the Equality and Human Rights Commission in the wake of the government’s refusal to adopt a proposed definition on Islamophobia.
From The Independent: The Conservatives have been accused of “giving a license to bigotry” by the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) after the party ruled Boris Johnson’s comments on Muslim women wearing burqas were “respectful and tolerant”.
From The Herald: Unrepentant Tory MP Nicholas Soames has told the SNP leader at Westminster to “grow up” in the wake of a row over Soames’ “go back to Skye” comment at the start of an emergency Brexit debate.
Sir Nicholas responded with a lengthy Twitter hashtag saying: “Oh grow up, ten minutes before we had a very jolly talk in the tearoom. Complete fake outburst.”
"Go back to Skye".Before he could even speak during an emergency debate in the Commons on Brexit, the Scottish National Party (SNP)'s Ian Blackford MP was heckled by a Conservative MP.
Posted by Channel 4 News on Tuesday, December 18, 2018
Sir Nicholas has previously had to apologise for heckling an SNP MP.
In January 2017, he made a ‘woof’ noise at Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh.
He said: “I thought that in her question to the Foreign Secretary she snapped at him a bit at the end, so I offered her a friendly canine salute in return.”
From The National: Brexiteer Tory MP Priti Patel has caused outrage after suggesting the UK use the threat of food shortages in Ireland to get a better deal with the EU.
From The Independent: A Tory MP has prompted an angry debate after suggesting killing people for what you believe in is acceptable.
He said: “The application of violence to defeat the enemies of the nation has become worryingly unpopular. Nothing wrong with fighting (yes killing) for values/what you believe in. The oppressed/bullied/tormented/voiceless deserve it. Join the fight; best thing you’ll ever do.”
From BBC News: Jacob Rees-Mogg has launched a personal attack on the Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, saying he should not have been in the post for some time.
He told BBC News that Mr Carney was a “second-tier Canadian politician” who “failed” to get a job at home.
From iNews: Christopher Chope, the Tory MP who controversially blocked the parliamentary bill to make upskirting a criminal offence, has blocked a bill to make it easier to prevent female genital mutilation of children.
From The Independent: Amber Rudd‘s appointment as the new work and pensions secretary has come under scrutiny after the emergence of “inflammatory” statements she has made in the past about benefit claimants.
From The Independent: Conservative MP John Hayes has called on the government to reintroduce hanging for people who commit violent crimes.
From Daily Mirror: The Tories have picked as their London mayor candidate Shaun Bailey, who has a track record of making offensive comments on a range of issues from race relations to single parenthood.
From Metro: Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg claims European Union citizens living in Britain will have no more rights after Brexit than those from other countries, and the 1.7m Britons who live in other EU countries will also lose their rights.
‘I do not believe there should be any special terms for EU migrants,’ he wrote to Labour peer Lord Adonis. ‘Once we have left the EU there will be no legal basis to treat them differently from migrants from non-EU countries.’