Sadiq khan

The Spectator podcast: Erdogan’s Europe

To subscribe to The Spectator’s weekly podcast, for free, visit the iTunes store or click here for our RSS feed. Alternatively, you can follow us on SoundCloud. Has Erdogan brought Europe to heel? In his Spectator cover piece, Douglas Murray argues that the Turkish President has used a mixture of intimidation, threats and blackmail to do just that and throw open the doors of Europe to Turkey. Douglas says Erdogan is a ‘wretched Islamist bully’ who has shown just how the EU works. But in pushing Europe around, is Erdogan now more powerful than Merkel, Juncker and Cameron? And how does the Turkish PM’s resignation this week changed the country’s

A toe-curling tragedy

Zac Goldsmith spent almost every day out on the stump during his London mayoral campaign dressed in the formal dark suit he inherited from his father, and had recut on his death in 1997. At least that is what a member of his team told me as I was out observing proceedings one day. I think that detail was offered as a bit of journalistic ‘colour’ to show Zac’s sense of filial duty, but that was the only sense in which his painfully understated campaigning could be said to have owed anything to Sir James Goldsmith’s bombastic, manic style when he ran the Referendum party. Some political campaigns are failures;

May 2016 elections: The Spectator guide

Britain goes to the polls this week, as electoral contests take place in London, Scotland, Wales and across England. They’re the elections which James Forsyth described in the Spectator last week as the ones ‘no one has even heard of’. So what will happen on Thursday night and when will the results be announced? Here’s The Spectator’s run-through of the May 2016 elections: London Mayoral election: Zac Goldsmith and Sadiq Khan go head-to-head in the London Mayoral contest. In 2012, Boris and Ken ran a close-fought race, with Boris getting 971,000 first-round votes to Ken’s 889,918. The relatively small margin between the two meant the result didn’t filter through until

Lloyd Evans

PMQs Sketch: Next stop, extremist Labour

Cameron hi-jacked today’s PMQs with a show of calculated brutality masked as high dudgeon. Feeble, whey-haired Corbyn obeyed the commands of his unwanted passenger and meekly drove him wherever he wished to go. Cameron’s destination was ‘extremist Labour’. Corbyn strives constantly to outdo himself in uselessness and today’s rambling, ill-structured assault was typical. Early on Cameron inverted the terms of the session and invited Corbyn to clarify his attitude to Hamas and Hezbollah. Years ago Corbyn had referred to Hamas as ‘friends’ at a seminar in parliament . Corbyn declined to re-express himself. Cameron repeated the demand and reminded us that the Hamas handbook calls for Jews to be killed

Zac Goldsmith’s London campaign has been a toe-curling embarrassment

Zac Goldsmith spent almost every day out on the stump during his London mayoral campaign dressed in the formal dark suit he inherited from his father, and had recut on his death in 1997. At least that is what a member of his team told me as I was out observing proceedings one day. I think that detail was offered as a bit of journalistic ‘colour’ to show Zac’s sense of filial duty, but that was the only sense in which his painfully understated campaigning could be said to have owed anything to Sir James Goldsmith’s bombastic, manic style when he ran the Referendum party. Some political campaigns are failures;

Why won’t Labour go for Zac Goldsmith’s non-dom jugular?

Trailing in the polls with three days to go until the London mayoral elections, Zac Goldsmith continues to attack his rival Sadiq Khan by accusing him of having links with extremists.   It is a pretty desperate strategy, reduced to making the charge that Khan has ‘shared a platform’ with extremists.   It is also somewhat undermined by the revelation that Goldsmith himself has been photographed smiling alongside Suliman Gani, the Tooting Iman who is subject of many of the claims.  Gani also appears to have shared platforms with Conservative MP for Battersea, Jane Ellison, on a number of occasions. But one thing puzzles me.  While Goldsmith’s campaign has stooped to a relentlessly negative

Is it ‘Islamophobic’ to draw attention to Sadiq Khan’s links with extremists?

Zac Goldsmith came in for a fair amount of criticism yesterday after writing a piece in the Mail on Sunday that, among other things, pointed out that Sadiq Khan criticised Labour’s decision to suspend Ken Livingstone in 2006 when he compared a Jewish Evening Standard journalist to a Nazi concentration camp guard. Reviewing the papers on Marr, Owen Jones called it ‘another example’ of a ‘poisonous’ and ‘disgraceful’ campaign that had tried to brand Khan as an extremist simply because he’s a Muslim. He called it ‘an attempt to tap into anti-Muslim prejudice’ and urged Conservatives to tackle Islamophobia as vigorously as his own party is tackling anti-Semitism. But is

The Spectator podcast: When the right goes wrong | 30 April 2016

To subscribe to The Spectator’s weekly podcast, for free, visit the iTunes store or click here for our RSS feed. Alternatively, you can follow us on SoundCloud. Is crazy all the rage in today’s politics and are conservatives going a little bit mad? That’s the topic for this week’s Spectator cover piece in which Freddy Gray argues that in America and in Britain, the right is tearing itself apart. Whilst Brits might be busy pointing and laughing at Donald Trump, all over the world conservatism is having a nervous breakdown, says Freddy. And the EU referendum is starting to prove that British Conservatives can be as barmy as everyone else.

Corbyn’s disgraced aide gets behind Sadiq Khan’s campaign

Throughout his London mayoral bid, Sadiq Khan has been at pains to distance himself from Jeremy Corbyn. Although Khan was one of the 35 MPs to help get Corbyn onto the ballot paper, he has since gone on to declare that if elected mayor, he will not be ‘Corbyn’s representative in London’. His comments have led his mayoral rival George Galloway to accuse Khan of ‘stabbing Jeremy Corbyn in the back’. Happily, Corbyn’s team still seem happy to support Khan’s mayoral bid despite. With less than a week to polling day, Khan’s official campaign Twitter account has shared a photo of their bustling phone bank in action: 8 days to

The Spectator podcast: When the right goes wrong

To subscribe to The Spectator’s weekly podcast, for free, visit the iTunes store or click here for our RSS feed. Alternatively, you can follow us on SoundCloud. Is crazy all the rage in today’s politics and are conservatives going a little bit mad? That’s the topic for this week’s Spectator cover piece in which Freddy Gray argues that in America and in Britain, the right is tearing itself apart. Whilst Brits might be busy pointing and laughing at Donald Trump, all over the world conservatism is having a nervous breakdown, says Freddy. And the EU referendum is starting to prove that British Conservatives can be as barmy as everyone else.

Seumas Milne fails to help Sadiq Khan’s cause

In recent weeks, Labour’s Sadiq Khan has faced flak over his decision to share platforms with extremists. In a recent Evening Standard article, Khan was criticised for sharing a ‘platform with five Islamic extremists’ at an event organised by Friends of Al-Aqsa. At the 2004 conference titled ‘Palestine — the suffering still goes on’, both Khan and Jeremy Corbyn spoke alongside the event organiser’s founder Ismail Patel — who once said ‘Hamas is no terrorist organisation’ — as well as the Imam Suliman Gani — who says women are subservient to men — and Dr Daud Abdullah, who led a boycott of Holocaust Memorial Day in 2005. Defending his decision to

Lord Sugar savages Sadiq Khan: ‘he has single-handedly wrecked the Labour Party’

As Sadiq Khan continues to lead the polls in the mayoral race, the Labour candidate has managed to brush off much criticism over his links to unsavoury characters by putting it down to ‘dog whistle’ politics. However, the MP for Tooting may have greater difficulty fending off the latest line of attack to come his way. Writing in the Sunday Times, Lord Sugar — the former Labour peer who resigned from the party after the general election — has launched a blistering attack on Khan. Sugar accuses Khan of having ‘single-handedly wrecked the Labour Party’. The Apprentice star says he cut up his party membership card after Labour turned anti-business under Ed Miliband —

John Travolta proves to be a thorn in Sadiq Khan’s side

As Sadiq Khan continues to face flak over his links to unsavoury characters, even a night at home in front of the television could now prove problematic. In this week’s episode of the BBC’s American Crime Story: The People v OJ Simpson, John Travolta acts out a scene about a man who Khan would no doubt like to forget about. Playing OJ Simpson’s lawyer Robert Shapiro,  John Travolta recreates a scene in which Shapiro expresses concerns about Simpson’s use of Louis Farrakhan’s security team during the trial — describing them as ‘strident black extremists’: ‘These are the same people who think that some Jews are the devil and that my people have

PMQs: David Cameron brings up Sadiq Khan’s extremist links

Today’s PMQs was a reminder that the old fashioned approach of detailed, forensic questioning on a single topic works best. Jeremy Corbyn delivered his best performance as leader of the opposition today, questioning David Cameron on why all schools will have to become academies. He skilfully exploited Tory splits over the issue. The relative silence from the Tory benches did nothing to shake the impression that this is a policy in trouble; which is a pity given that too many local authorities continue to exert a negative influence on education. But the most heated moment of the session came later when Cameron started talking about Sadiq Khan having shared a platform

Did Zac Goldsmith pick up some tips on tackling extremism from Yvette Cooper?

During last night’s BBC mayoral debate, Zac Goldsmith was asked whether he had run a racist campaign against Sadiq Khan — following negative press surrounding the Labour candidate’s links to extremists. After Khan found himself under fire for sharing platforms with characters like Suliman Gani, as well as for his work for Louis Farrakhan — the man who claimed Hitler was a ‘very great man’ — Labour’s Yvette Cooper complained that the Tories’ mayoral campaign amounts to racism: ‘It’s time to call it out for what it really is before it gets worse. What started as a subtle dog-whistle is becoming a full-blown racist scream.’ However, Cooper hasn’t always appeared to hold such strong views when it comes

BBC mayoral debate: Sadiq and Zac try to set the record straight over ‘extremism’ allegations

As the European referendum campaign gains momentum, the London mayoral election has had to take a backseat in recent weeks when it comes to setting the news agenda. Tonight the mayoral candidates had a chance to turn this around as part of the BBC’s London’s Mayor debate. While Respect candidate George Galloway was left out of the line-up, the five main candidates — Zac Goldsmith, Sadiq Khan, Caroline Pidgeon, Sian Berry and Peter Whittle — joined Andrew Neil for the biggest debate of the campaign. With the election widely seen to be a two-horse race between Khan and Goldsmith, the pair dominated the evening as their campaign feuds bubbled to the surface. The first topic on the agenda was

Zac Goldsmith’s extremist attack line backfires

It’s not turning out to be a great week for Zac Goldsmith. While the Conservative MP continues to lag behind Labour’s Sadiq Khan in the polls, he has been accused of running a racist campaign. Despite this, Goldsmith showed no signs of watering down his attacks yesterday in an interview with the Evening Standard. Goldsmith used the interview to criticise Khan for sharing platforms — and posing for a photo — with Suliman Gani, an Imam who says women are ‘subservient’ and speaks at segregated rallies. ‘To share a platform nine times with Suliman Gani, one of the most repellent figures in this country, you don’t do it by accident.’ However, the next time

Steerpike

Sadiq Khan’s London property pledge on shaky ground

As part of Sadiq Khan’s London mayoral bid, the Labour candidate has rallied against foreign investors buying up London property. In December, Khan told the Evening Standard that it was time to stop new homes going to ‘overseas investors’ instead of Londoners: ‘Ambitious young Londoners are rightly fed up with seeing thousands of new homes each year sold off to overseas investors – many of whom will never live in them – years before they are actually built. They’re sick of not being given a chance in our broken housing market. Building new homes for Londoners must come ahead of offering investment opportunities for overseas millionaires.’ So given Khan’s call for

Samantha Cameron’s sister gets behind Sadiq Khan’s mayoral campaign

As Zac Goldsmith continues to lag behind Sadiq Khan in the polls, even the most die-hard Tories are beginning to lose hope in their candidate. In fact, it seems Zac is falling out of fashion at a rate of knots. Samantha Cameron’s sister — and David Cameron’s sister-in-law — Emily Sheffield appears to be getting behind Khan’s campaign. Sheffield, who is deputy editor of Vogue, has retweeted one of the Labour mayoral candidate’s campaign pledges on Twitter. Given that Sheffield usually supports her brother-in-law’s party — ridiculing Labour’s pink women van in the last election — this is a very worrying sign indeed for Goldsmith. What’s more, it seems that Khan is

The Spectator podcast: Ex Labour advisor calls on Corbyn’s enemies to act

Jeremy Corbyn’s enemies within the Labour party are known to be dreaming about a time after his leadership. But why aren’t his opponents doing anything about getting rid of him? According to former Labour party advisor John McTernan, they should do it sooner rather than later. Speaking on the Spectator podcast this week, McTernan said: ‘If you’re going to assassinate someone, you chop off their head, you then chop them into pieces and bury them around the town. You don’t argue to yourself about the who right candidate is and when the right time is. He is the cause of his own assassination. No other cause is required. If you