A few cracks in the Curate's Lawn

It's not grown much at all this year ...


After the lunatic idea of Greg Dyke for Mayor, I started reading this Mary Sieghart piece on the Hammersmith Tory 'open selection' procedure with a sinking feeling.

The shortlist could not have been more diverse. There were two women and two men; two whites (one from a gypsy family), one mixed-race and one black. There was only one traditional Tory candidate: a white merchant banker, the classic perfect son-in-law who usually prevails at these occasions. But, despite the presence of a claque cheering him on, there was also a strong desire that Hammersmith should do something different. After all, ours is a gritty Inner London seat, not a genteel Home Counties affair.

There was genuine enthusiasm, too, from those of us who are neither party members nor tribal Tory voters. We were pleased to have the chance to vote in an open primary.

So far so bad. But it turns out the black candidate is one Shaun Bailey, of whom I have blogged before. And he won.


Polly Toynbee wants Britain to become more like Sweden. Looks like it's the other way round. Brussels Journal also comments.

Rosengård, an area with a very high immigrant population, is yet again on the frontpage as the riots from Saturday continue. On Sunday, several storage facilities were set ablaze.


I think this woman may have issues. Not professional conduct.


Three people sought after 89-year old woman conned out of £100,000 ? I try to fight my prejudiced stereotyping, but for some reason the headline made me wonder if they could possibly be from the travelling community ?


Ethnic Population change 1971-2001, David Owen, University of Warwick. Uses official census figures FWTW.


Ruth Gledhill puffs more Ekklesia lunacy.

Out must go the dragon, the crusades and the associations with patriotism and Empire. Instead St George's Day should become a 'day of dissent' when England celebrates its noble, alternative tradition of rebellion against the abuse of power, Ekklesia says.

What these idiots don't grasp is that 'alternative dissent' is now establishment orthodoxy, and that today it's far more subversive and radical to praise Empire or to regret the failure of the Crusades (perhaps looting Constantinople en route wasn't the brightest idea) than to beat ourselves up, the default ruling class position. They still think they're rebels, where Ms Gledhill and Ekklesia are total conformists.



The unveiling in the presence of Labour MP Gerald Kauffman of a bust of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, founder of Pakistan, to go alongside Gladstone and other Victorian greats at Manchester Town Hall, reminded me of something.

Jinnah believed that Muslims could not live peacefully as a minority in Hindu-majority India. At a Muslim League conference in Lahore in 1940, Jinnah said:

"Hindus and the Muslims belong to two different religions, philosophies, social customs and literature... It is quite clear that Hindus and Muslims derive their inspiration from different sources of history. They have different epics, different heroes and different episodes... To yoke together two such nations under a single state, one as a numerical minority and the other as a majority, must lead to growing discontent and final destruction of any fabric that may be so built up for the government of such a state."

The 1947 Labour Government agreed with this Two-Nation Theory and partitioned India.

What I can't understand is this. A Labour government agreed in 1947 that it was impossible for an Indian state to survive with a large Muslim minority. Let sixty years later anyone who questions whether a British state can survive with a large Muslim minority is declared by a Labour government to be a swivel-eyed Nazi.

Can anyone explain this historical conundrum ?