Blogsclusive: Osborne on Wilders
13th February, 2009
Ben Brogan of the Daily Mail (but soon heading to the Telegraph) draws my attention to claims the Conservatives have decided to say nothing about the Geert Wilders case.
I don’t know about that. Shadow chancellor George Osborne seemed happy enough to talk about it when I caught up with him on the phone a moment ago.
“It has given [the government] problems they would not otherwise have got,” he said. “We need to be consistent about who we let in and who we don’t, in terms of preachers of hate and others.
“Secondly, my personal view is by banning him [Wilders] in such a public way, he has been given far more publicity than would have been the case. I am not sure how thought-through this really was.”
George Osborne is right to highlight that this case has not been thought through by the Home Office. Unfortunately, he hasn’t caught on to the cause of the publicity and therefore problem.
Lord Ahmed of Rotherham’s threat to bring a massive demonstration to Parliament and the associated disruption and possible disturbance of the peace is the cause of the publicity. Mr Wilder’s deportation is only an after effect. It is clear that the Home Office is only responding to events rather than taking an objective view of Mr Wilder’s suitability to be in the UK. Without the threat by Lord Ahmed the visit would have gone by un-noticed.
February 13th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
I’m not sure unnoticed is right. I think they should have let Wilders in, strip searched him, frog marched him to parliament, refused him entry to abuse the parliamentary estate, taken him to some fascist pub, then kicked him out.
None of us know what the HO office know. It was no doubt a hard decision. But hizb_ut-Tahrir have been using Wilders’ activity to organise – including in Manchester – for 10 months. And there were some arrests of course, which the HO would have known about when weighing up the Wilders case.
February 20th, 2009 at 2:50 am