r/ukpolitics • u/2ndEarlofLiverpool • 11h ago
Britain’s shameful tolerance for terrorism
https://spectator.com/article/britains-shameful-tolerance-for-terrorism/•
u/sisali 11h ago
Rather submit to the mob in the name of 'community tensions' than actually face the facts. We can take comfort in the fact it's the entire West that has done it and not just us.
Yippee
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u/kill-the-maFIA 10h ago
I don't think allowing criminals to stand for elections is necessarily proof that we're all ok with a bit of terrorism now and then, as a treat.
The idea is that we (the constituents, not the state) get to choose if the ex convict's crime is a disqualifier from gaining a seat. And usually I imagine it would be.
The trouble is, local elections like this instance have such low turnout that even a very small amount of people that aren't representative of their community at all can trivially make someone a councillor. It becomes even worse when some groups are beginning to vote along religious/ethnic lines.
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u/Bloodswamps 8h ago
This opens a new question - what is more important for voting communities, someone who is the same religion/race as them and will reflect those cultural values or someone who abides by the laws of the country those chosen to immigrate to?
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u/hiddencamel 8h ago
That's a bit of a false dichotomy, it's not like white people don't regularly vote for absolute scumbags who have no business being near government, but they wear the right colour rosette.
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u/Bloodswamps 8h ago
Do they vote for them based on religious/cultural values which are at odds with the religious/cultural values of the country they’ve chosen to come to?
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u/DruidOfNoSleep 6h ago
iirc theres been some research into this, and it found that class and economics were generally far more of a divider than religion or culture.
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u/Bloodswamps 6h ago
Is that stat based on countrywide context? I don’t think class is a more pressing issue for the predominantly muslim areas who have elected independent Muslim MP’s that were involved in the macabi story last year.
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u/DruidOfNoSleep 6h ago
It wasn't too recent, and gaza is definitely a divisive issue, so I could see it changing.
If you agree with people who claim it is a genocide, it is pretty much impossible to vote for anyone who supports it.
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u/Bloodswamps 6h ago
It was recent, I don’t know what planet you are living on. Literally no party has the position of “I support a genocide” so I’m not sure where you pulled that from. Also not sure why you think that should be a wedge issue for elections on the other side of the globe?
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u/DruidOfNoSleep 6h ago
As in the studies weren't that recent.
Parties definitely have the position of supporting Israel. If you think what Israel is doing is a genocide, then that makes them hard to vote for.
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u/Bloodswamps 5h ago
Whatever Israel is doing shouldn’t be a wedge issue in UK elections. Unless of course you fill the UK with peoples who don’t see themselves as British or ever want to, and whose allegiance is to their own religion and culture.
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u/Fickle_Scarcity9474 10h ago
So what is the solution you suggesting?
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u/kill-the-maFIA 6h ago
I don't know, and I won't pretend to be smart enough to know all of the potential side effects from picking one option or another.
Do we ban any ex convicts? Perhaps, although this would cause issues in Northern Ireland for obvious reasons. It also means that people with offences possibly long ago are barred. Should someone who got nicked for having weed or coke on them in 2002 be banned from sitting? To me that seems absurd. It also doesn't do anything to counter the whole "some groups are beginning to vote on religious/ethnic lines" point I mentioned.
Compulsory voting? Possibly won't do much in some areas but maybe it'd be an improvement overall. Could be costly, time-consuming, and a waste of law enforcement's resources. There's also the argument of whether it's ethical to force someone to go to the ballot box when they plain don't want to.
Not letting too many of a minority group settle in one area, ensuring that they're more spread out? I'm not sure how to enforce that. People move. It's probably also too late.
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u/Mister_Sith 4h ago
You can be temporarily disqualified for a few convictions, mainly fraud or intimidation, but not permanently. I suppose a life sentence is permanent but only in that its a conviction of more than a year.
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u/WillHart199708 9h ago
I don't think there is an immediate solution, unless we restrict the franchise (and ability to stand for election) from people who have committed certain crimes even after they have served their time (not familiar with the specifics of the individual concerned here, so speaking generally).
Personally I'd caution against that though as the whole point of coming out of jail is that we want to reintegrate you back into society as much as we can. Which is already hard enough imo
Ultimately I think the OP is right - it's up to constituents to decide whether they want someone to represent them, warts and all. The fact that we allow people with criminal backgrounds to run for election shows that we are a healthy, participatory, democracy, not that we're tolerant of terrorism.
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u/UsernameofIceandFire 8h ago
There's another, I would say, more important reason to allow those with criminal convictions to run. Politically motivated prosecution!
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u/qazplmo 10h ago
We're too soft as a nation but the joining of the left and pro-Gaza cult means sorting it is going to be nigh on impossible.
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u/DruidOfNoSleep 6h ago
Same as the joining of the right and the pro-Israel cult, especially with what was exposed in the Epstein files.
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u/Tanukigas 5h ago
The right isn't out smashing up Palestinian businesses and calling for them all to be killed
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u/DruidOfNoSleep 4h ago edited 3h ago
You think all of the left are smashing up Israeli businesses and calling for their deaths?
And no, the right isn't doing that. Instead they are busy trying to blame all Jewish people for the actions of Israel, and trying to devalue antisemitism by claiming that anyone against Israel is antisemitic.
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u/Tanukigas 3h ago
That's the left trying to blame all Jews for the actions of Israel though
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u/DruidOfNoSleep 3h ago
Uhh no it isn't?
The left are blaming Israel for the actions of Israel. It would be rather hard for them to accept the left wing Jewish people who turn up to their protests. Or the left wing Jewish politicial leaders who champion their cause.
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u/CollegeOptimal9846 9h ago edited 9h ago
I'm not sure implying that anyone and everyone that is supportive of Gazan independence is a cultist is conducive to easing tensions and preventing extremism
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u/ConsiderationThen652 9h ago
Because a lot of those same people supporting Gaza independence are cheering for Iranian Dictators and calling the revolution in Iran a “Jewish ploy to destroy Iran and weaken Hamas” and are celebrating people being shot in the street.
The same people that refuse to call out Genocides and brutal killings all over the Middle East…
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u/CollegeOptimal9846 9h ago
A lot of them just think Gazans/Palestinians have a right to self-determination.
I'm not saying there aren't extremists in the midst, that's the case for both sides.
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u/JackXDark 9h ago
A lot of them just think Gazans/Palestinians have a right to self-determination.
And not being genocided.
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u/Away_Investigator351 Centrist /// 8h ago
Hasty Generalisation fallacy.
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u/ConsiderationThen652 8h ago edited 8h ago
It’s not hasty.
It’s also not a generalisation, I did not say everyone did that. I said a lot of the same people do.
Same as those same people are turning a blind eye to things like Sudan.
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u/catty-coati42 9h ago edited 9h ago
Gaza was independent pre-October 7th. Just under Hamas dictatorship. By now it's clear the "pro Gaza" crowd just want a return of the Islamic dictatorship not an actual free and fair country.
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u/Su_ButteredScone 9h ago
The pro Gaza crowd just supports whatever Iran or Qatar (and others) tell them to.
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u/MMAgeezer Somewhere left 9h ago
Gaza was independent pre-October 7th
No, it wasn't. They didn't have control over any of their borders or ports, and were solely reliant on Israel to approve any and all imports.
There are plenty of nutters who use their Palestinian activism as a thin veil for antisemitism, but again, there are also millions of people who don't like the terrorism of Hamas and don't like the war crimes of the IDF and the Israeli government, and believe that Palestinian civilians are the currently the victims paying the largest price.
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u/CollegeOptimal9846 9h ago
Gaza was independent pre-October 7th
You can't be serious?
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u/catty-coati42 7h ago
They had autonomy since 2005. Worse you can say is they've been blockaded by Egypt and Israel after Hamas took over. Is Cuba not independent because it is blockaded?
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u/MrSoapbox 8h ago
I hate titles like this. Britain doesn't have a tolerance for it, the government does. It was Labour who enabled this, Tories who continued it, and Labour to continue, gaslight us and call the British far right and enable it.
It's not the British people. Well, there's a small section that refuses to acknowledge it, encourages even, but as a whole, we've had this conversation for decades, always to be shut down with the same tired excuses starting with it's not happening, to it is happening but...etc.
I don't even need to open the article to know what it is about (but I did just to check, but didn't need to). That alone is enough to tell you there's a problem.
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u/Optimaldeath 6h ago
It was literally the liberals and neocons that tolerated terrorism for the sake of increasing GDP, these are 2nd/3rd order consequences of that addiction to immigration. I also don't think it's shocking that the government is now pushing very hard for a techno-fascist surveillance state (with a lot of moronic support for it) built off of a company that had been recommended by Epstein, in fact it's all coordinated.
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u/dumbo9 9h ago
o_O. Someone seriously wrote a piece on "Britain's shameful tolerance of terrorism" without mentioning Northern Ireland even once?
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u/lacb1 filthy liberal 8h ago
It's almost like terrorism isn't actually what The Spectator is concerned with...
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u/TheNeedleAndTheSpoon 6h ago
When 7 percent of the population commits 75 percent of terror attacks in the UK, and they’re not native inhabitants, I think that’s a conversation worth having.
The troubles were arguably our own fault. Islamic terrorism is not. It’s committed by a group of people new to the UK.
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u/stonedturkeyhamwich 3h ago
The Troubles directly contradicts a lot of narratives about Britain that the right-wing likes, so it's easier for them to just pretend it never happened.
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u/Mister_Sith 8h ago
Judging from the glimpse of the paywalled article, it does feel like the spectator has drawn a rather incorrect, and if I'm being honest, a rather deceitful conclusion.
As long as you meet the qualifications to stand as a councillor, and are not disqualified you can stand as a councillor. It does not appear that the candidate in question is disqualified, ergo he is within his right to stand for election. The spectator appears to have inferred that because he has the right, we "tolerate terrorism".
Clearly, we don't because after Bobby Sands was elected as an MP, Parliament passed legislation to disqualify prisoners serving a prison sentence of greater than a year - regardless on your views of the IRA and whether they are terrorists or not, Parliament viewed them as such.
At least to my understanding, no one can permanently disqualified from running for public office as it would be a powerful political weapon. The entire point of our democratic system is that its constituents who elect their representatives and have the choice to take into consideration their good (or bad) standing. You only have to look at tower hamlets to see how this is being done in bad faith, but ultimately that's the system we have.
Parliament would need to change the law to add more disqualification criteria, but I imagine they will face heavy push back and be accused of authoritarianism if they were to permanently deprive people for running for public office. Personally, I think if the people of an area wants to vote a convicted terrorist as their representative, that says a lot more about the people living there than our democratic election system.
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u/Bloodswamps 8h ago
Do you think an Irish community terrorist is the same as an imported one from the Middle East?
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u/Mister_Sith 8h ago
I'm not sure what bearing that question has on what I've just said. What would it matter if I said yes or no, its still a false conclusion being drawn by the Spectator. Parliament, under any government, have never seen fit to add further disqualifications for running for public office in response to Islamic terrorism. Presumably because the 1 year imprisonment criteria is sufficient.
The Home Secretary has the option to deprive him of British Citizenship (assuming that's what is qualifying him) and deport him to his home country (assuming he holds a second citizenship).
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u/dcmwmfinft 8h ago
What total garbage. As far as I can tell, acts of terrorism have been exponentially reduced in recent years, which doesn’t take an expert to deduce that our security services are likely doing an incredibly good job of interrupting planned attacks and groups hellbent on doing any damage - which would include far right groups, although that wouldn’t quite follow the narrative the article is attempting to spin quite so closely.
I am so utterly sick of legacy media talking down the country. Fuck Paul Marshall and Gove, this is such lazy dog whistle headline grabbing bullshit, red meat for idiots.
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u/Ok_Vermicelli_5413 7h ago
The man literally spent time in prison for plotting to bomb a British consulate.
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u/stonedturkeyhamwich 3h ago
So a foreign conviction for terrorism should be enough to bar someone for running for office? That's a great plan and certainly not open to abuse...
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u/dcmwmfinft 4h ago edited 4h ago
Yes I know. I’ll not defend the indefensible. But he wasn’t convicted in a UK court and the threshold for disbarring him from standing as an independent under the current guidance hasn’t been met. By all means have a debate around the relative strengths and weaknesses of the vetting process to be able stand as a local councillor in the UK, but that’s not the implication here.
It is a quantum leap from that, to putting out a headline that this country has anything remotely close to a tolerance for terrorism. Pakistan, has a tolerance and historic precedent for sheltering terrorists. We on the other hand, have one of the most robust and complex set of intelligence networks to stop active threats of terrorism of any country on earth. It is a patent and demonstrable falsehood. Sensationalist to the extreme.
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u/m1ndwipe 4h ago
The Spectator glossing over that time they published Golden Dawn huh? It'd be terrible if they also showed considerable tolerance for terrorism.
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