Badenoch offers new explanation for Tory attack on Muslim event, saying party objecting to gender segregation – UK politics live | Politics
Badenoch offers new explanation for Tory attack on Muslim prayer event, saying party objecting to gender segregation
Q: [From Peter Walker from the Guardian] Yesterday you backed what Nick Timothy said about the Ramadan event in Trafalgar Square. What was your objection to it? Yesterday your party said it was a segregation matter. This morning the party chair, Kevin Hollinrake, said it was a general point about prayer in public. But in an article this morning Timothy said this was a specific point about Islam. What is the party’s position?
Badenoch says they are both right.
She says the Tories believe in freedom of religion.
double quotation mark But this debate which Nick is having is not about freedom of religion. It is about how religion is expressed in a shared public space, and whether those expressions fit within the norms of British culture.
She says Keir Starmer pulled out of an an event organised by the group that organised the Trafalgar Square event when he was opposition leader because they are “highly controversial”. He was “sucking up” to British Jews. So his stance is “the mother of all hypocrisy”, she says.
She says Timothy is a ‘“fantastic shadow justice spokesperson”.
She says, as a woman from an ethnic minority, she is “very uncomortable seeing women pushed to the back in Trafalgar Square in an event which is exclusionary”.
She says she is happy to see religious events in Trafalgar Square. But they have to be inclusive.
(Although this Badenoch is claiming that the Tories primarily objected to the Trafalgar Square prayer event because it involved gender segragation, Timothy did not mention this at all in his original tweet attacking the event as “an act of domination”, or in a subsequent defence of his stance.)
Key events
Farage says attacking critics of immigration as racist ‘doesn’t work anymore’
Q: What is your response to John Swinney saying Reform UK is racist?
Farage says the Muslim Brotherhood is allowed to flourish in this country, even though it is banned in some Arab countries. It has a “dangerous agenda”, he says. “They want to impose their way of life on us.”
He claims that the event in Trafalgar Square on Monday was an example of something similar.
(There is no evidence for this. The event in Trafalgar Square had nothing to do with the Muslim Brotherhood.)
He goes on to say that, since Tony Blair has been in power, whenever someone has tried to have a rational debate about immigration, there has been an “attempt to shut it down by screaming ‘racist’”.
double quotation mark Do you know what? It doesn’t work anymore. No one’s listening.
Q: Why should people in England pay higher taxes than people in Scotland (as would happen if Scotland formed a government at Holyrood, and was in a position to implement its tax policies)?
Farage said that in the US people living in different states pay different amounts of tax. That is competition, he says. Tax competition between Scotland and England would be a good thing, he says.
Farage defends past comments saying Scotland gets too much UK cash, saying he wants Scotland to flourish without grants
Q: [To Farage] You have spent you career telling voters in England that people in Scotland get too much UK government money because of the Barnett formula (which gives Scotland more spending per head). Will you be saying this to voters in Scotland during the campaign, and if so can we come an film you?
Farage says that, with Reform UK in power at Holyrood, “you won’t need the current Barnett formula because Scotland would have been turned around”.
Farage says the questioner is looking at things the wrong way round.
double quotation mark Yes, of course individuals go through bad times, countries go through bad times. But welfare spending should not be permanent. There are massive economic opportunities in Scotland. Firstly in the North Sea. I also believe financial services in Edinburgh could be a lot lot bigger with the right thinking than it is.So look, we as national government would be here to support Scotland, but we’d much, rather much rather see Scotland not need the money because it’s succeeded.
Farage is now taking questions.
The first question came from a GB News reporter, who was cheered by Reform UK supporters at the event.
The second question came from Glenn Campbell, BBC Scotland’s political editor. He was booed by some of the activists at the end. Farage gently discouraged them.
Campbell asked if Farage had any regrets for saying he would back the US attack on Iran.
Farage said that he was not advocating joining the military action, but “sometimes in life you have to pick a side”.
Farage claims Muslim prayer event in Trafalgar Square was ‘attempt to overtake, intimidate and dominate’
In his speech in Scotland Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, fully adopted the Nick Timothy position on Muslims praying in public. (See 2.39pm.)
He said:
double quotation mark I put it to you that what happened in Trafalgar Square this week should act as a wake up call and a warning to everybody.We have always been a country that believes in religious tolerance. We’ve always been open to those of different faiths, persuasions and beliefs coming to our country and having their own private observance, but integrating in public. I think, to be honest, the Jewish community is probably the best example I can think of that.
But mass public praying, mass chanting of Islamic slogans in Trafalgar Square was a shock.
Until you learn that the same group, the Ramadan Tent Project, have done it in Coventry Cathedral, they’ve done it in London’s Guildhall, they’ve done it in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Folks, if it hasn’t come to Scotland yet, it will come soon. This is an open, deliberate, wilful attempt, not at the private observance of a different religion, but the attempt to overtake, intimidate and dominate our way of life.
As Farage started his speech, he was interupted by a protester, who was swiftly taken out. “You need a haircut,” Farage shouted at him. He then told the man he should go back to work, before adding: “Sorry, you have not got a job, have you?”
He claims hard-working people are paying record levels of taxes so that their neighbours (benefit claimaints, he is implying) can “rise at midday, have Deliveroo come and smoke dope for the afternoon”.
Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, is just about to speech at the launch of the party’s manifesto in Scotland. David Bull, the party’s chair, introduced him describing him as “the most famous politician in the country, if not the world”. There is a live feed here.
Why Nick Timothy argues his attack on Muslims praying in Trafalgar Square was justified
Nick Timothy, the shadow justice secretary, has an article in the Daily Telegraph today defending his attack on Muslims praying at an event in Trafalgar Square on Monday. While Kemi Badenoch defended his stance at her press conference this morning, she did so primarily on the grounds of gender segregation, which she claimed had been a feature of the event. (See 11.24am.)
But that is not the argument that Timothy makes in his article. He claims that it is an aspect of Islam theology that makes public prayer of this kind objectionable.
He says:
double quotation mark Some MPs and commentators say public concern [about prayer events like the one in Trafalgar Square] is misplaced. Some have even called it racist or – to use the recent invention – “Islamophobic”. They claim this exhibition of faith is no different from Trafalgar Square hosting dancing Sikhs, drinking football fans, or an Easter Passion Play.But this is wrong. First, the adhan makes the theological claim that there is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his messenger. That is, by definition, a repudiation of other beliefs. When proclaimed publicly, it is not just private devotion made visible; it is a declaration of dominance.
Some claim the adhan is no different from the peal of church bells, or the recital of the Nicene Creed in church. But this is wrong on three counts. First, church bells simply ring out, and do not assert any theological message or criticism of other faiths. Second, the Nicene Creed is a personal statement of faith that begins, “I believe”.
And third, even if these facts were not true, Christianity holds a different place to other religions in Britain. It is the foundation of our way of life, expressed in laws and norms and our institutional, intellectual and cultural inheritance. Expressions of Christianity here do not seek to challenge or replace anything, because our society rests upon the Christian idea.
The adhan, however, explicitly rejects the Christian belief in Jesus and the Holy Trinity, and asserts the truth of the Islamic faith. Indeed, historically the adhan was not only a communal call to prayer, but a declaration of Islamic control over a territory.
Labour will be ‘decimated’ in local elections, Unite’s leader Sharon Graham says
Here is a fuller version of the quote from Sharon Graham, the Unite general secretary, about Keir Starmer facing a leadership challenge because the local election results will be so bad for Labour. (See 9.50am.) She said:
double quotation mark I think after the May elections there will be a move to change leader because I think Labour are going to pretty much be decimated in those elections.I don’t think that they understand themselves how bad that will be – what anger is out there about the fact that they haven’t backed workers, the fact they have to be dragged kicking and screaming into doing things that, quite frankly, we would expect a Labour government to do, for example, have a wealth tax.
It’s not radical. I mean, it’s pretty obvious that that’s the sort of thing that we need to be looking at when the gap between the rich and the poor is as wide as it is.
Graham is using decimated to mean ‘wiped out’, but purists who prefer the more precise definition (the destruction of one in 10 of the enemy) would argue that Labour would be very happy about just being decimarted in the local elections. One analysis from a polling company says Labour could lose one in four of their councillors. Last week a Times report said “Labour sources expect to lose at least half of the seats they are defending” in England.
Scotland’s serial radical nationalist protester Sean Clerkin and his comrades evaded tight security at Reform UK’s Scottish manifesto launch to urge people to vote SNP instead, Severin Carrell reports. His post on Bluesky includes video.
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Reform UK proposes cutting number of MSPs in Scottish parliament
Reform has proposed cutting the number of MSPs and quangos in its manifesto ahead of May’s Holyrood election, the Press Association reports. PA says:
double quotation mark Party members are meeting to announce its candidates and launch its policy platform at a country club in Renfrewshire. (See 12.46pm.)Among its policy pledges is a promise to reduce the number of members of the Scottish parliament by cutting the number of constituencies from 73 to 57.
The 27-page document unveiled at the party’s conference also suggests a Reform government in Scotland would “shut down the quangos and return their powers to democratically-elected ministers supported by the civil service”.
Speaking at an event last week, Scottish party leader Malcolm Offord said a quarter of the country’s quangos could be on the chopping block, suggesting Reform could scrap them all before deciding which are required and bringing them back.
On energy, the party has made a number of pro-fossil fuel pledges, including scrapping all net zero targets set by the Scottish government and fast-tracking planning for new energy projects, including “open cast coal mining”.
