CHARLES COOKE: A British Politician Shocks the Press by Saying a True Thing.
In Britain, an attempt is under way to transmute the impressive MP Kemi Badenoch into the second coming of Bad Enoch. Her crime? To have said aloud what ought to be perfectly obvious to all and sundry: that “not all cultures are equally valid.” “I am not talking about cuisine,” Badenoch told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, “I am talking about customs.” Among the cultures that Badenoch listed as “less valid” were those in which women have fewer rights than men, those that celebrate child marriage, those that foster antisemitism, and those that persecute homosexuality. These, she concluded, ought not to be imported into the United Kingdom.
As one might expect, many within the English press treated this observation as if it were self-evidently scandalous. Badenoch, it was suggested, had not only “sparked a row” but had shown the temerity to provoke some criticism on TV. Even worse, her interview with the BBC had yielded a “tense clash” — the mere existence of which was deemed to be “extraordinary.”
To which one is obliged to ask: Really?
Related: Tories told to ‘unsmear’ Enoch Powell over Rivers of Blood speech.
The Tories must “unsmear” Enoch Powell over his infamous “rivers of blood” speech, a Conservative Party conference attendee has said.
An audience member told a debate on immigration and border security that the remarks made by the Conservative politician in 1968 were “a fair and accurate prediction” of what happened in the UK with migration.
The attendee, who identified himself as Christian Hacking, said: “Enoch Powell made what is now a highly Conservative speech in 1968 for which he was smeared and kicked out of the Conservative Party.
“Are the Conservatives willing to apologise and unsmear his name for what in hindsight has been quite a fair and accurate prediction of what came, which is not ‘rivers of blood’, he never actually said ‘rivers of blood’, but actually … heinous crimes have been committed by some of these unidentified individuals.”
Earlier: Mark Steyn on Rivers of Blood and the Tides of History.