After Starmer Panders to Muslim Leaders, Britain Braces for ‘Islamophobia Tsar’
The fear is that the new measures, including the creation of an anti-Muslim hostility tsar to enforce them, could further restrict free speech in the U.K.
Speaking to a large gathering of Muslim MPs, activists, and community leaders during a Ramadan iftar ceremony at Westminster Hall on Tuesday, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer emphasized that the United Kingdom had played no role in the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran and would not take part in any future offensive action against Tehran.
He also praised British Muslims as “the face of modern Britain,” thanked them for their “immense contribution” to the country, and blamed “far-right rhetoric and misinformation” for what he described as a wave of anti-Muslim hatred.
Empathizing with the group, he said he understood this was a “very difficult time” for them because of the “pain of the conflict in Gaza” and the “suffering of Palestinians.”
Additionally, even though a British military base in Cyprus was among the first targets of the Iranian regime’s retaliatory strikes, Starmer expressed sympathy over the death of Ayatollah Khamenei.
He concluded his speech with the words “Ramadan Mubarak,” which means “Blessed Ramadan” in Arabic.
Yes, his remarks were absolutely shameless, but the Muslim community constitutes a significant portion of his political base.
🚨 Keir Starmer this evening at the Westminster Hall iftar: "The British Muslim Community… you're the face of modern Britain… A success story when it comes to diversity… Ramadan Mubarak!"
How did all this identity politics work out for Labour in Gorton and Denton last… https://t.co/iXtK7VUqvY pic.twitter.com/rggZq6Uabw
— Subversive Force (@sirwg202110) March 3, 2026
Keir Starmer has demonstrated large amounts of cuckery in his time, but this takes the biscuit.
He's hosting Iftar for Muslims at Westminster tonight, and reiterates to them that Britain didn't help their allies against Iran.
Literally bent over for votes.
They even clap. pic.twitter.com/FQvrgviaG5
— Tommy Robinson 🇬🇧 (@TRobinsonNewEra) March 3, 2026
On Friday, The Spectator’s political editor Tim Shipman reported he’d obtained a draft copy of “Protecting What Matters, a document outlining Labour’s new cohesion strategy which is to be unveiled in a cross government push next week.” Among the new initiatives, Starmer will appoint a “special representative on anti-Muslim hostility,” or what Shipman refers to as an “Islamophobia tsar.”
[Note: Shipman’s article is behind a paywall, but can be viewed here.]
The 47-page government paper proposes stronger measures against extremism. To the document’s credit, it identifies Islamists as the primary threat to community cohesion and even calls for new immigrants to integrate and speak English.
The paper acknowledges that antisemitism has become “normalized in many corners of society – from our schools and universities to workplaces and the NHS.”
It also admits that, for many U.K. residents, “the changes brought about by mass migration have been too much, too quickly, leaving people feeling as thought they are losing their local and national identity.” While calling on U.K. citizens to have “respect for different cultures,” it notes that “newcomers have a responsibility to engage with and embrace what it means to be British.”
So, all of that is progress.
However, while the document rejects demands for blasphemy laws, it pledges to protect individuals from intimidation over alleged “blasphemy.” One can only wonder what the Starmer government will consider to be intimidation and how precisely it plans to protect those who are intimidated.
The plan also seeks expanded powers to shut down “extremist charities,” bar hate preachers, increase monitoring of extremism in universities, and prevent public institutions from funding or legitimizing extremist groups. It includes new rules to confront “divisive content” and “ensure trusted news sources are prominent.”
Given the arrests and jail sentences handed down for social media posts in recent years — and the pandering address to the Muslim community delivered by the prime minister on Tuesday — concerns about the proposed reforms are hardly misplaced. The fear is that the new measures, including the creation of an anti-Muslim hostility tsar to enforce them, could further restrict free speech in the U.K.
Shipman cites some specific concerns:
Critics fear these measures will be used to silence critics of Islamists or even TV channels like GB News which some Labour people view as too right-wing.
…
The creation of a ‘special representative on anti-Muslim hostility’ is likely to give a prominent platform to an activist voice. Their job will be to ‘champion efforts across the UK to tackle hostility and hatred directed at Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim’.
Alongside that is a new definition of anti-Muslim hatred, which has been watered down to avoid defining Muslims as a race, but which will still condemn ‘the prejudicial stereotyping of Muslims, as part of a collective group with set characteristics, to stir up hatred against them, irrespective of their actual opinions, beliefs or actions as individuals’. Critics think this will create a blasphemy law by the back door.
…
It also states that everyone must ‘embrace’ LGBT rights, opening the door to censure of those whose religious views are hostile to homosexuality and those who do not embrace trans rights. Ministers will also float the idea of religious education in the national curriculum and suggests the government should ‘promote’ religious education councils.
Asked for comment on the new proposals, Andrew Gilligan, a senior fellow at Policy Exchange and a former No. 10 adviser, told the Spectator: “There are clear risks to free speech. But there are also several worthwhile commitments, if they ever happen. The risk is that the bad things happen, and the good ones do not. The other risk is that the new strategy is implemented by the same old identity-politics activists, woolly-minded councillors and 40-watt policemen who have made the current mess.”
The paper does contain some long-overdue acknowledgments about the challenges posed by mass migration. But the initiative’s success — or failure — will depend on how these measures are enforced. If the same political instincts that produced Starmer’s pandering Ramadan address guide its implementation, many Britons will fear that the promised reforms will serve less to defend cohesion than to police dissent.
Keir Starmer’s government to appoint ‘Anti-Muslim Hostility Tsar.’
The UK government has created a document called ‘Protecting What Matters’ outlining a new definition of Islamophobia with plans for a ‘special representative on anti-Muslim hostility’
Source: The Spectator pic.twitter.com/1muGScHJTL
— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) March 6, 2026
Finally, sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words!
— Gregs iPinions (@Gregs_iPinions) March 6, 2026
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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Comments
So then, Starmer is like Biden, except conscious?
Just like their “gracious” King and a lot of pols in this country who are celebrating Ramadan.
We can’t F ourselves fast enough.
Glad I’m old.
Dear God
Pick Kamala. Pick Kamala please pleeeeeeeeeeze.
Starmer is a bigger cuck than Bryon Noem.
Starmer: “Peace in our time! We only need comply with all of their demands.”
Restrictions on free speech are now the norm in lesser britain. They are no longer part of the free world.
Subotai Bahadur
The old certainties are no longer certain and in truth haven’t been for some time. Every ‘ally’ and every alliance must be reviewed and reevaluated for the value it holds today, not based on outdated assumptions or worse a clinging attachment to nostalgia. Unless there’s a net benefit to the people of the USA across military, economic/trade and diplomatic domains then we shouldn’t grant those Nations the status of ally.
I wish I could give you more than one uptick.
The island is still Great Britain. It hasn’t shrunk. The name has nothing to do with what kind of government it has from time to time.
Good ol’ Milhouse…. are forests really made of trees?
Yes, actually, forests are composed of trees. Enough trees together are a forest; without trees you can’t have a forest. And they don’t have to be in any particular order, just close enough to each other to make the forest distinguishable from the surrounding mostly treeless area.
But what is your point? Subotai made a comment premised on the idea that the name “Great Britain” refers to some sort of metaphorical greatness, that it’s a title of praise, and therefore it can be forfeited so that the former GB can now no longer be great.
But it isn’t. It’s purely a geographical name, referring to the island’s physical size. And that hasn’t changed significantly. The island isn’t any smaller than it was when it got that name. Even if the UK collapses, and the island is depopulated or reduced to primitive savagery, it will still be Great Britain.
Great Britain referred to the Empire, to the world spanning civilization that left it’s mark everywhere.
Lesser Britain refers to the Islamicised dungheap that desecrates that once great island empire.
Take the damned literalist stick out of your arse and beat yourself over the head with it, Democrat, maybe you’ll knock a bit of sense into that empty head.
Cower may be a better word, when the better action is show fortitude.
Such an utterly despicable, feckless, cowed, meek, emasculated and submissive posture of total dhimmitude, by the vile, stupid, gullible, narcissistic and destructive Starmer.
The U.K. of the Magna Carta and as a bastion of Enlightenment values, is finished, bent in submission to the Islamofascist/Muslim supremacist bootheel and scimitar.
We bailed them out twice, but no power on earth can stop the invasion and subjugation they set in motion themselves with their virtue signaling. Pretty expensive stuff, that virtue!
The only thing we can do is learn from their unfortunate destruction and protect ourselves. My state just banned Sharia law from any authority anywhere in our borders.
Perhaps they should consider new definition of Occidentalphobia with plans for a ‘special representative on Muslim hostility’
What a simp. The UK is gone. Poof. And they did it to themselves.
We need to cut the UK loose. Remove our troops from their bases. Seize Diego Garcia for ourselves. Pull back our borrowed nukes. Terminate any defense and intelligence agreements. Either kick them (and Turkey) out of NATO or better yet leave ourselves.
We should also re-evaluate each and every military agreement with each and every muslim nation. Along with that we should terminate our bases in those countries. We should also stop selling them arms. Let them buy chinese crap.
To each and every nutjob who whines about Israel being the root of all problems I say your stupidity has it exactly backwards. Israel doesn’t want to change our way of life, Muslims demand everyone become Muslim and they are emigrating to this country to make it so. Wake up idiots,
Oh we also need to come down hard on any politician in the US that panders to the muslim horde here or abroad. Let no more in. Get rid of those who aren’t citizens. Infiltrate and spy on those that are because they represent a clear and present danger to this country.
Your analysis is spot on and I agree with all of your proposed solutions. Very well said.
Letting Turkey into NATO was a colossal strategic blunder. Its entry in 1952 may have been seen as a strategic coup and necessity in the context of the Cold War, but, NATO’s other member-states should have foreseen that the possibility that Turkey would, in the future, fall sway to an Islamofascist/Muslim supremacist leader (what has transpired, in actuality) who would be hostile to western, non-Muslim/secular interests and values.
In fairness the repeated refusal to allow Turkey to join the EU economic system, to include the EU moving the goal posts a couple times definitely played a role with the shift in Turkey away from their Western orientation and back towards embracing a more Eastern/Islamic orientation. That doesn’t excuse it just provides context to more fully explain why it happened.
I think that’s interesting context, but, I totally reject the notion that the west/Europe is somehow to blame for Turkey’s descent into belligerent and cancerous Islamofascism/Muslim supremacism. That theory is too redolent of the alleged/perceived “Muslim victim”/Muslim grievance-posturing that contemporary Muslims like to engage in, in order to rationalize Muslim/Islamic belligerence, supremacism, hatred, violence and pathologies.
The corrupting/evil influence and supremacist, belligerent and totalitarian nature of “Submission” is baked into that wretched ideology’s wicked tenets, meaning that it was only a matter of time before Turkish citizens rejected Attaturk’s short-lived experiment in Turkish secularism, and embraced a full-throated, assertive Islamic strongman/dictator, in the fashion of the vile Erdogan, or, someone like him.
It wasn’t THE cause but it was ONE cause among many. The prior leadership of Turkey, was striving mightily to fend off the smaller but growing influence of more Islamist elements. Erdogan was at the time kinda straddling the line between pro Western and Islamist (though with a strong lean towards Islamist but more of a Historical/Nationalist ‘make Turkey great again’ theme).
As PM Erdogan went back and forth with the EU seeking admission. Each time the EU sorta found a way to deny it. That meant he had little choice but to look Eastward since his ability to deliver on better economic integration with EU and a Western orientation was stymied. The Nations east of Turkey are many things but with the exception of Israel, India, Singapore, Taiwan, Japan they don’t have much of a Western Civilization orientation.
I’d argue there are people in many European Govt who regret their actions in stiff arming Turkey, or at least the consequences. Turkey had a choice about embracing more Islamist elements but the EU rejecting their attempts to more closely integrate into the West unquestionably played a major role in that choice.
At one point Turkey had a secular government and it probably made sense to include them to shore up the Southern front as Greece has and had a lot of communists. Times change though and should cause reevaluation of alliances. Sadly this seldom happens if ever.
We should leave NATO.
NATO shouldn’t exist as of 1991.
Truth! The sooner we end it the better off we’ll be. What use is a military alliance whose members depend upon the USA militarily, economically and diplomatically who treat us with barely disguised contempt, demand investment into their economies with ‘NATO’ (aka European) arms purchases, massive cost of bases and personnel then refuse to allow the USA to operate from those bases? The same sort of situation the EU and NATO Nations were trying to tell us would be preferable to the USA in Greenland than as a US protectorate.
Speaking of Bears… I was so hoping the cocaine bear was going to turn out to be like Santa or the ether bunny…😁😅
We should declare victory and go home. Let the muslims and the russians fight over it.
Every western country that let in muslims is toast. The second half of this century is for the countries that didnt.
Poland and others have stood strong. They will inherit power and prosperity by 2050. For better or worse, Russia remains immune to bending the knee to Allah so those surviving countries will still have to contend with Russia.
“the changes brought about by mass migration have been too much, too quickly, leaving people feeling as thought they are losing their local and national identity.”
Losing? Hell they have no identity any longer.
Wake up America!!!!! We are facing the exact same thing and the Dems are joing forces with muslims. Mr. Trump, where are you?
I had no idea it was this bad in England are there even a British people anymore or is the Island just a protectorate of Qatar ?
It almost seems like any Englishmen still living are in nursing homes.
More of Pakistan.
The joke from a decade ago was that a Jihad had been announced where all Englishmen in Birmingham were to be slaughtered. The Home Office was anticipating as many as 8 casualties.
All the “nice” stuff – worrying about extremisim, anti-semitism, “mass migration” etc. is just deflective cover for the real agenda which is to increase state power to intimidate people who speak up “out of line”. Eg Tommy Robinson.
That Muslim camel is halfway under the tent by now.
It’s over until the Culture Marxists get tossed out, by force if need be.
One can wonder, but any protection is better than none. At the very least the law won’t join in that intimidation.
If this has you scratching your head, you haven’t been paying attention.
What’s meant by blasphemy is any criticism, justified or otherwise, of islam. It does not include any such speech against Christianity.
And since the Church of England is nothing more than a social club at this point, what’s to criticize?
What we’re witnessing is creeping sharia. Unless and until the English people rise up and expel the muslims, the muslims will subjugate them.
As long as there’s footie on the telly and the betting shops are open, no one there cares.
Church of England is a Gay Social club primarily for women. While there is nothing wrong with a Gay Social Club for women declaring it a religion is just a bridge too far.
You’re the one not paying attention. The document pledges to protect individuals from intimidation over alleged “blasphemy.” So if you are accused of blasphemy against Islam, the government would protect you from any intimidation over that. One may well ask how good that protection will be, but any protection is better than none, and at least it means there wouldn’t be negative “protection”, i.e. the state wouldn’t join in the intimidation.
Also, your claim:
is just not true. Any proposed law against blasphemy would apply equally to speech against any religion, including Islam, Christianity, Satanism, or anything else. There is no proposal in any Western country for a blasphemy law that would protect only Islam.
This is unlike the common law crime of blasphemy, which only protects Christianity. Several states in the USA still have such laws on the books, though they’ve been unconstitutional since the Supreme Court decided that the 14th amendment incorporates the 1st against the states. In England and Wales it was enforced by a court in the 1970s, and wasn’t abolished until 2008.
Democrat, as always you have no idea what you’re talking about.
Spend five minutes listening to Englishmen and they’ll explain to you how this works.
Until then, save your ill-informed blather to this side of the Atlantic.
There’s supposedly a leaked draft of this plan which labels the Union Jack as too provocative to display and/or a symbol of hate. When the gov’t tells it’s people that patriotic display of their Nation’s Flag is problematic to recent arrivals, too upsetting to these arrivals I don’t see how anyone should grant good faith intentions or trust that govt won’t abuse power/authority.
You mean like how various US governments have said the US flag or various revolutionary war flags are too provocative (and upset the hispanic population or the illegal aliens),.
To my knowledge and in contrast with the UK, the US Gov’t nor a State/local govt in the US has yet to base an arrest on flying/displaying the Stars and Stripes nor has a govt paid out $ thousands to remove those put up by patriotic Citizens.
The politically themed social/cultural events in the UK are about two to three decades ahead of similar events in the USA. Canada is about a decade to 15 years ahead of us.
I’m not 100% sure that US governments have said that. I’m positive US newspapers have, though.
And Amherst MA was on the verge of actually doing that, had they not had the bad fortune to be sandbagged by 9/11 occurring the very next day.
Various schools have done it especially in CA. The media has attempted to shame people about flying the flag. Public schools are part of the government although if you say that is a stretch I won’t argue the point.
Chief, I have not suggested in any way that we should “grant good faith intentions or trust that govt won’t abuse power/authority.” But when that draft says that the government should protect people from intimidation over their “blasphemy”, that means that no matter how weak that protection will be it will necessarily be better than nothing, and at the very least it won’t be negative. If the government is claiming to protect you from intimidation it can hardly join in that intimidation. At worst it will suffice with wagging its finger at the intimidators and tell them not to do that.
Sad to see Britain as a standing dead tree.
Having been stationed there for two years as a young man I always have had a affection for England.
There already has been blasphemy cases, it will not go back only forward. And the Marxists are warning them it will.
There have not been any blasphemy cases in the UK since they abolished the ancient law against it in 2008. And that law only protected Christianity, not any other religion. New blasphemy laws that would protect all religions have been proposed, but none has yet been enacted.
I feel so sorry for true British citizens who see what’s happening and are powerless to stop it. Truly horrifying.
I don’t think they can wait til 2029 to get change.
Are there no English left in England to stand up against this idiot?
Dare Keir to eat a bacon cheeseburger and wash it down with a pint of ale.
certain instances of free speech are illegal if we say they are. We’ll let you know upon arrest, conviction and incarceration.
Ever read Article 29 of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights?
It’s the escape clause that turns rights into privileges. Every tyranny has one.
Wow! Great Britain is surrendering faster than the French!
Rule Britainia
Britainia rules the waves
Never, never will Britons be slaves.
Well I think we can delete that tune.
They’re replacing it with “Stop & Listen to Your Mum.”
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