But there’s one thing on which must agree. Better either of the above – or, frankly, a Cocker Spaniel – than the (current Home Secretary and lead rival contender) Theresa ruddy May.
Let me give you two reasons why.
First, May is fundamentally unsound. Earlier this year she claimed, without blushing, that “Sharia courts benefit Britain.” But there was an earlier indication she was a wrong ‘un in 2014 when she had a public spat with Michael Gove (who at the time was Education Secretary), over the best way to deal with Islamic extremism in Britain.
It began, you may remember, as a result of the Trojan Horse scandal when it emerged that a number of state schools in Birmingham had been hijacked by Islamists promoting an extremist agenda, with non-Muslim teachers marginalised, boys and girls segregated, teenage males taught that rape is legal within marriage, Islamic terrorists glorified and non-Muslims described as kuffar.
May – perhaps to duck responsibility and save her skin: as Home Secretary she’s supposed to be in charge of law and order and social cohesion – tried to pin the blame on Gove.
Gove struck back, as well he might. No one in the British government has been more keenly aware of the problems of Islamism than Michael Gove. He was on to it a decade ago when he wrote Celsius 7/7 – a book excoriating the cultural dhimmitude that had led to problems like the London bus and tube bombings.
Part of Gove’s argument has always been that it is simply not enough to combat Islamist terrorism. You also have tackle the root causes of the problem: madrassas teaching young British Muslims to despise the values of their own country; Wahabi and Deobandi imams, parachuted in from Pakistan and Saudi, preaching the most extreme form of Islam; inequality before the law endorsed by Sharia courts; sucking up to extremist “community leaders” and ignoring the peaceful majority; and so on – as well as more positive stuff, like encouraging Muslims to become better assimilated and more loyal to their host culture.
It’s known colloquially as the “drain the swamp” strategy. That is, it’s no good just bashing the crocodiles’ heads as they attack your canoe. If you want to sort out the problem long term, you have to neutralise the environment from which all those crocs are coming in to attack you.
May, on the other hand, is of the “don’t let’s make a fuss, let’s just deal with the crocodiles as and when they appear” school of thought.
Which of the two approaches, do you think, is most likely to secure long-term social cohesion and reduce the number of future terrorist attacks?
The row between the two got so heated that Gove was ordered by Prime Minister David Cameron to apologise to May.
Gove, it should be noted, is now supporting Boris Johnson’s candidature in the elections to become new Conservative leader and Prime Minister.
The second reason why Theresa May doesn’t deserve to be Prime Minister is because she backed the wrong side in the referendum.
She didn’t need to do so. It has long been rumoured that she has Eurosceptic sympathies. But when push came to shove, she decided to put petty ambition before principle and take what she thought was going to be the easy option: back the Establishment position and reap the rewards.
Had Remain won, she would have benefited accordingly.
It would be a monstrous injustice – not to mention an insult to the electorate – if, having backed the wrong horse for the most cynical of reasons, May went on to be rewarded with the highest office in the land.
Read the rest at Breitbart.