If progressives can criminalise Islamophobia, surely promoting child marriage in a Western country should be against the law
Daily Telegraph 27/08/26
As his many followers on social media will be well aware, John Cleese has become a rather outspoken figure these days, on any number of contentious subjects. I certainly can’t say I agree with everything he posts. But I was very much intrigued by a little thought that he put forward on Tuesday morning.
“I’d like to suggest,” he wrote, “that promoting child marriage, stoning, halal animal torture, wife beating, sharia courts, and other behaviour contrary to British values, should now be referred to as Anglophobia.”
What an interesting idea. I wonder whether Labour MPs will take Cleese up on it. After all, they were extremely keen to draw up an official definition of Islamophobia. So why not do the same for “Anglophobia”?
Admittedly, I suppose there’s a risk that some Labour MPs might think Cleese’s definition of “Anglophobia” constitutes Islamophobia – which would, of course, make it completely unacceptable to them. Especially if they think the latter of those two phobias is a far graver sin than the former.
Anyway, regardless of what our beloved Government might think, I for one rather like the thought of a crackdown on “Anglophobia”. Personally, though, I would expand on the definition proposed above. Because I think “Anglophobia” should be used to refer to anyone, of any background, engaging in the tedious Left-wing habit of performatively bashing Britain or the British, purely because they think it makes them look good.
Take, for example, the recent case of Jameela Jamil. The former BBC presenter, who was born in London but moved to Los Angeles in 2016, declared on a podcast last month that “British people are truly the most evil people in history”.
I was fascinated by this comment. Not least because if I were asked to name “the most evil people in history”, the first thought that would spring to my mind would be the Nazis. Does Jamil think the British are more evil than the Nazis? And, if so, does she think it would have been better if, in the Second World War, the Nazis had defeated the British, rather than the other way round?
On the whole, I’m fairly confident that she doesn’t think any such thing. I suspect she only called the British “the most evil people in history” because she thought it would make her sound both daringly transgressive and fabulously right-on. Whatever her motives, though, I would say her comment easily comes under my proposed definition of “Anglophobia”. So I thank her for so helpfully illustrating my point.
To what other uses might we apply this exciting new term? Well, we could use it to describe anyone who claims the British national flag is somehow upsetting, intimidating or “divisive”. Or anyone who demands that ordinary British people be forced to pay financial reparations for the transatlantic slave trade, as if they were to blame for events that took place centuries before they were even born. Or anyone who calls for British schools, universities, museums and other institutions to be “decolonised” (I’m never quite sure what is meant by this, although, in practice, it seems to mean “ruined”).
To be clear, it’s not that these examples of “Anglophobic” views offend me. It’s that I find them unbearably boring. Which is why I think it would be quite fun to play progressives at their own game, by formally ruling that all their endless whining about Britain and the British is actually racist, and potentially against the law. See how they like it if, every time they tweet a link to a Guardian opinion column complaining that the British countryside is insufficiently diverse, the police turn up on their doorstep and bark: “Excuse me, sir, but we’ve had reports that you’ve been engaging in Anglophobia.”
And if they don’t like it, here’s an alternative idea. Instead of formalising yet another type of “hate crime”, let’s bring back an old-fashioned notion known as free speech. That, I can’t help thinking, would benefit everyone. It would mean that progressives could bore on interminably about the unparalleled evils of the British Empire without fear of being arrested for “Anglophobia”.
At the same time, it would mean other people could express their concerns about, say, “child marriage, stoning, halal animal torture, wife-beating and sharia courts” without fear of being arrested for Islamophobia. Which would be reassuring, after Tuesday’s reports that two protesters in London were arrested for holding signs that read “f--- Islam”.
The British people have a proud history of both defending and exercising their right to free speech. To deny them it is deeply “Anglophobic”.
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