Mick Hartley

Politics and Culture

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  • From inside Iran

  • International law and the disputed territories

    Why Israel has sovereign rights to the West Bank. Eugene Kontorovich at Tablet

    Israel and Jordan signed an armistice agreement in 1949, ending the fighting without agreeing to permanent borders. Jordan remained in control of the Old City of Jerusalem and the surrounding areas. It proceeded to ethnically cleanse every single Jew from this territory, which it then annexed in 1950 and dubbed “the West Bank.” All but a few nations rejected the legitimacy of this move, as Jordan had no credible sovereign claim on the territory, having taken it in a war of aggression.

    Quite clearly, when Israel retook this territory in 1967, it was not occupying territory from Jordan, but rather ending Jordanian occupation of a portion of Mandate Palestine, the territory reserved by the League of Nations for a Jewish homeland under the British Mandate. Indeed, to say that “the West Bank” continues to have some special status 50 years after the end of Jordanian occupation is to retroactively give legal effect to the aggression against Israel in 1948. It is to say that to the extent the Arab states succeeded in occupying parts of Mandatory Palestinian territory and ethnically cleansing every single Jew, those areas must permanently remain Judenrein.

    But read it all. Setting the record straight.

  • “A hostile, humiliating and degrading environment”

    Victory for the Darlington nurses:

    NHS bosses discriminated against a group of female nurses by allowing a trans colleague into their changing room, a tribunal ruled on Friday.

    In what the eight nurses’ legal team described as a “landmark judgment”, a specialist employment law judge also said the women were harassed by managers at County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust, who unlawfully required them to share the female-only facilities with Rose Henderson, who was born a man but identifies as a woman.

    Judge Seamus Sweeney said that trust managers had “engaged in unwanted conduct”, that the policy had the effect of “violating the dignity” of the nurses and that it created “a hostile, humiliating and degrading environment”.

    The judge, who was part of a three-strong panel, said the trust had behaved unlawfully “by not taking seriously and declining to address” the nurses’ concerns, which had been raised in 2023 and 2024.

  • The Scottish drag queen

    From Reduxx:

    A drag queen has appeared in a Scottish court after being charged with child sex offenses. Craig Baxter, who performed under the name Miss Kitty Swallows, had worked in multiple nurseries and childcare centers in his community.

    I wonder if the name, “Miss Kitty Swallows”, might perhaps have suggested to these nurseries that this wasn’t quite the wholesome bit of kiddy fun that they’d assumed.

    Baxter was first taken into custody in October of 2025 after a local predator hunting group in Paisley became aware of concerning allegations against him. According to Scottish Daily Express coverage at the time, the group, Fighting Justice Against Predators, had been at an unrelated protest in the Johnstone area when they were approached by multiple children who claimed they were being groomed online.

    Jo Drennan, 37, told the paper: “Our group were out at a protest when some wee boys came up to us. They said they were getting groomed online. All the kids know us in Renfrewshire. They know we are there to keep them safe and they trust us. One of the wee boys then sent us quite a lot of stuff.”

    After briefly reviewing the evidence, Drennan called the police and Baxter was taken into custody that same day.

    At the time of his arrest, Baxter had been working at a nursery. Local parents on Facebook reported that he had worked at multiple childcare institutions around Paisley, including Abbey Nursery, Douglas Street Early Learning and Childcare Centre, Glencoats Lodge, and Kirklandneuk Early Learning Childcare Centre. He was terminated from his job shortly after his arrest.

  • “It feels like satire”

    Meanwhile, in Wandsworth:

    A Labour-run council has told staff to announce their pronouns at the start of meetings.

    Bosses at Wandsworth borough council are also encouraging employees to add general neutral pronouns such as “ze/zir/zem” to email signatures and their social media profiles.

    In an internal memo, seen by The Telegraph, it is argued that “people from the non-binary and transgender communities” need to be “more seen and recognised”.

    The authority says adding the pronouns such as ze/zir/zem to email signatures and announcing them at the start of meetings is a “simple step” towards this.

    I thought this nonsense was all behind us now. Apparently not. Not in Wandsworth, anyway.

    Susan Smith [For Women Scotland] told The Telegraph: “Perhaps Wandsworth council are short of things to worry about, although it might help signal which members of staff should not be taken seriously.

    “Will they be asking staff to declare star signs or belief in the tooth fairy?

    “More seriously, pressuring staff to make this declaration could be a discriminatory act against those who do not subscribe to this ideology and who will be concerned that this will be used to root out heresy.

    “At best, they are making the council a laughing stock, at worst, they are providing evidence to be used against them in future tribunals.”

    Fiona McAnena, director of campaigns at sex-based rights charity Sex Matters, added: “It’s ludicrous that Wandsworth council is encouraging staff to support the fantasy that people can be the opposite sex, or no sex at all, by adding pronouns to their email signature.

    “That a public body has given the example of zi/zir/zem as so-called ‘neo-pronouns’ – invented words that supposedly indicate being neither a man nor a woman – is so silly that it feels like satire.

    “This sort of nonsense is already going out of fashion, and Wandsworth council needs to join the many organisations that have withdrawn pronoun policies such as this one, having belatedly realised that they don’t reflect reality but rather discriminate against staff and clients who don’t hold fringe gender-identity beliefs.”

  • A blank cheque to the Islamists

    The latest exciting revelation from Birmingham:

    The elected police chief at the centre of the Israeli football ban row has been accused of offering to give a controversial mosque the equivalent of a “blank cheque” to apply for public funding.

    Simon Foster, the West Midlands police and crime commissioner, wrote that he would be “very happy” to provide Green Lane mosque with a generic letter of support that would allow it to apply for future, unspecified public grants.

    Internal documents reveal that in January 2023 Foster also praised the “impressive range of work” at Green Lane, which has a history of antisemitic and misogynistic speakers.

    A very impressive range of work. Labour seems to have a weakness for hard-line Islam.

    Foster, a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn, is the only person with the power to sack Guildford but has not done so, saying he wants to “follow the process”.

    A supporter of Jeremy Corbyn. Ah. It all comes into focus.

    West Midlands police’s links to the Green Lane mosque have been placed under the spotlight by the scandal. The force did not consult any local Jewish leaders over the Maccabi ban but did speak to eight local Muslim groups, including Green Lane and two others accused of hosting antisemitic preachers.

    Added:

  • The unanswerable question

    Jerry Coyne – This is why Democrats are in trouble.

  • In Ontario

    Story here.

    Transgender teen killer loses bid to stay in Ontario women’s prison after threatening inmates and staff.

    Michael Williams, who now goes by Michelle Autumn, played ‘with her penis and buttocks in a sexually suggestive manner,’ during a strip search at Grand Valley Institution for Women.

    The implication being that if he hadn’t been so nasty and threatening, he’d have got in to the women’s prison, no problem. This is Canada, after all.

    “Her penis and buttocks”, ffs.

  • Support them or keep quiet

  • A free speech and thought-control problem

    Good to see Kishwer Falkner, former head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, now ready to speak out on matters of importance – as, for instance, on the government’s proposed Islamophobia legislation. In the Times today:

    Another day, another government U-turn. Some can be justified by changed circumstances, others are simply the product of political weakness despite that huge majority.

    But if there is one policy that cries out to be ditched, it is the Labour attempt to define Islamophobia for public usage. This has not yet registered on the Labour backbencher’s survival Geiger counter, but from what we know it is both dangerous and divisive for them and for the rest of us.

    In the last election a handful of Muslim “independent” candidates surprisingly won relatively safe Labour seats. In constituencies with similar demographics other Labour MPs, such as Wes Streeting and Jess Phillips, survived with narrow margins. The lesson taken was that the Muslim “vote bank” had to be recaptured. Hence the contortions in government about coming up with something that might tilt the electoral balance in its favour. Enter Islamophobia/“anti-Muslim hatred”.

    It is, in other words, a craven attempt to recapture the block Muslim vote. And block vote it often is, too. We’ve heard how preachers at the mosques tell their congregation how to vote; how men tell their wives how to vote. Not all – but enough.

    The former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner set up a working group to guide further action on tackling religiously motivated hate. It was to prevent “unacceptable” incidents of anti-Muslim hatred, without saying what was unacceptable or to whom. Existing legal remedies for religious discrimination were apparently inadequate, ostensibly as they cover all religions, and clearly in this scenario Muslims needed special treatment.

    One year on, the proposed definition is even worse than anticipated, as Policy Exchange exposes in a damning new report.

    The government has belatedly discovered that religion and belief discrimination laws will squarely challenge its definition, and has therefore dropped both the terms “Islamophobia” and “hatred”. We are now told that “hostility” towards Muslims (or those perceived to be Muslim), based on their religion, ethnicity or appearance is what will land one in trouble. What’s more, this will cover physical, verbal, written or electronically communicated “hostility”. So, anything in any medium that may express opinion or mere observation could be captured as being anti-Muslim hostility.

    Leaving aside this reinforcement of two-tier justice, where only one religious group is deemed worthy of additional protections, what of “hostility” as a concept? It is undefined in law but used in cases alleging discrimination and criminal wrongdoing. Although it will not be legally binding it will have significant implications in employment disputes, as there is a propensity towards over-caution and gold-plating in the DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) industry.

    In the numerous laws that cover hostility as a factor in wrongdoing, the meaning is that of the dictionary: ill-will, ill-feeling, spite, prejudice, unfriendliness, antagonism, resentment or dislike can all be elements of “hostility”. There is no need to assess intent or to prove motivation if hostility itself is proven.

    It is immediately evident that this will become a free speech and thought-control problem.

    A year ago I called for an inquiry into grooming gangs and referenced the fact that many Muslim or Pakistani men who had raped white girls held culturally regressive attitudes towards women, hence their casual disregard for the latter’s rights. That, it seems, could be captured as anti-Muslim “hostility”. I had arguably articulated ill-feeling, unfriendliness and potential dislike of these men and their attitudes. The late Andrew Norfolk, the Times reporter, himself faced allegations of Islamophobia in covering those cases.

    And what of the recent claim by the historian Tom Holland that “Islam is uniquely indigestible for secular societies”? Telling people their religion is indigestible in British society could surely be construed as hostility.

    We’ve recently learnt that the relevant institutions who failed the murdered child Sara Sharif were cowed by fears about racism in their approach towards safeguarding her. The West Midlands police ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from Birmingham could be justified on the basis of trying to avoid “anti-Muslim hostility”, elevating the views of that community above other considerations.

    The government’s proposal also seeks to define Muslims as a racial group. In law, currently, religious belief protections are not race-based. Moreover, defining Muslims as a race goes against the tenets of Islam itself: the Muslim Ummah (a global brotherhood) firmly transcends race and nationality. Pity white Muslims who will now have to define themselves through hijabs or beards rather than their own religious adherence, to gain this added protection.

    What does this convoluted definition amount to? Beyond the hope that Muslim voters will be seduced to believe they have foolproof protections to combat all the unfairness they encounter in life, it will increase prejudice, albeit hidden. When the balance of equality is broken to favour one side, resentment on the part of those restricted, particularly where free speech and thought are imperilled, this becomes a rallying cause.

    I, my relatives and friends know the freedoms we enjoy here aren’t available to us anywhere in the Muslim world. The last thing we want or need as a religious community is to become scapegoats in a political quest to save a few seats.

    Room for plenty more U-turns. The puberty blocker trial; the Chagos hand-over; approval of the new mega Chinese Embassy; retail business rates; no-jury trials. The list goes on and on…