Testing Times

The vilification of Professor David Miller at Bristol is the result of Jeremy Corbyn's failure to face down the anti-Semitism hoax. With Corbyn out of the way, the Conservative Government has sacked the authors of the EHRC report, and has given the Chair of the EHRC to someone who rejects the IHRA Definition. But no one tells Gavin Williamson anything. As a result, a foreign state now presumes to dictate what should be taught at British universities, and by whom.

Subscription to the IHRA Definition recalls the subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles that was once compulsory for graduation from Cambridge and for matriculation at Oxford. You would be sent down for breach of it, and a record of such breach would preclude your admission. Yet that Definition is a denial of politically black, refugee and migrant experience, comparable to the Windrush scandal and to the fire at Grenfell Tower. It fails the litmus test of one's attitude to the specific phenomenon of white violence against people of colour. It obviously excludes Muslims. It excludes at least half of Jews.

And consider than the Campaign Patrons of my Independent candidacy for the parliamentary seat of North West Durham now include the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, the Armenian Apostolic Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, the Franciscan Custos of the Holy Land, the Coptic Orthodox Archbishop of Jerusalem, the Syriac Orthodox Archbishop of Jerusalem, the Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarchal Vicar in Jerusalem, the Ethiopian Orthodox Archbishop of Jerusalem, the Maronite Patriarchal Exarch of Jerusalem and Palestine, the Anglican Archbishop in Jerusalem, the Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, the Syrian Catholic Patriarchal Exarch of Jerusalem, and the Armenian Catholic Patriarchal Exarch of Jerusalem and Amman. If you identify with any one of more of those, then the IHRA Definition makes you as much of a Recusant as the Test Acts ever made anyone.