Free Republic

A desperate search for a new policy towards Islam has yet to produce results A WAR, a riot, a terrorist attack or a row over blasphemy: not long ago, Britain’s government knew exactly what to do when a crisis loomed in relations with the country’s Muslims. As recently as July 2005, after bombs in London killed 56 people, Tony Blair was confident that he could avoid a total breakdown of trust between Muslim Britons and their compatriots. Using an old formula, the prime minister called in some Islamic worthies and suggested they form a task force on extremism. Then, hours...

A shock win for the far-right British National Party yesterday sent a tremor through Labour amid growing fears that the recession is driving angry voters into the arms of extremist parties. The BNP seized a Labour seat in a district council by-election in Sevenoaks on a substantial turnout, encouraging fears that the party could make significant advances in the June local and European elections. The Kent town is a Tory stronghold at Westminster and local politicians had previously dismissed the likelihood of a breakthrough for the BNP. But the result will be seized on as evidence that Gordon Brown's ill-judged...

The wave of wildcat strike action that has swept across the UK escalated today as hundreds more workers walked out in the protest against foreign labour. Contract workers from the Sellafield nuclear site in Cumbria, the Heysham nuclear power station in Lancashire and a site at Staythorpe, in Nottinghamshire, joined the unofficial action over the hiring of Italian and Portuguese workers on a Lincolnshire power station project.