.... Warsi’s early life, in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, symbolises the blend of cultures in her background. She and her four sisters were raised in a neighbourhood where Pakistani immigrants were in the minority – a family proud of their heritage, who spent their summers eating candyfloss in Blackpool, or fruit-picking in their shalwar kameez.
.... Warsi is at her best delivering a withering polemic on the flaws in government rhetoric and policy on extremism and multiculturalism. In a chapter entitled “Islamophobia”, she dismisses the approach of David Cameron and other former colleagues as “nonsense”. Applied across the board, the government’s current definition of “extremism” would, she says, include Russell Brand.
She goes further, accusing the machinery of government of amounting to a “paranoid state”. This claim includes the revelation that when she was minister for faith and communities in 2012, her adviser was pulled aside by someone in government and told to spy on her. My source was not, apparently, alone in his desire to incriminate Warsi. [130 comments]
[TOP RATED COMMENT 115 votes] Religious identity should be a private matter and our society should become more secular, religiously neutral and communal, not several parallel.
[2ND 97] Tokenism. She has no real function or purpose beyond her identity.
[3RD 82] Not terribly bright, is she?
[4TH 65] How many times did she fail to be elected before being kicked up to the Lords as a token appointment?
[5TH 50] What is Baroness Warsi's position on the Rushdie fatwa?
Some reviews are suggesting that she advocated his prosecution for blasphemy. That can't be right, can't it?
[6TH 45] One of Cameroon's more stupid decisions.
[7TH 40 ] So where was she when the "Enemy Within" of the government of which she was a member was the poor, the disabled, those on benefits, immigrants the EU?
She was turning up at the House of Lords and voting the way the Conservative Government told her to - and keeping quiet.
You are either for fairness for all or your pleas for your special interests are worthless Baroness. [The Guardian] Read more
