Phillips Parses "The Speech"

Melanie Phillips applauds Prime Minister David Cameron's speech on the failure of multiculturalism--but has some major reservations about it. For one thing, she doesn't think the speech went far enough:

Despite the welcome advances in the previous remarks, he qualified them by reverting to some of the pusillanimous incoherence that lay at the heart of the previous failed thinking. The problem – as ever – is that although he identified ‘Islamist extremism’ as the problem, he simultaneously tried to suggest that this was nothing to do with Islam.

For another, she doubts Cameron understands the full implications of what he said and has what it takes to follow through on it: 

Listing the criteria by which the government will henceforth judge whether or not to treat with Muslim organisations, he said:

‘So we should properly judge these organisations: do they believe in universal human rights – including for women and people of other faiths? Do they believe in equality of all before the law? Do they believe in democracy and the right of people to elect their own government? Do they encourage integration or separation? These are the sorts of questions we need to ask. Fail these tests and the presumption should be not to engage with organisations – so, no public money, no sharing of platforms with ministers at home. At the same time, we must stop these groups from reaching people in publicly-funded institutions like universities or even, in the British case, prisons.’

Golly. If this is followed, then it means that not only the Muslim Brotherhood-influenced Muslim Association of Britain but the supposedly more mainstream Muslim Council of Britain, along with most if not all of its affiliates, will now be deemed to be beyond the pale. Is the government really going to take that approach? Will it, as this also inescapably implies, sack the Brotherhood types who are now acting as advisers on Muslim extremism within Whitehall? Will it finally take action against Islamist groups preaching jihadi subversion on campus? Will it arrest the spread of sharia law, end the Saudi funding of mosques and university Islamic studies departments, and row backwards on sharia financing?

Concludes Phillips, ever the skeptic when it comes to good intentions, "I’ll believe it when I see it."