Feminists for Cameron?

The fallout from Labour’s morally and tactically disastrous decision to attack David Cameron’s defence of liberal values continues. Now it is Joan Smith’s turn to take a kick. She is one of the few true feminists left in Britain, and proves it by her willingness to say without equivocation that if white-skinned women in Britain should have equal rights then so should brown-skinned women  inTehran. (Or to bring that comparison closer to home, if the emancipation of women is good enough for Hampstead and Highgate, then it is good enough for Bethnal Green and Bow.)

‘Labour’s response to Cameron’s speech was lamentable, appearing to have more to do with electoral calculation than principle. As a secularist, I’m well aware that self-appointed representatives of ‘faith’ groups frequently complain about discrimination while displaying varying levels of misogyny, homophobia and intolerance. But the Party under Ed Miliband seems as unprepared as ever to acknowledge that people who are disadvantaged are not always shining examples of tolerance themselves, and that a willingness to condemn terrorism is not on its own proof of a commitment to universal human rights.