Rod Liddle parodies the nonsense that is the government’s approach to foreign visitors with unpleasant messages. It makes no sense to ban a critic of Islam but let in every homophobe with a passport
Perhaps we should not let anyone into our lovely country, for fear of the mischief they might cause. Almost all foreigners I have met have been devious and malevolent, eaten up with jealousy about what it is to be British, none too bright and with filthy table manners. You would not leave them alone with your wife for ten minutes. Nor, indeed, with your children. A complete ban on these vile people would spare us a lot of moral wrangling over which of them should be allowed in and which condemned to remain in their overheated, squalid and dusty little redoubts. At the moment official government policy seems confused and haphazard. Some of these people are allowed in, some are barred. There seems no rhyme or reason.
Perhaps the Phelps family will help us decide the issue, for they, too, are on their way. The Phelps clan runs the Westboro Baptist Church, based in Topeka, Kansas, and revel in the soubriquet ‘America’s Most Hated Family’. Those slim slivers of civilised America took against the Phelps family largely because of their robust views on homosexuality: ‘AIDS cures fags!’ is one of their buzzy, edgy little slogans. They picket the funerals of dead US soldiers, insisting that God wanted the soldiers to die because they were fighting for a country which finds nothing remiss with sodomy. As you may have gathered, the members of the Westboro Baptist Church are collectively — and as the US demotic has it — crazier than a s***-house rat.
They are coming here, supposedly, to picket a play being put on by a sixth-form college in Basingstoke.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in