It looks like Boris has offended lots of people by suggesting that some folk are where they are because they’re not very bright, something Nick Clegg calls ‘unpleasant’ and ‘careless’.
It’s also, as Clegg must know perfectly well, true, but as Rod Liddle writes this week there are certain things you just can’t talk about, not just despite being true but because they’re true.
Rod cites what Dominic Grieve recently said about corruption, which was rude, offensive, insulting to the Pakistani community and of course totally true. Likewise when Richard Dawkins recently pointed out a fact about the relative success of the Muslim world vs Trinity College, Cambridge – that was offensive.
At some point in the English-speaking world it was agreed that people should not say things that were true, however necessary it might be, if it offended someone’s sacred identity.
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