Watch: Labour MP calls for blasphemy law

Oh dear. Tahir Ali is at it again. It was only ten months ago that he had to apologise after claiming at PMQs that Rishi Sunak had ‘the blood of thousands of innocent people on his hands’. But the controversies of the past don’t seem to have blunted the Honourable Member for Birmingham Hall Green and Moseley. For the Labour MP has today asked whether, er, he might consider the reintroduction of blasphemy laws. So much for a politics that treads more gently on people’s lives…

Ali asked Starmer ‘Will the Prime Minister commit to introducing measures to prohibit the desecration of all religious texts and the prophets of the Abrahamic religions?’ Alarmingly, Starmer refused to rule out the proposal, only saying that ‘desecration is awful and I think should be condemned across the House’ before insisting ‘we are committed to tackling all forms of hatred and division, including, of course, Islamophobia in all of its forms.