Today in the Commons the Tory backbencher Rehman Chishti asked: “Will the Prime Minister join me in urging the BBC to review their bizarre policy; when they wrote to me to say that they can’t use the word Daesh because it would breach their impartiality rules? We are at war with terrorists, Prime Minister. We have to defeat their ideology, their appeal. We have to be united in that. Will he join me now in urging the BBC to review their bizarre policy?”
https://soundcloud.com/spectator1828/cameron-on-what-to-call-isis
David Cameron positively purred: “I agree with my honourable friend. I’ve already corresponded with the BBC about their use of IS—Islamic State—which I think is even worse, frankly, than either saying ‘so-called IS’, or indeed ‘Isil’. But Daesh is clearly an improvement and I think it is important we all try and use this language.”
Important? Well, kinda. But – as Parliament votes on whether or not to wage actual war (or, less bombastically, on whether or not to extend the mandate of existing bombing raids onto the other side of an almost literal line in the sand marking the boundary between a failed state and one whose government’s legitimacy we don’t recognise), there’s important and there’s important.
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