Rakib Ehsan

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has finally bowed to pressure and announced five local reviews alongside a ‘rapid national audit’ into grooming gangs. But the plan falls short of the national inquiry that many, including some Labour MPs, want. Cooper’s plan is insufficient. Labour may well pay a hefty electoral price for it Cooper’s statement in the

Nigel Farage claims that British Muslims are just as concerned, if not more, by the threat of Islamist extremism. The Reform leader said that ‘if you’re a Muslim family and the news is all about radical Islamists committing heinous acts, you’re going to think “wow, my neighbours may well be prejudiced against me because I’m Muslim’”. 

Is Britain racist? At times, you’d be forgiven for thinking so. In recent years, our country has experienced considerable turbulence on the subject of race and equality. The spread of the American Black Lives Matter movement on these shores in the summer of 2020 – which led to protests from the Isle of Wight on England’s

Radical preacher Anjem Choudary – the Bexley-born godfather of homegrown Islamist terrorism in modern Britain – has finally been imprisoned for life. Found guilty of directing the banned group al-Muhajiroun after an international investigation involving Scotland Yard, the MI5, the New York Police Department (NYPD) and Canadian police, Choudary was given a minimum term of 28 years

The Harehills riots and disorder, which started last Thursday in Leeds after social services removed several children from a Romani family, is a fine example of people projecting their biases onto complex social events. We are more likely to find the roots of the Harehills disorders in the politics of Central Europe than on the

After yet another dose of Euros final heartbreak for England, Gareth Southgate has resigned as manager. Southgate has been manager of England at a time where the overall quality of international football is not as high as it was in the past On paper, Southgate – who led England to two Euro finals and a

Once again, Nigel Farage – arguably the most influential politician in recent British political history – has sparked a furious debate.  What I take issue with is the grand-sweeping generalisations of British Muslims On Sky News and interviewed by Sir Trevor Phillips, Farage said there are a growing number of Muslims who refuse to subscribe

While Labour has gained councillors across England, and won bellwether councils such as Nuneaton and Bedworth and Milton Keynes, it has also lost some of its traditional Muslim support to George Galloway’s Workers Party of Britain (WPB) and pro-Palestine Muslim independent candidates. From the industrial Lancastrian town of Blackburn to inner-city Bradford in West Yorkshire, the ‘Palestine’

Labour’s defeat in Rochdale – following the party’s string of impressive by-election victories in places such as Wellingborough, in Brexit-voting middle England – will give leader Keir Starmer an almighty headache. Despite the party’s big poll lead, it shows that nothing can be taken for granted when it comes to looking ahead to the general

English football will soon have an independent regulator, with the power to block clubs from joining breakaway leagues and also try and prevent teams from going out of business. The football watchdog is part of plans set out in the government’s white paper, published today. For a struggling Tory party, this presents a golden opportunity

This week’s public disorder outside a hotel accommodating asylum seekers in the town of Knowsley in Merseyside was in some ways inevitable. A total of 45,756 people entered the UK on small boats via the English Channel last year – which, according to the 2021 Census, is a number larger than the entire population of

While some in Britain are understandably anxious about the Taliban’s rapid takeover of Afghanistan and the prospect of the Central Asian country becoming an international jihadist training ground, long-standing domestic problems concerning religious radicalism continue to persist. The issue of unregistered private schools in British Muslim communities is one of them. This has been thrust

After being soundly beaten by the Tories in Hartlepool and winning a paltry 1.6 per cent of the vote share in Chesham and Amersham, Labour have managed to cling on in the Batley and Spen by-election by 323 votes. While the result gives the party’s under-pressure leader Sir Keir Starmer some breathing space – and

The ugly scenes in Bristol last night make it plain to see that Britain can no longer turn a blind eye to a particular brand of political disorder. Violent clashes during the city’s ‘Kill the Bill’ demonstration – supposedly in protest against the Conservative government’s Police, Crime, Sentencing, and Courts Bill – resulted in 20 police officers being