The Nick Timothy trap

It's the same strategy every time: Make a provocative (and racist) statement, trigger a 'debate', and push the discourse further to the far right.

Previously: Gail’s, The Guardian, and a proxy war in the press

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When the Shadow Justice Secretary, Nick Timothy, responded to an Open Iftar event in Trafalgar Square by posting on X that “mass ritual prayer in public places is an act of domination”, “straight from the Islamist playbook”, and “not welcome in our public places and shared institutions,” many people’s understandable first instinct was to fact-check him: Open Iftar events have taken place in Traflagar Square for years; other faiths have used the space for religious events too; and the content of his ‘objection’ is at odds with his professed support for free speech and freedom of religion. They were falling into an all too familiar trap.

It’s a well-worn tactic: Say something obviously offensive and watch as the media debates whether you were right, actually. The result is that the state of general discourse moves further to the right, the ratchet effect in action. “Tonight on the show, we ask: should Muslims have to stay indoors and not be seen by the good Christian folk of Britain? Hey, we’re just asking the question…”

When Keir Starmer attacked Timothy’s comments during Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, Kemi Badenoch backed her shadow minister to the hilt, saying he was “defending British values”. She’s doubled down since. The following morning, on BBC Breakfast, the Tory party chair, Kevin Hollinrake, joined in: “This wasn’t a performance. It wasn’t carols being sung in Trafalgar Square that everybody could enjoy, or some kind of spectacle or performance.”

Of course, The Daily Telegraph — where Timothy was a columnist in the period after he served as chief of staff to Theresa May, pushing the hostile environment and ‘go home vans’ and before he became an MP — has given him the chance to expand this tweet into a comment piece headlined Islamic domination of the public sphere is unacceptable. In it, he writes:

A memorial to national independence, Trafalgar Square belongs to us all. To use it as a stage for this act of domination and division is completely wrong, and it should never be allowed to happen again.

It belongs to us all, but seemingly not to British Muslims and particularly the Muslim Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, who was born in the city, according to Timothy’s logic.

Inevitably, The Spectator (Feeling uncomfortable about Muslim prayer in Trafalgar Square isn’t racist) and Spiked (Nick Timothy is right: Islam is getting more assertive) rushed out pieces in support of Timothy’s comments. The aim here is to set the parameters of debate and to further a sense that Muslims are not legitimate participants in public life.

A radio debate on whether British Muslims should be allowed to pray in public should be so short that it could fit between the weather report and the time check. I had the same temptation to write a long edition of this newsletter unpicking why Timothy and his defenders in the press are wrong, but then I realised I would be falling into their trap. To accept that it is a topic for debate is to step backwards.

Timothy and his friends have been engaged in a project to undermine the place of Muslims in British life for years now. His post on X is not a wild outburst but a very calculated move. That Tommy Robinson welcomed Timothy’s comments won’t be something that worries him. In fact, he will be not-so-secretly delighted.

Every time one of these extreme statements is picked up and turned into the fodder for debate in the media, it is far-right thinking being laundered as ‘reasonable’. We have to stop falling for it.

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