It is never a good sign when a minister needs to spend as long talking about what a new policy doesn’t do as what it does. Much of Michael Gove’s Thursday was occupied with stressing the limits of the new extremism definition. It will not be statutory, the communities secretary pointed out. It will “in no way threaten” free speech. It will not be used against environmental groups. It would not be used in response to an individual comment, he added, responding to the inevitable questions that arose because the crackdown coincided with the Guardian’s revelation that one of the Conservatives’ top donors, Frank Hester, said in 2019 that Diane Abbott “should be shot”.
What the new measure will do, said Mr Gove, is help the fight against extremism. It won’t. Had community cohesion and tackling hatred truly been a priority, a full public consultation and proper engagement with faith groups would have been the right way forward. Instead came what the Conservative peer Sayeeda Warsi described as a “divide and rule approach”.
