Iain Dale is not racist, but…

By Stephen Newton

Oh golly! A blog war with the media’s favourite, Iain Dale, right at the centre of things as always. No harm will be done, as bloggers are pretty much unsackable. Our blogs are – like the London Evening Standard – vanity publications and we are our own bosses.

Like so many others in the chatterati, I too listened to Iain defending Carol Thatcher on Radio 4, but I must be fair and say I thought he acquitted himself well.

Iain confidently built bridges with his opposite number in debate. Although, as always with Iain, there was no attempt to hide that his views were formed from the comparative shelter of an Essex pig farm surrounded by doting sisters. He found it hard to understand that a black person of similar age will have had very different experiences of growing up in Britain.

Let’s be clear. Iain Dale is almost certainly not knowingly racist, but he can be a little naive at times. Back in March 2007 he found himself in ‘the sort of place where you just happen to stand next to Henry Kissinger at the urinal. Which I did. And no, I didn’t.’

Iain was at a dinner of the Anglosphere Institute. They promote an emerging branch of civilisation that embodies the values of the English speaking nations at its core: ‘individualism, rule of law, honouring contracts and covenants, and the elevation of freedom to the first rank of political and cultural values.’ I bet they’re gutted the French got to ‘liberty, equality, fraternity’ first. And it’s hard to believe they count English speaking countries like Zimbabwe, say, or Nigeria, among their nations to admire.

The Anglosphere is not a racist construct. But they do promote the idea that the UK and USA are ‘node’ countries with five second division outliers (Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and South Africa) and in third place, the ‘educated English-speaking populations of the Caribbean, Oceania, Africa and India’. This scheme isn’t racist, say Anglospherists, even though an uneducated Briton will always be in the first division while a well-educated Indian will always be third rate.