Politics: “unfathomable treachery”

By Richard North - September 6, 2025

There is an iron rule in modern politics which holds that, just when you’ve got to the state when you think things are at rock bottom and cannot get any worse – it gets worse.

That rule, with all its terrible implications, was brought to the fore yesterday with Starmer’s appointment Shabana Mahmood as home secretary, replacing the lacklustre Yvette Cooper who takes over foreign secretary portfolio from David Lammy.

This was followed in short order by a Home Office statement that, “for over two centuries, the home secretary has safeguarded the nation”, adding: “Today, we begin a new chapter as we welcome Shabana Mahmood to the Home Office as the new home secretary”, a phrasing which unwittingly seems to imply that the home secretary will no longer safeguard the nation.

Mahmood’s duties, as has been quickly pointed out, include taking charge of law enforcement, national security and counterterrorism, immigration and border security, and oversight of the Security Service (MI5). As a Pakistani (Kashmiri) heritage woman, she also inherits responsibility for the national inquiry into the Pakistani rape gangs scandal.

Yet this is the woman who is a devout Muslim who, in her own words, said: “My faith is the centre-point of my life and it drives me to public service, it drives me in the way that I live my life and I see my life”, a woman who, when she entered parliament as a newly-elected MP, swore her oath on the Koran.

It is worth noting at this stage that, beginning with the Test Act of 1673, Roman Catholics were excluded from high office and the crown in England, motivated by fears of Catholic influence, particularly during the reign of Charles II, amid concerns about “popish plots” and the potential restoration of Catholicism, when loyalty to the Pope was seen as incompatible with loyalty to the crown.

Most restrictions on public office were lifted by the Catholic Relief Act 1829, but the bar on a Catholic monarch remains to this day, although the 2013 Succession Act eased restrictions on royal marriages.

And the essential reason for the lifting of the restrictions is that Roman Catholicism is no longer a political force in this (largely secular) country (not forgetting Northern Ireland).

However, that is not the case with Islam. Readers might recall that, in yesterday’s piece, I cited Steve Bannon’s warning that Britian was on the brink of civil war.

What I did not mention was the sub-head to the Telegraph piece which had Bannon saying that Britain has a problem with “radical Islam” that is getting worse. The only point with which I would disagree is the use of the word “radical”. There is Islam, and there is Islam, where the adherents to the faith owe their loyalty not to the nation (any nation), but to the ummah, the transnational, global community of Muslims which has become a fundamental concept in Islam.

Thus asks Dan Burmawi, how can a woman whose moral and ethical framework has been shaped by Islamic ideology be entrusted with safeguarding the security and freedoms of a nation built on Western values?

The home secretary, he observes, is not just another cabinet position. It is one of the most powerful roles in the British government, responsible for immigration, policing, counterterrorism, and the protection of civil liberties. The office directly impacts the safety, rights, and future of every British citizen.

Burmawi reminds us that, according to the Home Office’s mandate, the home secretary must: Uphold the rule of law without bias. Defend free speech and civil liberties. Protect the nation from threats, foreign and domestic.

Islamic ideology, he says, is not compatible with these standards, as he goes on to ask: “How can someone shaped by a system that subjugates women (Qur’an 4:34) credibly defend women’s rights in Britain? How can someone whose religious doctrine criminalizes free speech as “blasphemy” protect Britain’s centuries-old tradition of open debate?”

And so the questions flow. “How can someone whose worldview is rooted in Islamic supremacy guarantee equal treatment for Jews, Christians, atheists, and other minorities? How can the overseer of counterterror policy belong to an ideology that has produced global jihad for 1,400 years?”.

Britain, Burmawi warns, “is blindly placing its national security in the hands of someone formed by an ideology that views Western freedoms as sinful and temporary”. Thus he asks: “When Sharia-influenced decision-making begins shaping immigration, counterterrorism, and policing, who will stop it?”.

Jim Chimirie, another prominent Twitter commentator, agrees. The home secretary, he says, is not a backroom role – it’s the fulcrum of state power over law, order, and borders. To put someone shaped by Islamic doctrine into that seat is not “representation”, it’s surrender.

The issue, he argues, isn’t whether Shabana Mahmood is polite, competent, or even loyal to Britain in some nominal sense. The issue is the ideological framework that will always sit at her shoulder. Islam is not just a private faith; it is a total system – law, politics, culture, and morality rolled into one. He continues with the observation that its track record on women’s rights, free speech, minority protections, and pluralism is plain for all to see.

In Chimirie’s view, this appointment is not an accident. It is the logical outcome of a political class that treats multicultural optics as more important than national survival. Starmer, he says, wants to prove his “diverse” credentials. The price, he says, is that MI5, counterterror strategy, immigration policy, and the fight against grooming gangs are now in the hands of someone whose worldview cannot possibly align with the very freedoms she is meant to defend.

This is how a civilisation hollows itself out, he concludes, not with tanks on the streets, but by handing the keys of its core institutions to those who do not believe in its foundations. The home secretary’s oath is to Britain. The question is whether her first loyalty lies elsewhere. And if it does, then Britain has crossed a line from which there is no easy way back.

Chimrie, in a separate post, expands on the background to the appointment. “This is calculated”, he asserts. “Starmer is making a point. He’s signalling to the Leftist-Islamist alliance that he will put ideology and optics above the nation’s safety.

And he’s spitting in the face of every Briton who still believes this country should be governed according to its own values, not those imported from outside. It’s a message dressed up as “diversity”, but the real translation is contempt: we’ll decide who rules you, and you’ll swallow it. That’s why this appointment matters – it isn’t just personnel, it’s policy. And it shows us exactly where Starmer’s loyalties lie.

Looking at Mahmood’s past performance, one observer recalls that, in January, as Justice Secretary, she and her department quietly enforced new probation service rules. They should have provoked utter outrage but not that many took notice.

Under her rules, judges were instructed to “prioritise” cases involving ethnic minorities, women, and trans-identified suspects. This was on the assumption that they face a “disproportionately higher risk” of being remanded in custody. But they went further than just identifying potential vulnerabilities.

They explicitly called for judges to consider factors such as “important historical events which may have had a greater impact on those from specific groups and cultures.”

In short, she installed two-tier bail procedure while no one was looking. It’s very likely that white male Brits have been subject to bail guidelines that “positively” discriminate against them since the onset of the year.

Mahmood, he says, seems very good at saying what people want to hear, as proven when the Sentencing Council scandal kicked off. Behind-the-scenes, she does something else entirely – much like Starmer.

Telling us what to expect, Connor Tomlinson predicts: more migration from the Muslim third-world; more proscribing of reasonable right-wing concerns about culture and identity; more psyops telling you “Don’t look back in anger” whenever a Jihadist reads the Quran too closely and butchers children at a pop concert; reluctance to explore the racial and religious motivations of the rape gangs; two-tier policing between British patriots and Palestine protestors.

And that is just a sample of the social media view. The legacy media, on the other hand thinks that “Shabana Mahmood’s elevation points to the right”. Not anywhere from the establishment press do you get a hint of the outrage that has Tominson declaring: “the scale of treachery is unfathomable”.

That, perhaps, is another of the reasons why Twitter (X) has overtaken the legacy media as the primary source of news.