Anthony Browne, oh my oh my!

Oooooh! Are you sure you want to go there, our Nick? A little bit of background on "Our new man in town to fight political correctness" …

Anthony Browne has some … funny … friends (actually perhaps this link might be more helpful, the previous one is blocked by most workplace filters). He's not "a liberal". He is, to put it bluntly, an immigration nut. I can hardly improve on David T's analysis from 2005:

It is clearly possible to oppose a particular immigration policy without being a racist. Similarly, it is possible to denounce Zionism without being a racist. The fact that racists may oppose either or both immigration and Zionism does not make all those who use such arguments racists.

However bigots usually give themselves away. It is usually a turn of phrase that provides the clue. At some point, the weight of evidence makes it more likely than not that a person is, in fact, a bigot who seeks - as Newshog puts it - to "hide … bigotry under a smokescreen of faux concern".

I can certainly see Newshog's point in Browne's case. The argument which Browne makes about the fascist nature of radical Islamism appear to be part of a broader argument which he is making about “third world colonization“. The case for treating radical Islamism seriously can do without his support.

And this is a rather bowdlerised version of what actually happened in the furor over Browne's 2003 Spectator article, entitled "The Secret Threat to British Lives"

exposed the civil servants who were pretending that a rise in HIV was due to poor sex education rather than immigration from African countries where the virus is raging. A former press officer at the Department of Health staff told me that his arguments caused consternation, not least because they were true

On the matter of the medical profession's response to Browne, I'll once more resort to verbatim quote, this time from Richard Croker, writing in the BMJ.

"The United Kingdom has an enviable reputation in international public health. In recent decades this has rested in part on a humane public health policy response to HIV - where a position was taken early in the pandemic to protect human rights and provide care and succour to those in society most marginalised and stigmatised. This approach also happened to be rational, coherent and effective. It would be a shame if this reputation was tarnished through an ill considered conflation of immigration control and communicable disease control.

And the 2003 article ought to be put in the context of Browne's full program of views about immigration. He wrote in 2000 that white people will be a minority in the UK by 2100 and in London by 2010 (eighteen months to go Anthony, although he rather rowed back on this in 2003, claiming that he was talking about "White British"). He also thinks that Muslims want to conquer the world.

Nice liberal mates you've got there. In fairness, it should be noted that this is in the "Seals of Dacre" series rather than "World of Decency", as Nick is well outside the Decent mainstream on this one. Aaronovitch was an early dectractor of Browne and "Migration Watch", Harry's Place stepped away from their endorsement as noted above and even Martin Bright acted somewhat embarrassed by Browne (while continuing to cuddle up to Policy Exchange).

The interesting question now, I think, is whether Nick will go on to endorse VDare itself as being "basically liberals".