Former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has suffered a major setback in her legal battle with American 'shock jock' Michael Savage after her officials were accused of banning him from the country on racial grounds.Oh, dear, how did this get out?
Emails written by Home Office officials privately acknowledged the ban on Mr Savage would provide 'balance' to a list dominated by Muslims - and linked the decision to Gordon Brown and Foreign Secretary David Miliband.
The officials admitted their action could look 'duplicitous' and cited his 'homophobia' as a reason the move would receive public support.
Whoopsie!
Now, correspondence released under Freedom of Information legislation suggests the banning of Mr Savage, whose real name is Michael Weiner, was based on a party political calculation made at the highest level of Government.Hoist by their own petard. How delicious..!
One message, sent by an unidentified Home Office official on November 27 last year, said that 'with Weiner, I can understand that disclosure of the decision would help provide a balance of types of exclusion cases'.
So it was for exactly the reasons everyone thought- they had banned a bunch of Muslims so they looked around for someone who was hostile to Islam whom they could also ban.
ReplyDelete"So it was for exactly the reasons everyone thought..."
ReplyDeleteIt would appear so.
And yet, despite knowing about the FOIA, they still swapped emails stating that.
Can you imagine how dangerous they would be if they weren't stupid?
ReplyDelete