Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Over on The Green Ribbon, Tom Griffin has picked up a great story. Here is how it begins:
Well done to Nick Clegg for becoming the first major party leader to take on Policy Exchange over its unscrupulous approach to Islam. (hat-tip Sunny Hundal)
In a statement carried by the PoliticsHome website on Friday, Clegg criticised the think-tank over for a privately circulated briefing against the Sunday's Global Peace and Unity event in London.
The Policy Exchange briefing I have seen seeks to raise alarm over a number of the speakers planning to attend the conference. The accuracy of the allegations is variable, with a notable lack of evidence to support many of the claims.
In particular I was appalled to see ‘evidence’ quoted from the Society for American National Existence, an organisation which seeks to make the practice of Islam illegal, punishable by 20 years in prison. I need hardly point out how illogical it is to attempt to criticise one set of extreme views by citing another.
My concern is not limited to the facts in the document, however. Your attempt to raise a boycott of this event by privately briefing against it is bizarre, and underhand behaviour for a think-tank supposedly interested in open public debate. The information you are disseminating is extremely narrow in focus and as a result tars with the brush of extremism the tens of thousands of Muslims who will be in attendance.
This looks exactly like the kind of activity which led the Charity Commission to identify 'a need for greater transparency' from Policy Exchange earlier this year. The briefing is now available from PoliticsHome. There is a very fair assessment at Wouldn't It Be Scarier?.
One point worth making is that the Society of Americans for National Existence are not just some bunch of marginal crazies. SANE is actually a project of the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies. IASPS was where key neoconservatives like Richard Perle, David Wurmser and Doug Feith worked out the clean break strategy, which many believed formed the basis of the Iraq War agenda they went on to pursue in the Bush administration.
Read the rest of the post here.
