Jane Moore Muslim Smear Busted

The Murdoch Sun is not all about leering laddishness, and to prove this, the paper employs the likes of pundit Jane Moore, who will be familiar to viewers of programmes like The Andy Marr Show (tm), where she occasionally graces the Official BBC Sofa and contributes to reviewing the Sunday papers. Ms Moore gives the impression that she is unlike all those dirt-digging hacks. But impressions can be deceptive.

When it comes to doling out casual smears to the Sun’s chosen targets, Ms Moore can mix it with the rest of the hatchet brigade, and today has brought forth a particularly ripe example of her participation in this enterprise. The chosen target - demonstrating that his media honeymoon is over - is London’s newly elected Mayor Sadiq Khan.

Ms Moore eschews any subtlety when it comes to making sure readers know that Khan, however appealing he may have been to London’s electorate, is still one of those Scary Muslims (tm). Under the title “Khan in culture clash”, she tells “TREVOR PHILLIPS, the highly respected former chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, has warned that a ‘dangerously misguided’ liberal elite is ignoring the fact that Britain’s rapidly changing cultural landscape is causing friction in communities where there was once tranquility”. What she doesn’t tell is that Phillips regards Khan as a friend, but hey ho.

Instead, readers are told “He says: ‘Rome may not yet be in flames but I think I can smell smouldering whilst we hum to the music of liberal self-delusion’”. He doesn’t see the Tiber foaming with much blood, then. And then Ms Moore introduces her jibe.

“Last week, Labour’s Sadiq Khan became the first Muslim mayor of our capital city and promised to act on behalf of ‘all Londoners’”, she begins, before the mood darkens. “But in a letter published the following day, one Muslim woman observed: ‘However liberal Mr Khan professes to be, he comes from a culture which would leave him with no alternative but to obey the Muslim Council of Great Britain and other Islamic factions’”.

Really? Do go on. We get more of that letter - “‘Is he prepared to fight for equal rights for gay people, for women to dress as they please and to marry whom they choose?’” - before Ms Moore muses “Is he, indeed? Watch this space”. Yeah, Sadiq Khan, the inmates of the Baby Shard bunker are watching you! They know you’re really one of those Scary Muslims (tm) and they’re on your case! You’re in hock to someone else!

And to that I call bullshit: Sadiq Khan has shown time and again that he is his own man, and has already voted for equal rights for gay people, and, yes, to marry whom they choose. This is well known because he received death threats for it. His local Imam fell out with him and backed the Tories instead. Or has Ms Moore conveniently forgotten Suliman Gani? You remember Jane, the bloke David Cameron defamed in the Commons. Twice.

Jane Moore demonstrates that, when it comes to smears and hatchet jobs, she can mix it with the worst of them. But good of her to let slip that the Sun is as ready as ever to leap from gutter to sewer in order to put the boot in on Labour politicians.