On last night’s edition of BBC’s Question Time the Prime Minister was schooled in the proper way to react to Islamic State by the journalist and commentator, Douglas Murray.
Murray flagged up the debate that arose earlier this week, calling it the Prime Minister’s “battle with the BBC about what we call these terrorists.” He said that indulging in the debate is a “big mistake” which doesn’t help, continuing:
“We never called the IRA the ‘so-called IRA’ and the Islamic State is the Islamic State. It is what it says it is. It’s what it claims to be. It’s very Islamic and it claims to be a state.”
Rather than adopting “ludicrous” alternatives, labelled by Murray “a demonstration of weakness”, he explained the role of the Prime Minister:
“It is not the role of the Prime Minister of this country to tell the BBC what the Islamic State should be called and nor is it the role of a Prime Minister to get into that kind of wordplay. It should be the role of a Prime Minister, I think, to say 30 British citizens were killed in cold blood, now Britain as a state should respond to that very forcefully.”
In doing so, Murray earned a rare round of applause for a conservative voice on Question Time.
Although not a universal response, Murray did find support for this position on Twitter.
Douglas Murray highlights Cameron’s semantic idiocy. If not ‘Islamic State, then don’t substitute with acronym incorporating it. #bbcqt
— Alistair Heron (@Al_roar) July 2, 2015
Good to hear Douglas Murray making robust defence of the BBC’s right to call Islamic State by their proper name. Hands off the Beeb. #bbcqt
— paulusthewoodgnome (@woodgnomology) July 2, 2015
Fantastic to see Douglas Murray decisively crushing the PM’s ridiculous, deflective rhetoric on Islamic State. #bbcqt
— Damaine (@DamaineAG) July 2, 2015
Douglas Murray spoke sense earlier on the whole thing about what to call ISIS, it’s nonsense,not calling them “Islamic state” means nothing
— joseph (@josephdcassidy) July 2, 2015
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.