A senior Labour MP and co-author of a new Policy Exchange report attacking attempts to define Islamophobia privately told former Conservative Cabinet Minister Baroness Sayeeda Warsi that the Conservative think tank is a "dangerous" outfit with extremist tendencies that he is trying to "temper" with his presence. 

The conversation between Baroness Warsi and Khalid Mahmood, Labour MP for Birmingham Perry Barr, came to light in leaked WhatsApp messages seen exclusively by Byline Times.

Mahmood is currently a senior fellow at Policy Exchange. According to the parliamentary register of interests, he received regular payments from the think tank between April 2019 and March 2022, totalling more than £50,000. 

His private criticisms of Policy Exchange cohere with previous reports by Byline Times revealing the connections of multiple staffers with far-right anti-Muslim and antisemitic conspiracy theories. 

Several Policy Exchange fellows, including the co-authors of the new Islamophobia report, are linked to a supporter of the so-called ‘Great Replacement’ theory which has inspired several far-right terrorist attacks, including in Christchurch and Texas.

The think tank’s current head of security once described “Zionists” as “the enemy” alongside all the mainstream political parties.

Michael Gove, Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Secretary, gives a speech at a Policy Exchange event. Photo: Tommy London /Alamy

Policy Exchange 

The messages seen by Byline Times were sent to a WhatsApp group of senior cross-party Muslim politicians in the UK. They contain a series of heated exchanges between Mahmood and Baroness Warsi, a former Conservative Party chair. 

The private messages were prompted by Mahmood’s co-authorship of a new report published by Policy Exchange – 'A definition of Islamophobia? Old Problems Remain, As New Problems Emerge’ – which states that Islamophobia is being weaponised to silence free speech. 

In a foreword to the report, former Home Secretary Sajid Javid equates a working definition of Islamophobia created by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on British Muslims with “blasphemy law by the backdoor” that would also potentially undermine counter-extremism work. 

This was denied in 2019 by Labour MP Wes Streeting as Co-Chair of the APPG on British Muslims. At the time, both the then Chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council to Number 10, Martin Hewitt, and then Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu, the Metropolitan Police’s Head of Counter-Terrorism Policing, said that they believed basic refinements of the APPG definition would be sufficient. 

In the WhatsApp exchanges, Mahmood told Baroness Warsi multiple times that, if he had not joined Policy Exchange – one of the most influential lobbying groups around the UK Government – it would be a far worse organisation.

He claimed that he only joined the right-wing think tank to “keep an eye” on it from within, due to its “dangerous” nature.

Keeping an Eye

In the messages, Mahmood vigorously disputes Baroness Warsi’s criticisms of his role in the Policy Exchange report. Baroness Warsi complains that Mahmood had not raised his concerns directly with the APPG on British Muslims despite several invitations to do so. Mahmood rejects this criticism. 

“At least twice I have personally asked you to engage and you did not take up the open invite offered to all parliamentarians to submit evidence,” the peer writes in one message.

“And when I have addressed specific issues you’ve given me some wierd [sic] answer about how you working with PX [Policy Exchange] is in the best interests of the community because they (PX) would be far worse without you tempering/keeping an eye on them.”

In his responses to Baroness Warsi, Mahmood does not deny this conversation.

Instead, he writes: “I respect you have your opinions with PX's report. Although moving forward, I am looking to having a more meaningful conversation with you.”

In a further message, Baroness Warsi writes: “I saw you a few weeks ago at the Big Iftaar and I spoke about this very issue. You didn’t ask for a discussion nor give any indication that you were interested in working collaboratively.” 

She also writes that she was told “PX would be far worse without you being there and you needed to be on the inside. You gave the clear impression PX were dangerous and they [sic] you were keeping an eye on them – at no point did you defend PX”.

Neither Baroness Sayeeda Warsi nor Khalid Mahmood responded to Byline Times’ requests for comment. 

Although Mahmood's private characterisation of Policy Exchange as “dangerous” is at odds with his public stance, it is an accurate description of the think tank’s affiliations.

'Great Replacement’ Ties

Two of Mahmood’s co-authors of the new Policy Exchange report – Sir John Jenkins and Dr Martyn Frampton – have worked closely with Dr Lorenzo Vidino, a ‘white genocide’ believer who once worked for the same far-right conspiracy theorist whom former Prime Minister David Cameron called an “idiot” for describing Birmingham as a Muslim "no-go zone".

Dr Frampton also collaborated with Dr Vidino on a major anthology about the Muslim Brotherhood published in 2013, to which he was a contributor.

Former UK diplomat Sir John Jenkins spoke alongside Dr Vidino at a 2017 event hosted by him at George Washington University, where he heads up the programme on extremism. Dr Vidino was previously commissioned by Sir John to produce a paper and consultative briefing for the UK Government review of the Muslim Brotherhood. 

Dr Frampton was also hosted by Dr Vidino in 2018 at George Washington University to speak about his own book on the Muslim Brotherhood.

As Byline Times has previously revealed, Dr Vidino is on record advocating the far-right Great Replacement theory – an ethno-nationalist theory warning that an indigenous (white) European population is being replaced by non-European immigrants through a programme of reverse-colonisation, according to the Counter Extremism Project. 

In 2005, when asked if Europeans were witnessing “the end of Europe” by FrontPage magazine (the far-right publication of anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-black activist David Horowitz), he said: “Europe as we knew it 30 years ago is long gone. Demography doesn’t lie: in a couple of decades non-ethnic Europeans will represent the majority of the population in many European cities and a large percentage of them will be Muslim.” 

According to Georgetown University’s Bridge Initiative, Dr Vidino is well-known for promoting “conspiracy theories about the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe and the United States” and “is connected to numerous anti-Muslim think tanks in the United States and Europe, and has published in various anti-Muslim outlets”. 

From 2002 to 2005, Dr Vidino was a senior analyst at Steve Emerson’s Investigative Project on Terrorism, identified by the Centre for American Progress (CAP) as a top player in a global anti-Muslim “misinformation” network “orchestrating the majority of misinformation about Islam and Muslims in America today”. 

Emerson played a leading role in establishing the Muslim Brotherhood conspiracy theory through cherry-picking and misrepresentations of key documents. According to CAP’s online database of anti-Muslim hate groups, he has a reputation “for fabricating evidence to substantiate his ravings about Muslim extremism”.

In 2015, Emerson was notoriously ridiculed by then Prime Minister David Cameron as “a complete idiot” for calling Birmingham a Muslim-controlled "no-go zone". 

Byline Times also previously revealed that in 2010 Policy Exchange’s head of security and extremism, Dr Paul Stott, described “Zionists” as “the enemy” alongside Islamists, “Neo-Conservatives, New Labour [and] the Con-Dems”.

In 2021, Dr Stott was commissioned by the Sweden Democrats, a neo-Nazi political party boycotted by Israeli Government officials due to its antisemitic tendencies, to produce a report claiming the existence of a conspiratorial alliance between the Muslim Brotherhood and European political leaders. 

These extremist affiliations fundamentally discredit the integrity of Policy Exchange’s research on Islamophobia and Muslim communities.

Policy Exchange did not respond to requests for comment.

An antisemitism campaigner's clash with the Metropolitan Police yards from a pro-Palestinian march on 13 April was about a lot more than him looking "openly Jewish". I know, I was there when it happened.

Gideon Falter, chief executive of the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA), was blocked by a police officer and threatened with arrest in Aldwych, London – with the exchange caught on camera.

Footage published by Sky News showed Falter telling police officers that he wanted to make his way to the other side of where pro-Palestinian protestors were marching. The police did not less him pass and offered to escort him via another route, avoiding the protestors to ensure that he would be "completely safe".

During the exchange, one of the officers said Falter was being "disingenuous" and trying to "antagonise" others as he "took it upon himself" to walk "right into the middle" of the march and was "openly Jewish".

The incident sparked calls for the Met Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, to resign, and Scotland Yard has apologised twice.

Falter is the vice chairman member of the Jewish National Fund UK, which reportedly raised more than £1 million to fund ‘Israel’s largest militia’.

During the incident, he appeared to be flanked by a number of security guards in dark glasses and a videographer who later provided footage by the CAA to the press.

I happened to witness a small portion of Falter’s interaction with the police as I moved along the protest route.

As I had come towards Aldwych, I noticed the pro-Israeli protest with a number of Israeli flags, as well as a few Pahlavi Iranian flags featuring the face of the son of the last Shah of Iran. I saw one man being led away from the pro-Israel counter-protest by police, his wife following him. As I got nearer, I saw that some people from both sides were hurling insults and trying to antagonise each other. 

Stewards on the march were encouraging pro-Palestine demonstrators not to engage with the counter-protestors.

The clash at the Pro-Palestine march has led to calls for the Commissioner of the Met Police to resign. Photo: John Lubbock

It is clear that some Israel supporters are unhappy with the level of support for Palestine being demonstrated by the weekly marches, and are openly advocating that the police should ban demonstrations which former Home Secretary Suella Braverman has called "hate marches".

Following the incident, Falter told TalkTV that the Met Police should "ban the marches". Such calls have been going on since last November when Rowley refused to bow to calls to ban a demonstration held on Armistice Day.

This week’s headlines announcing that Falter had been prevented from crossing the demonstration route because he was "openly Jewish" have allowed all those people who previously called for the Met to ban marches to now call for Rowley’s resignation.

But there is more to the story than Falter’s categorisation of it as him being "simply Jewish in the vicinity of these marches". Falter's presence at the march had a number of contextual factors, of which looking "openly Jewish" was by no means the most important. It is, however, the only one which he chose to draw attention to

Falter claims he was not there to counter-protest, but why was he then trying to cross the march right next to the counter-protest, where antagonists on both sides were shouting at, and insulting, each other?

He claims he did not have a film crew, yet footage published of the incident by the BBC and others is credited to his organisation. Other videos show Falter at the centre of a group of people attempting to wade into the demonstration.

Protest movements seeking social and political change, which employ large street demonstrations to show their support, are used to agents provocateurs who aim to show the movement in a bad light by getting close to protestors and antagonising them. A man wearing a three-piece suit, with a number of security guards in tow, would look out of place almost everywhere except possibly entering a celebrity nightclub.

The attempts by Falter and some elements of the media to reduce his behaviour to a simple matter of him being Jewish appears to have an obvious political aim – to paint opposition to the Israeli state as motivated by racism.

I believe this is a political tactic employed by those who support the actions of the Israeli Government, which does a huge disservice to the fight against the real problem of antisemitism which exists globally.

The Jewish diaspora in the UK contains political factions which are highly critical of the Israeli Government and its actions in Gaza, and many hundreds of British Jews are regularly seen on these demonstrations.

The 13 April protest had a large contingent from the Jewish bloc, who gathered at a separate starting point before joining in with the head of the demonstration as it left Russell Square. Taking photos at the head of the march, I heard a loud cheer go up as the Jewish bloc joined the main march.

Attempting to paint pro-Palestine demonstrators as antisemitic, then, is an attempt to divide a large and diverse group of people calling for an end to the bombing of Gaza.

I didn’t stay to see the end of Falter’s confrontation with the police, because stewards advised us to move on and not engage with counter-protestors looking to antagonise people.

But Falter seems to have got exactly what he came for: a filmed confrontation which made a police officer look bad, and which is now being used to call for the sacking of the Met Commissioner.

The Campaign Against Antisemitism was contacted for comment.

Emmanuel College, Cambridge University has “cut ties” with Nathan Cofnas, a philosopher on a Leverhulme Trust fellowship there, because of his research on race and intelligence. However, Cofnas retains his fellowship as part of the Faculty of Philosophy at the university, so it is unclear whether this is merely a symbolic gesture by the college or a decision that affects his academic freedom.

Emmanuel College’s decision was a response to blog posts by Cofnas earlier this year that prompted the Leverhulme Trust to launch its own investigation of him, and which spurred a student petition calling for the university to dismiss Cofnas. The posts received attention for their racism. Here’s one example:

According to Varsity,

Cofnas received a letter on the 5th of April notifying him of Emmanuel College’s decision to terminate his research affiliation with the College… The letter sent by Emmanuel College reads: “The Committee first considered the meaning of the blog and concluded that it amounted to, or could reasonably be construed as amounting to, a rejection of Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion (DEI and EDI) policies.”

“The Committee concluded that the core mission of the College was to achieve educational excellence and that diversity and inclusion were inseparable from that. The ideas promoted by the blog therefore represented a challenge to the College’s core values and mission,” according to the letter.

More here and here.

UPDATE: Andrew Buskell writes in with some helpful information:

It’s important to distinguish Junior Research Fellowships (JRFs) from what Cofnas had at Emmanuel College. JRFs are positions funded by, and operated through, an Oxbridge college. Termination of a JRF affiliation — like, if I remember right, the case of Noah Carl — would be equivalent to terminating the position and stifling the ability of the individual to conduct research.

Cambridge college affiliations of the kind that Cofnas had are much looser, typically allowing the “fellow” access to room booking, the senior common room, and possibly internal pots of money. In addition, the fellow gets a few free meals per week, and other small perks. These are not, in other words, significant affiliations and some post-docs at Oxbridge do not pursue affiliation with a college if they arrive with an independent source of funding (like a Leverhulme Fellowship).

So it is not just symbolic — Cofnas is losing some perks of being at Cambridge — but it does not impact his ability to conduct research or draw a salary. Those resources are granted and managed through his primary affiliation. In this case, the Faculty of Philosophy.

Comments are closed because I know how the internet works and I don’t want to deal with tons of racist comments.

The post Emmanuel College Dissociates from Cofnas first appeared on Daily Nous.

Until 4 March this year, describing Laurence Fox as “racist” risked the ‘free speech champion’ making legal threats with the prospect of financial ruin attached – as quite a number of people can testify.

Prior to that date, the actor-turned-TV presenter and politician faced regular accusations of racism from social media critics, and would often respond by promising expensive court action.

But due in part to Mukhtar Yassin, a young Black British man who – in a David versus Goliath battle – defied Mr Fox’s legal and financial threats, and a racist social media hate campaign from some of Fox’s 500,000 X/Twitter followers, doing so is now a lot less risky.

“I told Laurence Fox he was ‘a racist piece of shit’ on social media, and stand by every word,” says Mr Yassin in an hour-long call with Byline Times, his first and only interview since Fox abandoned his threats and made a “significant” contribution to Yassin’s legal costs last month. 

“Fox’s threat of libel action against me was ridiculous and never stood a chance of succeeding. He tried to flex his muscles and bully me, and it didn’t work. If I continue to call out Laurence Fox as racist, he can try to sue me again if he wants, but he won’t because he knows he’ll lose.

“And he didn’t lose to just anybody, he lost – badly, and very publicly – to a young Black boy. I think that will have hurt and embarrassed him. Now he even gets heckled about it in the streets.”

Reclaim Party candidate Laurence Fox. Photo: PA/Alamy

Yassin is, by his own admission, “just a normal working-class bloke from The Ends”. The 29-year-old Muslim lives on a council estate in the Black Country, works in IT and has no legal background, let alone the sort of money required to defend himself against expensive litigation from a high-profile figure on the British right, whose political party Reclaim is backed by the multi-millionaire businessman Jeremy Hosking.

And yet that is exactly where Yassin found himself on 2 May last year when he called out a racially-charged post made the previous day by the then GB News presenter.

“It all started when Fox quote tweeted someone to say: ‘Dear Black people. Stop making everything about you’. I ‘quote tagged’ him saying I thought he was a ‘racist piece of shit’,” says Yassin. 

“He told me to delete it and apologise. I replied saying ‘suck your mum’. I know it was childish, and that Fox might try to sue me if he was able to find my address, but it was funny, and I don’t regret it.”

At the time, Fox was going through separate libel proceedings against Crystal, a drag artist, Simon Blake, a former Stonewall trustee, and Nicola Thorp, an actor, all of whom had also called Fox a racist on X [then Twitter], in October 2020. The three had themselves taken legal steps against Fox for calling them “paedophiles”, and he countersued.

With Fox having threatened legal action, Yassin says he seemed in private to be “increasingly desperate” not to sue but “did not want to lose face” in public. Yassin last week posted on X screenshots of Fox on one occasion offering him the opportunity to “discuss” the matter before Fox pursued legal action. 

“One of Fox’s GB News colleagues contacted me privately to tell me Fox wanted me to go on his show so he could get me to say something that would support his case. His bosses apparently saw it was a terrible idea and overruled it, not that I’d have gone on anyway.”

Four months after Yassin’s posts, Fox’s legal team managed to track down the address of one of Yassin’s family and served legal papers there. “None of my family knew about the legal threat as they are not on X. They asked me, ‘Who the fuck is Laurence Fox and why is he suing you?’ When I explained that he was sort of famous on X, my mum told me if I believed my words then I should stand by them. So I did.”

That’s not to say Yassin took it lightly. “I’m not going to lie, I was shocked and nervous. It’s a weird feeling. It was a lot to process. So many emotions go through your head when you get a letter like that. I have no legal knowledge; I didn’t even know any solicitors.

“But the day I got the letter I spoke to a few high-profile people, including [the MP] Dawn Butler, who put me in touch with the lawyer who was representing Nicola Thorp, Simon Blake, and Crystal. Once I heard how confident the lawyer was, and I had digested the letter, I felt better. I knew I was right, and Fox didn’t have a leg to stand on.”

Fox posting yet more examples of his apparent ‘racism’ also added to Yassin’s self-belief. “He tweeted one photograph of himself in ‘Black face’ and in another tweet, he told a Black person to ‘fuck off back to Jamaica’; The more he kept tweeting stuff like this the more I knew I would win. The rest is history.”

Yassin was further heartened by the many hundreds of tweets and messages from people supporting his cause – as his follower numbers doubled, and then trebled – many of whom donated to a £35,000 crowdfund for his legal fees. “I was overwhelmed; I didn’t realise how divisive people found Fox to be,” he says. 

The positive messages drowned out the negative ones, many of which Yassin says were overtly racist. “For almost two weeks I had loads of far-right accounts calling me [the ‘N-word’] and that I should ‘go home’, that Fox would ‘destroy’ me, or I would get beaten up if they saw me in public. It was relentless.

“X under Elon Musk is horrible. It’s like it has opened the floodgates to every racist around the world. I could tweet ‘Good Afternoon’ and within half an hour I would have people saying ‘what are you doing in my country?’ The stuff I see on there now is insane. It goes to dark places I’ve never seen, with misogynists, Islamophobes, conspiracy theorists. This didn't happen before Musk took over.

“Before then, if someone called me [the ‘N-word’] I would report it and within a few days, the post would be removed. Now when you complain you get a notification saying the rules have not been broken, but they make the post invisible. It’s a con trick. It gives racists confidence to say what they like. And it means there’s no point complaining.”

The rise of GB News, and its often barely-disguised racism, are simply two sides of the same coin, says Yassin. “GB News is toxic. They are just there to brainwash and radicalise people, and Ofcom don’t do anything about it. As a regulator, it makes me wonder whether it’s fit for purpose. GB News and X/Twitter both validate one another. It is an echo chamber of prejudice which unfortunately makes a lot of noise.”

With GB News under pressure to change its culture, Fox was sacked last September following a misogyny scandal which also led to the departure of the channel’s star £600,000-a-year host Dan Wootton in March.

“I was delighted,” says Yassin. “I felt that Fox losing some of his income and profile would have hurt him. But he’s responsible for his own downfall.”

After Fox lost his other libel action in late January – with the judge finding that the three tweets cited in his counterclaim were unlikely to cause serious harm to his reputation – his lawyers offered to drop his case against Yassin -!if Yassin paid his own legal fees and signed a gagging clause. “I said ‘fuck that, no way’.”

Fox then said he would drop the case with a “contribution” towards Yassin’s legal fees without a confidentiality clause in place, to which Yassin agreed because he “wanted it over and done with.”

Yassin says he doesn’t think Fox believes himself to be racist, “even though so much of what he’s saying has racist overtones”.

“One of the phrases he uses is he ‘has Black friends’ – he has a mixed-race girlfriend – and that makes him think he can’t possibly be racist and can say what he wants. It’s odd.”

Yassin also questions why Jeremy Hosking, a former Conservative Party donor - ranked number 351 in the Sunday Times Rich List 2019, with a net worth of £375 million - and a shareholder in Crystal Palace Football Club, is “funding hate” via The Reclaim Party. Fox, its leader, accrued legal fees for the two combined cases believed to be more than £2 million. 

“I find it weird that someone would back a person like Fox. Fox is vile and anyone who backs him is going to appear to agree with him. It feels like Hosking and his ilk are using Fox and those like him to fund hate, sow division and wage a culture war.

“I can’t understand why people would want to do this. How would it benefit them? Or benefit society?”

Byline Times has been told that Hosking has ceased to fund Fox since his latest legal defeat, but when approached on this matter, Hosking declined to comment. In reply to several questions from Byline Times, Laurence Fox replied: “Thanks… I only speak with real journalists.”

Yassin, a devoted “family man”, is more interested in the thoughts of those close to him. “When I got off the phone to my lawyer who told me Fox had dropped the case last month, I told my mum and she said, ‘I’m proud of you, son’. Hearing her say that meant everything.”