Michael Deacon

Islamist terrorists now have more ‘human rights’ than we do

By protecting an al-Qaeda plotter from torture while ignoring our right not to be blown up, the law is turning Britain into a jihadi haven.
Down in the bowels of hell, Osama bin Laden will be kicking himself. After 9/11, he hid in Pakistan. But that, he must now realise, was his fatal mistake.

Instead, he should have moved to Britain. If he had, he’d have been perfectly safe. In fact, he wouldn’t even have had to bother hiding because he could simply have told a judge that removing him would breach his human rights.

On the face of it, such a scenario may sound just a tiny bit far-fetched. But consider this. In 2012, a Bangladeshi national named Shah Rahman was jailed – along with three other UK-based terrorists inspired by al-Qaeda – for plotting to bomb the London Stock Exchange. This week, however, we learnt that his story has the most flabbergasting addendum.

After he was eventually released from prison, Rahman applied for asylum. Thanks to the small matter of his terror conviction, this plea was rejected. Yet he was still allowed to remain in the UK. Why? Because it was ruled that sending him back to Bangladesh would – yes, you guessed it – breach his human rights. To be specific, it would violate Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which provides an absolute right of protection from “torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”.

Well, I can’t tell you how relieved I was to read that. Imagine how awful it would be if a foreign extremist who plotted a major terror attack on our country were to come to some kind of harm. How distressing it is to picture this poor, vulnerable, would-be al-Qaeda bomber being treated in a fashion that he might consider degrading. Why, I can hardly bear to think about it.

Then again, it may be that not everyone shares my sympathies. Last year, the polling firm, JL Partners, asked the British public whether they would support the deportation of serious foreign criminals, such as rapists and paedophiles, even if deportation would put those foreign criminals in danger of being tortured. And you’ll never guess how the British public responded. An overwhelming majority said they’d be perfectly happy to risk such an outcome, thank you very much. As for the very small minority who disagreed, I don’t know how many of them were thinking, “No, I don’t want foreign paedophiles to be tortured abroad. I want to torture them here, myself.”

At any rate, the results of that poll make it fair to surmise that most British people, given the choice, would quite like to deport Rahman. Because, not unreasonably, they could argue, “Yes, Article 3 protects his ‘human right’ not to be tortured. But what about our ‘human right’ not to be blown up by an extremist fanatic? Or at least, our ‘human right’ to live in a country that is able to get rid of extremist fanatics, rather than forcing us to live alongside them? Why should we have to put up with laws which seem to leave Islamist terrorists with more ‘human rights’ than the rest of us?”

All good questions. To which the Tories and Reform will doubtless offer a straightforward answer – as both of those parties have pledged to withdraw Britain from the ECHR, mainly in order to prevent farces like this one.

Admittedly, the pledge horrifies many politicians on the Left, who, as always, have the best interests of foreign criminals close at heart. And it may well be that some of these politicians’ constituents feel rather anxious about losing the protections of the ECHR. In which case, I politely ask them to consider living by the following rule of thumb.

If you don’t want to be deported to a country that might do nasty things to you, don’t plot a devastating terrorist attack on the country you’re currently living in. Just a small thought.

For the time being, however, we’re obliged to continue with a system which graciously permits gentlemen such as Rahman to remain in our midst, safe from harm. Which is why I imagine that poor old Bin Laden is currently feeling terribly foolish. As the flames of damnation lick higher, he’ll be suffering from the most agonising esprit d’escalier, as he dwells on what he should have said.

“Come on, Your Honour. You can’t possibly hand me over to those mean and horrid Americans. Don’t mass-murdering jihadi psychopaths have a right to a family life in the UK? After all, everyone else on the planet does.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/04/22/islamist-terrorists-more-human-rights-we-do/

There is an uncanny similarity between Putin's sycophants who claim that his "Special Military Operation" goes according to the plan and Trump's sycophants who insist that Iran war was meticulously planned.

 ‘It’s all a giant clusterf---’: Inside Trump’s floundering Iran peace process

US president increasingly relying on loyalists who paint ‘rose-coloured view’ of conflict, say White House insiders 
Connor Stringer 
An army of yes men, in thrall to Donald Trump’s shifts of temper and short attention span, is hampering any prospect of peace with Iran. And with the president’s indefinite extension of a ceasefire being announced on Tuesday, a day after he threatened to resume bombing, the White House’s claims of success are running out of road, insiders say.

In the past 48 hours alone, the US president claimed that a deal was “close”, before then saying it was out of reach. Typifying the confusion, JD Vance, the vice-president, was still at the White House, after Mr Trump said on Sunday that his deputy was heading to Pakistan for talks with Iranian negotiators.

Tehran, after days of stalling, moved first, saying it was pulling out of the peace process, which had been cratering for days.

Mr Trump’s subsequent statement came minutes after US stock markets had closed. With the war in its eighth week, the president backed off again, saying Iran would be given more time to come up with a peace proposal.

“No one in the administration seems to know what’s going on. What the plans are. What we’re even aiming for now. It’s all just a giant clusterf--- and there’s zero accountability, either,” a Trump-world source told The Telegraph.

Even Mr Trump’s closest aides are struggling to keep pace with his updates on Truth Social, which have generated a lot of noise but no discernible diplomatic progress.
No clear plan on Iran

On Sunday, Mike Waltz, the US ambassador to the United Nations, and Chris Wright, Mr Trump’s energy secretary, told morning news programmes that Mr Vance would be heading up negotiations in Islamabad.

At the same time, Mr Trump was telling reporters that his vice-president would not be travelling for security reasons, before changing tack and saying he was going to Pakistan after all.

Former officials say such actions indicate that the president is increasingly detached from the structures that typically guide an administration when conducting war operations.

Instead, Mr Trump relies on instincts and advice from a tight circle of loyalists who shape – and in some cases soften – the picture of the war.

Having long passed the “four to six weeks” he said the war would take, the constant mixed messaging and exaggerated claims about a deal point to one reality: there is no clear plan.

What once looked like a calculated campaign to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb has deteriorated into daily updates with no consistency.

Social media posts fired off by the president and Mohammad Ghalibaf, the Iranian parliament speaker, tend to shape the media narrative far more robustly than any comments made by cabinet ministers or even the president himself in various interviews.

The claims from Iran and the US remain at odds, reflecting that their respective demands have so far been irreconcilable.

Mr Trump’s actions indicate he has little patience for the long, structured national security meetings that traditionally anchor US decision-making during war. He prefers to react to events as they unfold, a style aides desperately tried to pry him away from during his first term.

“That is just not what happens anymore, Trump doesn’t like it, he feels constrained by it,” John Bolton, the president’s former national security adviser, told The Telegraph about the abandonment of traditional decision-making.

“It was more [of a] process in the first term because we were able to explain to him why it benefited him. Now he thinks he can do what he wants.”

Susie Wiles, Mr Trump’s all-powerful chief of staff, is said to have expressed concern that aides are giving the president “a rose-coloured view” of the war. But the stalemate between Iran and the US suggests she hasn’t been persuasive in changing the president’s unwavering view that all is going to plan.

“There is no one group in their command that speaks for the nation,” a source close to the president said.
One of Mr Trump’s closest allies when it comes to the conflict is Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary. He has framed the combat operations as divinely sanctioned, repeatedly invoking religious rhetoric removed from pragmatic tactics or war doctrine.

The president has even claimed that Mr Hegseth does not want the war to end, telling journalists, “Pete didn’t want [the war] to be settled”, and that he was one of the first to throw support behind the initial bombing campaign.

Mr Vance, an isolationist who voiced his displeasure with foreign wars throughout Mr Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, said little at the outset and has since been prevented from criticising the war effort by being tasked with negotiating peace.

Tulsi Gabbard, Mr Trump’s director of national intelligence, was also a fierce critic of foreign wars before the president appointed her to the cabinet. Reportedly already at risk of losing her position, she appears to be staying quiet.

The president is provided with daily videos of US military successes, but insiders say he has been shielded from the conflict’s misadventures, which include a US missile attack which reportedly killed more than 170 schoolchildren near its designated target.

Mr Trump and the Pentagon had said they were investigating the strike, which occurred during the early days of the war.

When not extolling the US military’s abilities, the president has sought to vent his frustration at European allies for not helping.

“There is panic and the White House realises that nobody is coming to rescue them, the Europeans aren’t going to step up. It has been deemed on him now that we have to get out of this,” a source added.

“His patience is short and he is telling people he doesn’t even want to deal with it anymore.”
‘His posts are causing chaos’

One source described how Mr Trump had become more irritable, claiming he was sleeping less and writing unchecked posts on Truth Social, as aides – who reportedly urged the president to curb his social media activity – have been unable to intervene.

But Truth Social was where his latest update was made – minutes after stocks close down on a day when oil prices again rose, nearing $100 (£74).

The president’s comments about the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic shipping lane, have only undermined efforts by Pakistan and others to strike a deal to end the war, a Gulf diplomatic source said.

“His posts are what are causing the chaos,” the diplomat said. “It’s good and bad but the bad has major effects. Behind every single tweet there is a reason for posting, often at the stock market.”

Behind the presidential podium in Cross Hall of the White House on April 1, Mr Trump addressed the nation and told the US that its military objectives were almost complete and that the war was “very close” to being over.

Yet, 21 days later – and 52 days since the first strikes were launched – the same roadblocks remain."

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2026/04/21/white-house-iran-trump-war/

Local Trump sycophants like some Alex Shishkin and others are invited to comment.

Michael Deacon 
According to The Guardian, families are being ‘torn apart’ by the ‘extreme’ Right-wing views of today’s pensioners. Seriously? 
Here’s an idea for Louis Theroux. He’s just had a big hit with his Netflix documentary about “the manosphere”. So, as a sequel, perhaps he should make one about “the nanosphere”.

Because it’s not just young men who are being dangerously radicalised online. It’s old ladies.

Or at least, so I gather from The Guardian. At the weekend it ran a 3,736-word feature headlined, “‘I Feel Like I’m Losing Her’: The Families Torn Apart by Older Relatives Going Far-Right”. And it was all about how horrifying it is to see the political views of many “boomers” growing ever more “extreme”, under the influence of online “misinformation” – as well as AI-generated “nostalgia porn” about “how much better” life in Britain used to be.

Interviewees described their alarm at hearing their “boomer” parents express admiration for Nigel Farage, or ire over illegal immigration. One millennial woman said she “now thinks twice” about taking her children to her mother’s house, because she’s “nervous” that her mother “might say something offensive” about “small boats”. Meanwhile, a millennial man said he’d urged his mother, who is in her 60s, to cure herself of her Right-wing opinions by trying “therapy”. Frustratingly, she’d declined to take him up on this thoughtful suggestion.

Another interviewee – an academic in his early 50s – reported that his elderly parents have started supporting Reform, because they’ve been “radicalised” by “the discourse on immigration”. He complained: “It’s like they’ve lost the ability to think critically, so they’re in this sort of self-reinforcing cycle of ignorance. But they also can’t imagine they’re ignorant because they’re educated people who know about the world.”

Naturally I’m sure we all sympathise with these poor, worried Guardian readers. I hope they won’t think it insensitive, however, if I ask: are they quite certain that it’s only “boomers” whose “extreme” opinions are “tearing families apart”?

In the interests of balance, I suggest The Guardian run a follow-up piece, on what to do if your younger relatives are “going far-Left”. The author could interview pensioners who are distressed to hear their children and grandchildren spout unhinged views that are completely divorced from reality, such as “Zack Polanski would make a good prime minister”, or parrot misinformation they’ve picked up online, such as “women have penises”.

Oh, and one other thought. Maybe the piece could suggest that, if your “boomer” mother is quite a lot crosser about immigration than she used to be, it might be because immigration is quite a lot higher than it used to be. And, if she says that life in this country used to be better than it is now, it’s not necessarily because she’s been brainwashed by “nostalgia porn”. It might be because it actually did.
Even Britain’s loos are going down the pan

What a relief for Bridget Phillipson. For months, Labour’s minister for “women and equalities” has been under serious pressure to ban trans women (i.e., males) from using women’s public loos. Yet now, it seems, she needn’t worry.

Because, the way things are going, there soon won’t be any public loos left to ban them from.

In England, reports the Royal Society for Public Health, the number of these facilities has fallen by 14 per cent in the past decade. This means that there is now only one public lavatory for every 15,000 people.

This is of course a worrying state of affairs. But in particular, I should imagine, for the residents of Durham. Because they’ve got quite enough problems as it is.

Look away now if you’re eating breakfast. But six months ago, while strolling through the centre of that otherwise beautiful city, I was somewhat taken aback to see a sign from the council, sternly instructing people not to “defecate” in the street.

Still, it turns out that Durham isn’t alone, because in the past year similar signs have been erected in various other British cities, including London, Colchester and York. I find this a puzzling trend. Perhaps my memory deceives me, but I would swear that, when I was younger, councils didn’t feel the need to put up signs of this kind. In those days, it was taken for granted that the people of this country knew not to behave in such an utterly revolting manner.

Yet now, it appears, these signs are increasingly considered essential. I wonder what’s changed.

Here’s one theory. In January it was reported that a quarter of children starting primary school in 2025 hadn’t been toilet-trained. Could it be that their parents haven’t been toilet-trained, either?

Well, I suppose we shouldn’t rule it out. There is, however, an alternative possibility, which relates to another major change that has taken place in our country over recent years.

Then again, I’d better not go on, or The Guardian will call me a boomer.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/04/21/this-attack-on-boomers-exposes-hypocrisy-millennial-left/

Mathew Parris
To say someone has lost his mind can carry a range of meanings. Accusations of mental instability may be merely a kind of insult, bandied around cheaply in politics, and not a serious diagnosis.But when I say the president of the United States is insane I must make clear that this is not meant as playground abuse. I mean Donald Trump is mentally ill; that he is of unsound mind; that he is suffering from substantial cognitive decline. I mean that were he in any lesser office than the American presidency, urgent discussions would be taking place among colleagues about his mental fitness for the post.Imagine he worked in a bank. Or as a British Airways pilot. Or as your local solicitor or GP. In none of these roles would he be allowed to keep working.
Among this president’s fellow leaders, there cannot be a friend or foe of the United States who would dare publicly acknowledge that the leader of the free world has lost his wits. Nor a single one who would privately deny it. I’ve been writing as much for more than a year, and with every month it becomes more urgent to repeat it. As we speak, he has plunged half a continent into murderous chaos and the world peers into the abyss of economic collapse.
An early and critical sign that somebody is of unsound mind is when they begin to act, react or communicate in ways that even at the most obvious level are not in their own interest. Lashing out in personal terms at the Pope, for example, if you lead a country with a huge Catholic population; in one breath declaring that another country’s nuclear capability has been destroyed, and in another declaring that it represents an immediate threat. Or posting on your Truth Social account an image of yourself in red and white robes with light shining from your hands healing the afflicted, with a fighter jet and American symbols in the background.
“Gaga” is a cruel word for a cruel affliction and age-related cognitive decline comes in many forms. If you are like ex-President Biden, you stumble gently around, falling over and forgetting things. If you’re his successor (or King Lear), your energy never flags and you start letting fly in all directions, contradicting yourself, firing people, promising the impossible and asserting the implausible, swinging wildly between aggression and self-pity.
The president has surrounded himself with a ragtag platoon of close collaborators who must see his derangement all too clearly but, should he fall, must fall with him, and so stay silent. Under the 25th amendment to the US constitution, his vice-president and cabinet could declare his incapacity for office. But they will not. Like those surrounding Joe Biden, they know the truth but say nothing.
There was a time when the most obvious explanation for this president’s otherwise inexplicable behaviour — that he was losing his wits — felt too shocking to contemplate. So commentators stroked their beards and devised theories, such as that he was a dealmaker who opened with a preposterous bid (seize Greenland) then negotiated down. Or that he was a genius for generating content on social media and so dominating the news. Or the “madman theory” — power through pretending to be mad. That the occupant of the White House was not pretending was still too terrible a leap for our imagination. It is no longer too terrible. The president has lost his mind and must be removed. This cannot happen until he begins losing the confidence of his own Republican Party. Then, after November’s midterm elections, a possibility may open up: impeachment.
Only the House of Representatives can start the process, by simple majority vote. The trial, however, is conducted in the Senate and for it to succeed a two-thirds majority of senators is required.
“Unfitness for office” is not among the named grounds for the impeachment of a president but “high crimes and misdemeanours” is, and the truth is that if the requisite majorities in both houses of Congress want to remove a president, the necessary misconduct will be found; so impeachment is more like our Commons “no-confidence” motions than a criminal trial.
And the further truth is that if the required Senate majority is to be obtained, a schism in this president’s party must open up. Twice impeached in his first term (the word refers to the process, not the verdict), Trump survived because Republican senators stuck together. In any future impeachment they will have to weigh up whether their party’s chances will be enhanced at the next presidential election, in 2028, by removing the incumbent now.
In a 100-member Senate, not many Republicans need to rebel for a two-thirds majority for convicting the president to be found; but it will have to be more than a few rogue senators. Even after the mid­terms the Republican bloc will remain substantial. The party would need a proper schism, a concerted movement by a discernible team, for the president’s internal party authority to be challenged. It may never happen, but if it does, then — believe me — we shall all be saying it was only ever a matter of time.
When a president is removed, his vice-president automatically succeeds to the role. So (assuming he aims to run for the presidency) JD Vance will have to make some difficult calculations if Trump hits serious turbulence this autumn. Take his chances by Trump’s side, or detach himself early?
I find Vance interesting. I hated his behaving towards President Zelensky like a bully’s sidekick. I find his forays into ethical philosophy deeply impressive: his argument about concentric circles of moral obligation is the missing paragraph Christ never supplied but which Christianity needs. Like all of us, he’s probably confused; but in intellectual reach he goes fathoms deeper than his president. It’s only a hunch, but mine is that Vance’s name will soon be surfacing quite often.
He will duck, and the more he ducks the more he will be noticed. Yet duck he must. Can and will Trump be successfully impeached? If he can, and is, Vance will become president for two years. Would that be a good footing for a run in 2028? Or would he do better to define himself properly, and soon, against a failing president?
Those who grasp a truth before its appointed arrival in political history must face hilarity, but we do not care: we know that in time everyone will be saying that evidence of Donald Trump’s personal disintegration was visible from the start. I say it now.
https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/trump-deranged-president-impeachment-srp6pmhmv