Does the Tory party have a death wish? It’s a question we have been prompted to ask again and again over recent years, as the supposed natural party of government has self-immolated before the electorate’s eyes. But if an interview with education secretary Gillian Keegan on Sky News over the weekend is anything to go by, the answer is an emphatic ‘Yes’.

Many prominent Tories are up to their necks in woke identity politics

Last week’s horrific alkali attack in south-west London has exposed a dysfunctional asylum system that no sane person could support. That the Afghan national Abdul Ezedi – the man suspected of disfiguring a mother and her two children in Clapham on Wednesday – had two rejected asylum claims and two sexual offences under his belt before he was granted leave to remain has appalled people across the political spectrum. Anyone with a pinch of humanity and common sense knows this man should never have been allowed to stay here if he went on to commit this life-changing assault.

But the Tory front bench are apparently not so sure. On Sky News yesterday, Keegan told a baffled Trevor Phillips that this shameful case ‘is not really about asylum’. ‘We don’t want to have people in this country who have criminal records’, she welcomely conceded, ‘but in this particular case he was granted [asylum]’. When pressed, Keegan continued to ignore the asylum issue and said that, whenever any ex-con reoffends, ‘rightly, everybody always asks: how did that happen, what can we learn from that?’.

‘How is it possible, that someone turned down twice for asylum, who then commits more than one sexual offence, is granted refugee status?’

‘This is not really about asylum’ says Education Secretary @GillianKeegan. #TrevorPhillips https://t.co/fhIHlpTGAF pic.twitter.com/QCVsKcnkCa

— Sky News (@SkyNews) February 4, 2024

We already know how it happened, Gillian. At least, we have a pretty good idea. The sordid details have been emerging over the past few days. Apparently, in 2020s Britain, we will happily grant leave to remain to a man who came to the country illegally, before being convicted of two sexual offences in this country, all because he briefly pretended to have converted to Christianity. Even if our ‘hospitality’ means endangering not just British citizens, but also other asylum seekers. (Ezedi’s victims were reportedly staying in a refugee hotel.)

But there are apparently some in the Tory party who would rather ignore the elephant in the room than risk saying anything that feels a bit mean or anti-asylum. Even though no one – no matter how pro-asylum you might be – believes that this scumbag should have been allowed to stay here. Indeed, it seems to me that the pro-asylum, pro-migration cause will be finished if it comes to be associated with giving shelter to sex offenders, Isis propagandists and Albanian crime lords (those are all genuine, recent cases, by the way).

We expect this sort of thing from Caroline Nokes, the supposedly Tory MP and backbencher who can always be relied upon to dispense mad woke platitudes. (On Newsnight last week, Nokes deftly dodged the asylum question then babbled on about ‘microaggressions’.) But you’d think the Tory front bench would know that the only correct response to the Clapham attack is to say, ‘of course he shouldn’t have been granted asylum’. Apparently not.

To those wondering why the Conservative party has presided over the Great Awokening of British society, look no further than people like Keegan. Many prominent Tories are up to their necks in woke identity politics. Keegan has previously declared that ‘trans women are women’. So has Penny Mordaunt, the current public favourite to be the next Tory leader.

The British culture war increasingly resembles not a battle between left and right, but between virtue-signalling and common sense; between those who get that it’s a bad idea to put rapists in women’s prisons or throw the borders open to violent sex offenders and those who are too fearful of looking bad at some future dinner party to dare stating the bleedin’ obvious. The Tory party really needs to decide which side it’s on.