There’s a meme doing the rounds depicting British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer saying, ‘Many Muslim countries, like the UAE and Saudi Arabia support war on Iran, while other Muslim countries, like the UK and France do not’. Many a true word is spoken in jest.

The reality is, Muslims in the UK account for around 6.4 per cent of the population, with the highest proportion (1.3 million or 15 per cent of the total) concentrated in London. Over 50 per cent were born in the United Kingdom.

While the British Prime Minister claims Muslims are ‘the face of modern Britain’, most Britons must hope not.

The Muslim unemployment rate is roughly 50 per cent higher than the national average. Some 27 per cent live in social housing, ten per cent more than the general population and, Muslims account for 18 per cent of the prison population.

Nevertheless, thanks to the power of their vote, and, amidst allegations of ‘family voting’, where one person, normally the male head of the household, directs or completes the voting papers of others, the Green party, campaigning on Islamophobia, achieved a comfortable win in last month’s Gorton and Denton by-election

Labour came a dismal third.

It seems Sir Keir took this as a wake-up call which demanded he distance himself from the actions of the United Kingdom’s closest ally, the United States. He immediately emphasised that the ‘UK was not involved in the initial strike on Iran’ and denied the US Air Force use of the Diego Garcia RAF base. ‘We believe the best way forward for the region and the world is a negotiated settlement where Iran agrees to give up any aspiration to develop nuclear weapons and ceases its destabilising activity across the region,’ he said.

Clearly channelling another appeasing British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, or, maybe, the feckless President Barack Obama, Starmer demonstrates he is no student of history. He forgets how Hitler outplayed Chamberlain and how the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei duped Obama into lifting sanctions, secretly unfreezing eight billion of Iranian assets and delivering $2.4 billion in cash all for a worthless agreement never to develop nuclear weapons.

Inevitably, the UK relented and announced it was preparing an aircraft carrier for possible deployment. In response, President Trump posted, ‘That’s OK Prime Minister Starmer, we don’t need them any longer – But we will remember.’ Perhaps, one day, Sir Keir and his haughty Nato colleagues will regret rejecting Trump’s request.

Meanwhile, Israel, the only full democracy in the Middle East, exists in a constant state of war. Abandoned by the non-American West, it is depicted as genocidal and a Palestinian coloniser, even though Israel has been home to Jews since the Bronze Age.

It’s easy to criticise the UK from the distance of Australia, but Australians may really be seeing their own nation’s flaws magnified in others.

Like Britain, many Australian Muslims retain negative attitudes towards socio-political life in their adopted country. They too are significantly over-represented in the prison system. Their unemployment rates are roughly double the national average and studies using 2016 and 2021 Census data have consistently shown that Muslim households are twice as likely to live in social housing compared to non-Muslim Australians. This community concentration discourages wider integration.

It is not Islamophobic to highlight these realities. Nor to legitimately ask whether, fundamentally, Islam is culturally compatible with predominately Christian societies? Is Islamic migration disproportionately influencing political outcomes in a West becoming increasingly, culturally, agnostic?

Undoubtedly, President Obama’s rejection of American exceptionalism sent an unambiguous signal to foreign actors and left-wing activists to intensify their divisive crusades in Western schools, universities and the media. Today’s generations learn they are descendants of evil colonialists, slave traders and white supremacists, a stereotype which encourages moral relativism.

That narrative was exploited by the Black Lives Matter movement which revealed how governments, once dedicated to serving the people, now support cultural wars against them. The same governments enact ‘hate speech’ laws which, rather than unite society, polarise it.

Cutting to the chase, Australian Labor is fundamentally antisemitic. Following Hamas’s unspeakable atrocities in Israel on 7 October 2023, Labor governments did little but tut-tut as Australian Jews experienced rapidly growing antisemitism and actual physical harm. While pretending political neutrality, Labor gave encouragement to Hamas by supporting a separate Palestinian state.

Yet, like Starmer, the Albanese government torments itself trying to appease left-wing activists, political Islam, China, and an increasingly demanding Donald Trump.

Mr Albanese’s support for the US attack on Iran pointedly ignored Israel’s role. Australia’s offer of assistance to the Gulf states, loudly protests it is defensive and not part of the US-Israel war. So deep seated is Labor’s torment, that Australian submariners were confined to their bunks, when their US submarine torpedoed an Iranian warship.

Labor’s procrastination in calling for a royal commission following the Bondi Beach massacre is also telling. Its terms of reference and the disappointing resignation of a key member, Dennis Richardson, suggest a royal commission designed to protect rather than expose.

And the clandestine assistance given to eleven Isis brides compares to initial hesitation over granting asylum to five visiting Iranian soccer players.

While universally presented as a moral crusade, the marriage of Marx and Islam is one of temporary political convenience. It is sustained by mutual hatred of the West and Israel. Atheist Beijing’s brutal treatment of its minority Uighur Muslim population demonstrates its true Marxist foundations.

The West today faces a civilisational watershed. However, President Trump’s leadership in prosecuting America/Israel military success in Iran has done much to rekindle international respect for US exceptionalism, and expose the reality that not all cultures are equal.

Neither Trump derangement syndrome, nor ideological and, religious blindness, can hide the fact that, while not perfect, the prosperity and happiness of the world’s middle classes lies in, full democracy, smaller government, and individual freedom, not in political or religious authoritarianism. Procrastination is truly the thief of time.