Families split by war

BORIS JOHNSON’S sister, Rachel Johnson, who has a weekend slot on LBC, spent an hour last Sunday (22) discussing how families can be split by politics. She revealed that when Boris came to dinner, Brexit was off the menu. Boris’s siblings didn’t agree with him.

One man rang LBC to say he hadn’t spoken to his brother who had “nicked” his partner. Another man said his sister was “a really nasty person”.

One woman said her two elder brothers had cut her out of their mother’s will. She was fobbed off with £2,000 while they keep the proceeds from the sale of the house. At her mother’s funeral, she was not allowed to sit with her brothers at the front, but right at the back of the chapel.

Rachel really wanted to discuss the fall-out from the current Israel-Palestinian/Hamas conflict.

Imran Khan’s former wife, Jemima Khan (nee Goldsmith), should have called in. She has had a spat with her brothers Zac and Ben Goldsmith.

While Ben believes there is “no other option” for Israel than going into Gaza “to root out Hamas” and Zac says many people marching in London to support the Palestinians are “celebrating murderous depravity”, Jemima argues that “targeting innocent Palestinian civilians will not bring back the poor hostages”.

As with many historic disputes, this is one without a solution. The best one can hope for are long periods of relative peace between wars.

There is now a growing risk of the conflict spilling over into the UK. Incidentally, the total number of people self-identifying as Jews in England and Wales in 2021 was 271,327. That compares with the UK’s Muslim population of about three million.

Rachel Johnson

The police worry about “lone wolves”. How can one forget that on July 7, 2005, four home-grown British suicide bombers struck London’s transport network, killing 52 people and injuring more than 770 others? When assistant commissioner Neil Basu was counter terrorism chief at Scotland Yard, he was also worried about terrorists from the far right.

Going through Charing Cross station last week, I found the place swarming with police cars and officers with sniffer dogs.

Politicians and the media should be very careful with their language and do everything possible to calm passions.