Expulsions illegal, UN tells Clarke

Once again our Government acts first and thinks later. Some of its deportations of non-citizens who speak out in support of terrorists may (according to the UN) be in breach of the Geneva Convention.That's embarrassing. Worse however is that the policy is a headline-grabbing substitute for real action.

We have allowed Muslim communities to exist alongside us, rather than among us. We don't have enough Muslims in our police and security services to operate in their communities and detect terrorist cells. Our education system fails to integrate them, reflecting as it does our intellectually-bankrupt and pusillanimous contention that "all views are equally valid".

Our suicide-bombers were citizens. They were educated (or not) in our schools. They grew up in our towns, where they lived in self-imposed apartheid designed by their families to preserve the values of the communities from which their parents or grandparents came.

They were brought up to despise our women as whores and all of us as "kaffirs". The massed ranks of Guardian-readers in our schools and social services led them to believe that we kaffirs are racists for not accepting their world-view. But those young men were real racists in our midst - and homicidal racists at that.

The Government has no plans to address any of these issues. It is merely indulging in gesture politics to give the impression of "firm action".