German police seem to know a great deal already about the man who drove his car into a Pride march in Berlin over the weekend, killing one woman and injuring many more.
Abdul Ballout, 21, was a German citizen who had travelled to Lebanon in 2025 in an unsuccessful attempt to join the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group. He had been in pre-trial detention until May 2026, and was ordered to take part in a de-radicalisation programme. After his attack, Ballout was traced but was shot and killed after attacking police officers with a knife.
If you want to join an Islamist terrorist sect like IS, that makes you an Islamist, a Muslim who has adopted a particularly vile political version of Islam that commits its followers to the establishment – by force if necessary – of a worldwide “caliphate” under sharia law.
Not every Muslim is an Islamist, but every Islamist is a Muslim. The vast majority of ordinary British Muslims want nothing to do with their terrorist-supporting co-religionists; in many cases it is the tyranny and cruelty of Islamism that forced them to seek a new life here in the first place.
And yet despite this clear distinction, despite the unambiguous motivations of a religiously inspired psychopath who thought he was doing God’s will by attacking a Pride march, there are few politicians – especially Labour ones – with the courage to call it what it is.
The X platform is awash with the usual boilerplate, box-ticking condolences you get on such (frequent) occasions. The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, posted: “London stands in solidarity with Berlin’s LGBTQ+ community. This is why Pride matters. Those who seek to spread hatred and division will never win.”
Those who seek to spread hatred and division? Anyone particular in mind, Lord Khan? How odd that the mayor of a city that has suffered more than its fair share of Islamist atrocities can’t bring himself to name the poisonous ideology that provokes such inhuman acts.
Sadly, there were plenty of others who followed the same craven pattern. Catherine West MP predicted that “hope will triumph over hate”. But whose hate? Simon Lightwood MP’s thoughts were with “everyone affected, their loved ones and the wider LGBT+ community”. Everyone affected by what, though? Why did the attack even take place? Any thoughts. Simon?
Ludicrously, Kate Osborne, Labour MP for Jarrow, actually compared the Islamist attack in Berlin to the rise of Reform UK, which would be funny were the implications not so chilling.
I fear the answer to Labour’s reticence to call a spade a spade lies purely in electoral considerations. While Andy Burnham’s second coming has reassured his party that Reform can be beaten back and its electoral appeal blunted, there remains the headache over what to do about the haemorrhaging of votes to the party’s Left, specifically to the Greens. Zack Polanski’s party has exploited Muslim anger at Israel’s response to the Hamas attacks of October 2023 and has effectively painted Labour as a supporter of Israel and as an apologist for events in Gaza.
Having already lost four previously safe Labour seats to “Gaza independents” at the 2024 election, and with similarly motivated independents gearing up to fight vulnerable Labour-held seats at the next election, Labour is known to be extremely nervous about further offending or alienating Muslim voters. And while most Muslims reject the tenets of Islamism, hyper-sensitive, politically-correct Labour MPs can’t help but notice that “Islamist” looks awfully similar to “Islam”. Stupid as that sounds, it might explain the cowardice of so many MPs in refusing to name the real cause of so many terrorist acts in recent years.
But this isn’t just a case of the sensitive use of language and a fear of offending; it’s vital, in the fight against Islamism – whether it manifests itself by flying airliners into New York skyscrapers, suicide bombers on the London Underground, an MP being savagely murdered in his own constituency surgery or a religiously-motivated hatred of gay people so intense that you feel the urge to drive your van at them – that it can be named, identified and understood. How else can it be challenged and defeated?
And if MPs, the very people we expect to lead the fight against this threat to the British and western way of life and the liberalism that they claim so frequently to support, cannot bring themselves to name the culprit, what hope is there of victory? How do you beat a lethal, misogynist, homophobic, brutally intolerant form of religious fascism if our political leaders are too frightened to acknowledge it even exists?
The answer, I’m afraid, is that you don’t. Every MP who thinks it’s more important to win votes than risk offending a sizeable proportion of their electorate is an MP who probably shouldn’t be in parliament in the first place. If speaking the truth offends some people, then that’s fine, go ahead and offend.
Although it did him little good, we should remember Sir Keir Starmer’s repeated assertion that his party would always put the country before party. To do the opposite would be bordering on criminal behaviour. So just imagine the depths to which any politician would have to stoop were they to place their own political careers ahead of their country.