Chancellor Sajid Javid has joined a host of other public personalities condemning a magazine column suggesting that Muslim people should be deterred from voting.
In a column for news magazine The Spectator, right-wing controversialist Rod Liddle suggested that elections should be held on Islamic holy days so as to deter Muslims from voting.
“My own choice of election date would be a day when universities are closed and Muslims are forbidden to do anything on pain of hell, or something,” said Liddle.
“There must one at least one day like that in the Muslim calendar, surely? That would deliver at least 40 seats to the Tories, I reckon.”
Denouncing the column, Javid took to Twitter on Friday (1) to say that no community in Britain "should be put down that way."
"Not clear if the Rod Liddle comment is supposed to be a joke - but it's not funny and not acceptable," wrote Javid, who is himself Muslim.
Joining the chorus of condemnation was Rabbi Charley Baginsky of Liberal Judaism, who added: "We stand in solidarity with those targeted in Rod Liddle’s latest Spectator column. His words are islamaphobic and misogynist. Liberal Judaism unequivocally, and will always, condemn this language and hatred.”
The Spectator's assistant editor Isabel Hardman also said she was "hugely upset" by the piece and said she has "nothing to do" with it.
Following backlash, Liddle wrote in a blog on the Spectator website that his words were taken out of context.
“There was no hate speech or Islamophobia whatsoever in my piece,” he wrote.
“It was a very light-hearted series of suggestions about when to hold an election, based upon the silly dispute over the proposed dates for the election.
“They were very obviously ludicrous suggestions, satirical in manner, about how to reduce the Labour vote by targeting groups which traditionally vote Labour and occasioned by the wrangling over whether the election should be on December 9 or 12 and the reasons for that wrangling.”
Piyush Goyal and Jonathan Reynolds tour the Royal Opera House in London
