I’ve rarely had any great love for the slippery and Janus-faced Liberal Democrats. Of course there might be one or two decent and trustworthy members of that party but on the whole the Lib Dems activists and politicians that I’ve encountered in my life or who I’ve had the misfortune of being represented by have been less than trustworthy. Too many Lib Dems are the sort of people who if they told me it was raining outside I would feel that I would need to go and check to see if they were telling the truth. I’ve never liked the Lib Dem strategy of being all things to all men and playing one game in the local council elections and another in national elections as it is cynical and manipulative. Their electoral communications, which sometimes try to ape non political magazines or other publications, also leave a very bad taste in the mouth.

However what is pissing me off today about the Liberal Democrat party is that they are showing that they are not only following the Labour Party route of pandering to Islam, but are also behaving in a very illiberal way when it comes to the issue of freedom of speech. Some indication of how illiberal the Lib Dems have become and how deeply they are engaging in Islamopandering comes from the Metro newspaper which is reporting that a Lib Dem candidate for the Hume ward in Manchester has been suspended for challenging an MP’s ‘Islamophobia’ narrative. Apparently the MP, Labour’s Naz Shah was whining online about ‘Islamophobia’ and was challenged by the Lib Dem candidate, 32 year old Dániel Tóth-Nagy about the more negative aspects of Islam.

Mr Tóth-Nagy used Twitter to challenge Ms Shah about such issues as forced marriage, Islamic religious schools, FGM, women’s rights and the protests by Muslims in Birmingham against LGB and T education in schools. From what I can gather all the questions that Mr Tóth-Nagy put to Ms Shah were valid ones about issues that do need to be discussed and there was no incitement to religious or racial hatred in his words from what I could see. But, rather than be truly liberal and respect Mr Tóth-Nagy’s right to freedom of speech about the issue of Islam, the craven and cowardly Liberal Democrats have decided to suspend Mr Tóth-Nagy from the party and forbid him from standing as a Lib Dem candidate.

From what I can gather from the Metro report Mr Tóth-Nagy has done nothing wrong. He did ask some awkward questions of Naz Shah, but they are questions concerning the more troubling aspects of Islam that should be asked of any of the myriad ‘Islamophobia’ whiners that occupy positions in public life. Those who go out and defend Islam should, in my view, quite rightly be asked if they defend the more dodgy aspects of Islam as well as defending the rights of individual Muslims to go about their business unmolested.

By suspending Mr Tóth-Nagy the Liberal Democrats have shown their true colours as an Islamopandering party that does not allow free speech about certain subjects such as Islam. Anybody considering voting for the Lib Dems in upcoming local council elections should think hard about whether they would defend your right to speak about controversial subjects. This is because a party that goes out of their way to silence one of their candidates who speaks on the subject of Islam may be more than willing to enact or support legislation that would silence the rest of us.

This is a disgraceful way for a party that calls itself ‘liberal’ to act. To silence a candidate who asks reasonable and carefully worded questions of a high profile Muslim politician shows us that, on the subject of freedom of speech, they are not to be trusted.