Notion of Muslim-controlled areas unsafe for white people has been promoted by rightwingers since the early 2000s

The claim by a former government minister earlier this week that parts of London and Birmingham with large Muslim populations are “no-go areas” has highlighted the enduring myth that there are UK neighbourhoods and towns unsafe for white people.

Paul Scully, the MP for Sutton and Cheam in Greater London, later retracted his suggestion that Tower Hamlets and Sparkhill were unsafe for non-Muslims to enter , made during a BBC interview about allegations of anti-Muslim sentiments within the Conservative party. But he also defended invoking the Islamophobic trope on the grounds that people told him they perceived there to be a threat.

John Crace watches the Tories tie themselves in knots to avoid calling Lee Anderson the ‘R’ word (1m48s); a Ted Bundy survivor tells Anna Moore how the moment changed her life (8m59s); and Fergal Kinney looks at how Sex Lives of the Potato Men broke the British cinema industry (25m59s)

Labour’s leader has left Muslim supporters disenchanted. And the left must think hard about what happens when his approach unravels

When Keir Starmer’s political project comes crashing down, as one day it will, George Galloway’s Rochdale triumph should be remembered as a portent. For hardcore Starmerites, this assertion is easily dismissed. Courtesy of the Tories’ comprehensive self-immolation, Labour is heading for a crushing landslide victory. With an average 19-point lead – an undeniably stunning turnaround from the party’s 2019 rout – there is no sign of the usual polling swingback a government enjoys in election year. Rishi Sunak is an inept prime minister leading an intellectually exhausted government, devoid of any ideas except doubling down on the same policies that left Britain with an unprecedented squeeze in living standards, stagnant growth and a shrivelled public realm. When Starmer becomes prime minister in November , as he almost certainly will, he is unlikely to be worrying much about Rochdale, which may well return to the Labour fold in a general election anyway.

Well, such complacency may prove a mistake. The Labour candidate was, of course, belatedly disowned by the national leadership after claiming that Israel deliberately allowed the 7 October atrocities to happen, and deploying a crude antisemitic trope about the influence of “certain Jewish quarters” in the media. Labour – which has today apologised to the people of Rochdale for failing to offer a viable Labour candidate – will easily dismiss the candidate’s derisory vote, and yet overall turnout – nearly 40% – was actually higher for than the last three byelections. This means that, despite some demoralised voters staying at home in a farcical election, Galloway won far more votes than the Labour, Tory and Liberal Democrat candidates combined: that is, he clearly enjoyed an enthused turnout, many rallied by the message summed up at his victory speech: “Keir Starmer, this is for Gaza.” Labour says Galloway won because there was no Labour candidate. That is highly debatable.

Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist

The remarks from the senior Conservative are symptomatic of the party’s longstanding failure to tackle the issue

Lee Anderson’s failure to apologise for grotesque remarks about Sadiq Khan, and subsequent insistence that he was right , have isolated him. Rightly, the Conservative whip was withdrawn after he claimed that Islamists had “got control” of the mayor of London. But while he is the locus of the current row over Islamophobia in Tory ranks, he is hardly unique. Rishi Sunak’s belated response, the leadership’s unwillingness to acknowledge his comments not just as prejudiced but as racist or Islamophobic, and the lack of reaction to the inflammatory words of colleagues, all speak to a broader problem and a failure to tackle it.

Mr Anderson was responding to an article by Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, stating that “the Islamists, the extremists and the anti-Semites are in charge now”. The prime minister and others say that the Ashfield MP was wrong to name an individual.

From Trump and his supporters to the ‘meatheads’ on GB News, Khan has been under attack ever since he was elected in 2016. Facts don’t come into it

My kids have this stunt that I fall for every time: they ask me a question they know I’ll answer in an incredibly long, unbroken monologue, and they can zone me out until I’ve finished. It is the equivalent of putting me in a playpen. They have been doing it since they were small – “What dog will you have when you’re old?” – and have refined it over time: “What exactly happens in Heathers?”; “What’s wrong with having a single tax rate for everyone?”

So yesterday, I got: “Is Sadiq Khan a good mayor?” In normal times, I would have talked about how all politicians shout a good game on housing, but so few of them build anything, and how Khan has broken the mould on that, though he has been frustrated in the speed of his endeavour by what they call “challenging market conditions”, when they mean, “since the Liz Truss disaster”. I’d have mentioned his Hopper fare , which lets you get on as many buses as you like within an hour for a flat fare, and how that is quite a subtle piece of policymaking, directed at people on low incomes, but not so rigidly as to need means-testing. Maybe I would have mentioned that it speaks to a politician’s ambient popularity when people generally call them by their first name.

Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist

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Former Tory deputy chair says ‘when you think you are right, you should never apologise’ because it would be a sign of weakness

Lee Anderson has stood by the comments that lost him the Tory whip and launched a fresh attack on Sadiq Khan, as a body for Muslim Conservative members said it was seeking an urgent meeting with government figures.

The MP admitted that his words last week had been clumsy , but said in a statement via GB News, where he presents a weekly show, that they were “born out of sheer frustration at what is happening to our beautiful capital city”.

The label ‘Islamist’ is being used to stir up anti-Muslim feeling for political ends. Anderson is just part of that toxic trend

After Lee Anderson was suspended as a Tory MP for claiming that “Islamists” had “got control” of Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, the coverage that followed was full of questions . Had the party acted quickly enough? Would the apology he refused to give really have been adequate? Were Anderson’s comments Islamophobic? Would senior Conservatives unambiguously condemn them?

The answers were unsatisfying. Somewhat to my surprise, I found myself thinking of Jodie Foster. When presented with an apparently uncrackable mystery in the latest season of True Detective, Foster, as detective Liz Danvers, scolds her colleagues for “ not asking the right questions ”. The mystery of Anderson’s baseless attack on Khan, made with no apparent sense of political jeopardy, will not be solved by asking other Tories whether they will now say that it was beyond the pale. The right question is: why on earth would Anderson have thought there was anything wrong with what he said?

Archie Bland is the editor of the Guardian’s First Edition newsletter and writes a monthly column on media, culture and technology

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here .

Words wield immense power, and public figures such as Suella Braverman and Lee Anderson are using them cleverly to whip up their audience

“Get out of our country, you fucking Muslim. Go back to Palestine. You deserve to be killed, and all your children,” were the words a man hurled at me as he threw a glass bottle in my direction. He just missed me and threw his fists in the air as I hurried into Piccadilly Circus underground station. When I got home, I hugged my kids tightly. With the heartbreaking loss experienced by parents in Gaza at the front of my mind, it was difficult to hold back the tears. This disturbing incident, occurring just three weeks into the Israel-Gaza conflict, was sadly not an isolated one.

Last week, Tell Mama, an organisation monitoring anti-Muslim hate, found that hate crimes against Muslims had risen by 335% since 7 October. In more than 65% of cases, women were the target of such attacks. It is therefore deeply troubling to witness public figures spout anti-Muslim rhetoric. The Conservative MP Lee Anderson may have had the whip removed, but his claims on GB News that London and its mayor, Sadiq Khan, are under the control of “Islamists” will do lasting damage. Meanwhile, in a column in the Telegraph last week, the former home secretary Suella Braverman asserted that “Islamists are bullying Britain into submission” and that the influence of “Islamist cranks and leftwing extremists” can be found “in our judiciary, our legal profession and our universities”. This kind of rhetoric – which characterises pro-Palestine protesters like me as shady yet powerful “Islamists” – only serves to fuel further hatred against Muslims.

Tasnim Nazeer is a journalist and freelance TV reporter. She is a Universal Peace Federation ambassador for peace

Prime minister is giving interviews to local stations in Yorkshire where he is chairing his cabinet meeting this morning

Rishi Sunak is about to be interviewed on BBC Radio York. You can listen here.

Good morning. Rishi Sunak is set to break his silence on the Lee Anderson Islamophobia row shortly. Anderson, a former deputy chair of the Conservative party, told GB News on Friday :

I don’t actually believe that the Islamists have got control of our country, but what I do believe is they’ve got control of [Sadiq] Khan, and they’ve got control of London.