Well, so Bright claims on his Spectator blog. He objects to Ken Livingstone having described him in a recent interview as “a bit of an Islamophobe” (which some of us might argue was a bit of an understatement). Bright writes:

“The charge of Islamophobe is a serious one, that could have serious consequences for my future work. I will be writing to Ken Livingstone to ask him to withdraw this defamatory and groundless statement. I hope he does the decent thing and apologises.”

As we have repeatedly pointed out, when speaking at a FOSIS conference at City Hall in August 2005 Bright stated that he saw nothing wrong with Islamophobia because there is “a lot in Islam to be fearful of”. He got roundly booed and in the following discussion was sharply criticised for his comments.

It is true that, in reply to the discussion, Bright backed off and conceded that he shouldn’t have made that remark. But the fact is that he did make it. And there were a hundred or so participants at the conference who can confirm that.

Bear in mind that this is the same Martin Bright who made a witch-hunting documentary, broadcast early in 2008 during the run-up to the London mayoral election, in which he accused Ken Livingstone, among other things, of being an alcoholic.

Bright reserves the right to mount such disgraceful attacks on his political opponents but comes over all pompous and self-righteous when his opponents criticise him in return. As we’ve noted in the past, this is a common feature of Islamophobes – they can dish it out but they can’t take it.

So here at Islamophobia Watch we have every confidence that Ken will do the decent thing and tell Bright to get stuffed.