When MPs wanted to 'no platform' Trump it was heroic, but when people of colour ban Boris it's oppression

There's actually a lot of 'no platforming' that goes on in British politics - but it only counts as censorship when minority voices are the ones involved

Boris Johnson has come under fire for some of his pro-Brexit comments over the past week - including says Barack Obama hates Britain because he is 'part-Kenyan' (Getty Images)

The news that over 60 per cent of students support the NUS policy of ‘no platforming’ speakers will no doubt be greeted by howls of disapproval from the right wing press. Spiked even has a campaign against ‘campus censorship’, complaining that no platforming is part of a politically correct agenda that is destroying universities as sites of debate and discussion.

Far from being a threat to liberal democracy, however, ‘no platforming’ is based on the idea that it is necessary to exclude extremist and offensive views from public discourse. There’s really nothing very new or controversial about that.

The irony of the widespread objection to ‘campus censorship’ is that it comes from the same right-wing places that are appalled at the election of Malia Bouattia as president of the National Union of Students. Apparently, Malia is a ‘poisonous woman’ with ‘odious supporters’, whose election has led to some student unions threating to decertify from the national body. Her offense is to hold critically views towards Israel and the British government’s regressive approach to Muslims. The fact that she was democratically elected has not stopped the assault and vilification of her in the press.

When the NUS policy is banning the BNP and al-Mujahiroun from university campuses, there is no outcry from the right-wing press. It is only now that student movements are treading into territory that make the mainstream uncomfortable that this has become an issue.

When feminist icons such as Germaine Greer are objected to because of their views about transgender people, or ethnic minority students complain about the dominance of colonial ‘heroes’ such as Cecil Rhodes on campus, that’s when ‘no platforming’ becomes censorship. When oppressed minorities have their voices heard, the response is sadly not to listen, but rather to drown them out with accusations of ‘political correctness gone mad’.

The latest furore concerns Boris Johnson being no platformed by King’s College over his comments about Obama’s ‘part-Kenyan ancestry’. Not only did Johnson raise Obama’s background as somehow important to his views of Brexit, but he explained how it prejudiced the president with an ‘ancestral dislike of the British empire’.

It seems as though Boris has stopped dog-whistling to the right and is now engaged in a full-throated xenophobic call to leave the EU based on an embrace of Empire ideology. In many ways he morphing into our own version of Donald Trump: a right-wing, moneyed populist who gets away with saying progressively outrageous things.

Lest we forget, MPs debated whether to no platform Trump on grand scale by banning his entry into the UK.

By invoking the right to ‘no platform’ speakers, students are embracing their democratic right to define the boundaries acceptability on university campuses – just as we embrace our right as a country to choose which public figures are allowed to enter and speak here. Having a platform to air one’s views is not a human right, after all; it is a privilege.

We must resist the right-wing backlash to students from oppressed groups making their voices heard. Listening to these perspectives may make people uncomfortable, but it is precisely these voices that will push us to creating a more equal society. And ‘no platforming’ techniques have to play a part in that.