Is Warsi using Islam as a protective cloak

Today's speech by Tory Chairman Baroness Warsi about how ghastly it is that people conflate Islam with terrorism seems to put herself out on an even greater limb than she was before.

But I wonder if this speech today in Leicester is a calculated move to make it very difficult for Dave to sack her.

He postion was pretty precarious after she launched into the Tory right and claimed, with an apparent straight face that the Conservatives had fought hard in Oldham.

As James Forsyth pointed out after her excerable performance last week on the Today program,

What to do about Warsi is quite a problem for the Tory high command. She does visibly show how the party has changed but she’s also not very competent. Cameron has already split her role, giving Cameron’s university friend Andrew Feldman a whole bunch of the financial and administrative responsibilities. But as one Tory press adviser said to me just now, ‘you can’t put her on the radio. She’s just a disaster waiting to happen.’

So what does she do to glue herself to her job. Accuse the majority of the British that they are Islamaphobic for even thinking  that there are degrees of extremism, and 'good' or 'bad' Muslims.

She even suggests in some bizzare way that terrorism comitted abroad is broadly acceptable, just terrorism committed here should be dealt with,

“Those who commit criminal acts of terrorism in our country need to be dealt with not just by the full force of the law,” she will say.

She is, in this speech redefining Islamaphobia. After this, if I suggest that there is a material difference between Mr Assad down the road and some chap waving a poster saying 'Death to Democracy, We will cut off your heads" then I am now guilty of the thought crime she abhors.

Tebbitt offers some no doubt unwanted, but sage advice,

Had Baroness Warsi sought my advice, I would have counselled her not to make the speech which has been trailed in The Daily Telegraph today.

I would have told her that the Muslim faith was not discussed over the dinner tables of England, nor in the saloon bars, before large numbers of Muslims came here to our country. Then I would have told her to go to our Christian churches and listen to what was said about her religion and those who practise it, then to the Mosques to hear what is said in some of them about the Christian faith and those who practise it (or about Buddhists, Jews, or even those who have no faith at all).

After that, I would say, she might consider who is in need of her homilies on prejudice.

Until then a period of silence from the Baroness might not come amiss.

The thing is My Lord, that this is her using attack as a means of defence.

Now what does Dave do? She has painted him into a corner. If he sacks her, she can now come out saying that it is an Islamaphobic act, and Dave doesn't want to be seen to be nasty. If he doesn't sack her, more and more people will feel that he endorses her attack on the vast majority of normal reasonable people in this country.

Update
Doesn't look like Dave likes the position she has put him in. The gap between thines in this short statement is cavernous. (from PA - no link)

Asked whether the Prime Minister agreed with Lady Warsi that prejudice against Muslims was becoming more widespread, David Cameron's official spokesman said: "She is expressing her view. He agrees that this is an important debate."