He continued: "You must have a very divisive community down there.
"There are sometimes challenging issues over divisive community politics, but this is no excuse for failing to enforce British law and protect the integrity of our democratic process.
His condemnation of what he calls "divisive community politics" is rich coming from a politician whose party's approach to winning votes includes fomenting resentments between the "hard working" and so-called "scroungers".
Panorama gave communities secretary Eric Pickles space to utter pieties about "divisive community politics" yet great planks of coalition policy pit one group of people against another - "strivers versus skivers"; "hard-working families" who "do the right thing" against all those welfare loafers who don't.
At its worst, however, religion can be fanatical, intolerant, and divisive, tearing communities apart instead of uniting them.
Last January Newman wrote in the Spectator that windfarms were "grossly inefficient, extremely expensive, socially inequitable, a danger to human health, environmentally harmful, divisive for communities, a blot on the landscape, and don't even achieve the purpose for which they were designed – namely the reliable generation of electricity and the reduction of CO2 emissions".
In January 2012 Newman wrote in the Spectator that windfarms were "grossly inefficient, extremely expensive, socially inequitable, a danger to human health, environmentally harmful, divisive for communities, a blot on the landscape, and don't even achieve the purpose for which they were designed – namely the reliable generation of electricity and the reduction of CO2 emissions".
This is really very divisive in communities throughout the country, and I don't think we have any reason to be divisive here because I don't see any evidence of that".
While the legislation passed, the new measures were divisive, pitting community leaders who wanted their towns to remain "dry" against those who favoured the freer sale of liquor (some of whom wanted to apply for liquor licenses), and different would-be saloon-keepers against one another in competing for the government-issued licenses.
Policing methods and the challenge of building a force acceptable to all factions have been among the most divisive issues among communities riven by guerrilla and sectarian strife until truces pointed the way to an edgy peace.
