"This man is promoting a form of Islam that is more liberal than found pretty much anywhere in the world - and he's rather disturbingly using current tensions to plead for the government support in establishing it."
To be honest, Jake, I don't see what's disturbing about this. You drew a parallel with the CofE earlier, and the relative softening of Christianity in Britain has made it by and large pretty benign, or at least not actively harmful.
Such a development in British Islam would be anything but 'disturbing' to my mind.
I do accept your point about government involvement though.