Some say the Tories stoked them, others say Nigel Farage; some even say Keir Starmer played a role. Who is really behind the UK’s 2024 racist riots?
Simon Wren-Lewis presents an excellent case against the Conservatives in his latest Mainly Macro column. You should visit it to get the full details but the abbreviated summary runs as follows:
- They changed the law to label asylum-seekers as “illegal” migrants.
- They tolerated Islamophobic language at even the most senior level of the party.
In the case of that last point, they still do. Robert Jenrick got himself into a pickle last week when he said Muslims using the Islamic version of the Christian exclamation “Hallelujah!” should be arrested.
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But he is the front-runner to be the next Conservative leader, so it seems the MPs and members of that party are entirely comfortable with the idea of being led by a racist.
After the last few weeks, it seems unlikely the rest of the UK will feel the same way.
More overtly anti-foreigner is Nigel Farage (he makes an exception for his French wife Laure Ferrari). He has been stoking xenophobic sentiment for decades – but listen to him rail against any implication that he could have had anything to do with causing the riots:
Are you more likely to agree with his words – or those of the people commenting on them?
Perhaps most shocking for many is the possibility that the Labour Party might have played a role in inciting the riots.
It is certainly true that Keir Starmer has tried to roll back the racist rhetoric in Whitehall – he has stopped asylum-seekers being described as “illegal” migrants (they are now “irregular”).
But… well, here’s Jonathan Cook in Middle East Eye:
Since becoming Labour leader four years ago, Starmer has played a direct role in fuelling the anti-Muslim climate, too, a climate that encouraged the far-right out onto the streets.
In his campaign for No 10, he made a conscious decision to compete with the Tories on the same political terrain, from “illegal immigration” to patriotism and law and order.
That political terrain was shaped by a New Labour foreign policy 20 years ago that has had far-reaching domestic repercussions, stigmatising British Muslims as un-British, disloyal and prone to terrorism.
In lockstep with the United States, the Labour government of Tony Blair waged a brutal, illegal war on Iraq in 2003 that left more than 1 million Iraqis dead and many millions more homeless. Still more were dragged off to black sites to be tortured.
Along with a violent and prolonged occupation of Afghanistan by the US and UK, the Iraq invasion triggered regional chaos and spawned new and nihilistic forms of Islamist militancy, particularly in the form of the Islamic State group.
Blair’s brutalising crusade in the Middle East – often framed by him as a “clash of civilisations” – was bound to alienate many British Muslims and radicalise a tiny number of them into a similar nihilism.
In response, Labour introduced a so-called Prevent strategy that cynically focused on the threat from Muslims and conflated an entirely explicable disenchantment with British foreign policy with a supposedly inexplicable and inherently violent tendency within Islam.
Starmer modelled his own leadership on Blair’s and recruited many of the same advisors.
As a result, he was soon obsessively aping the Conservatives in a bid to win back the so-called Red Wall vote. The loss of urban areas of northern England in the 2019 general election to the Tories was in large part down to Labour’s muddled position on Brexit, for which Starmer was chiefly responsible.
Starmer tacked firmly rightwards on immigration, chasing after the Conservative Party as it veered even further to the right in its attempt to head off an electoral insurgency from Farage’s Reform Party.
As opposition leader, Starmer echoed the Tories in fixating on “stopping the small boats” and “smashing the smuggling gangs”. The subtext was that the migrants and asylum seekers fleeing the very troubles the UK had inflamed in the Middle East were a threat to Britain’s “way of life”.
It was a reinvention of the “clash of civilisations” discourse Blair had championed.
There’s more – but you can read it at its source.
So that’s the evidence. If you want to know which of the Conservative, Labour or Reform parties were responsible for stirring up the racism that led to the riots, the conclusion is clear – and damning:
All of them.
Source: mainly macro: Racist riots and the Conservative party
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Who is really behind the UK’s 2024 racist riots?
Some say the Tories stoked them, others say Nigel Farage; some even say Keir Starmer played a role. Who is really behind the UK’s 2024 racist riots?
Simon Wren-Lewis presents an excellent case against the Conservatives in his latest Mainly Macro column. You should visit it to get the full details but the abbreviated summary runs as follows:
In the case of that last point, they still do. Robert Jenrick got himself into a pickle last week when he said Muslims using the Islamic version of the Christian exclamation “Hallelujah!” should be arrested.
Buy Cruel Britannia in print here. Buy the Cruel Britannia ebook here. Or just click on the image!
After the last few weeks, it seems unlikely the rest of the UK will feel the same way.
More overtly anti-foreigner is Nigel Farage (he makes an exception for his French wife Laure Ferrari). He has been stoking xenophobic sentiment for decades – but listen to him rail against any implication that he could have had anything to do with causing the riots:
Are you more likely to agree with his words – or those of the people commenting on them?
Perhaps most shocking for many is the possibility that the Labour Party might have played a role in inciting the riots.
It is certainly true that Keir Starmer has tried to roll back the racist rhetoric in Whitehall – he has stopped asylum-seekers being described as “illegal” migrants (they are now “irregular”).
But… well, here’s Jonathan Cook in Middle East Eye:
There’s more – but you can read it at its source.
So that’s the evidence. If you want to know which of the Conservative, Labour or Reform parties were responsible for stirring up the racism that led to the riots, the conclusion is clear – and damning:
All of them.
Source: mainly macro: Racist riots and the Conservative party
Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:
Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (bottom right of the home page). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical
3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/
Join the Vox Political Facebook page.
4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com
5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/
6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical
7) Feel free to comment!
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Cruel Britannia is available
in either print or eBook format here:
The Livingstone Presumption is available
in either print or eBook format here:
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:
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