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This article originally appeared in our Elevenses newsletter.
Nigel Farage has called for parliament to be recalled as disorder on the streets of England and Northern Ireland spilt into a seventh day after the tragic Southport stabbings. The Reform UK man, in true ‘arsonist demands a debate on the cause of the fire’ style, condemned the violence before suggesting it had something to do with the Black Lives Matter movement and a commonly held belief of “two-tier policing” which has contributed to a “sense of injustice”. I can only imagine how upset he’ll be when he hears about all the looting, the arson, the NHS nurses that have been attacked and the libraries that have been reduced to ashes over the past week which bear none of the hallmarks of the peaceful BLM movements.
Sir Keir Starmer has resisted calls to recall MPs thus far, and he is right to do so. The Commons was once a place to discuss ideas and engage in constructive discourse. Now it’s a place for social media soundbites, and an emergency debate would do little more than afford the Reform leader a photo opportunity to put his divisive, populist ideas on display in the home of our democracy. And what’s more, what is there to debate? The country has been put under siege by far-right thuggery that has no place in a functioning society. We don’t need new legislation to tell us how to deal with people who vent their frustration at three children being murdered by stealing trays of cookies from Greggs and swindling Crocs from Shoe Zone.
As for addressing the underlying cause of the riots, per the resounding plea among many right-wing media organisations, we’d do well to remember how little air time the pro-immigration argument has received in recent years. Farage and the like love to talk about how often they get shut down at the mere mention of the word immigration, but their opinions have become positively mainstream since the Brexit vote. There are currently no safe and legal routes for asylum seekers trying to reach Britain, while protesters were seen brandishing the same slogans – Stop The Boats, et al – as were used by the Conservative Party in government. As James O’Brien has pointed out on social media, we have got into the habit of giving such populist spokespeople newspaper columns, TV and radio slots and “season tickets for Question Time” in a sure sign that the issue has passed what Baroness Warsi would term the ‘dinner table test’ of socially acceptable conversation. The riots are a testament to just how right-wing we have become as a country.
And while we’re on the topic of polite debate, we should probably address whether it is appropriate to describe the rioting protesters as being “anti-immigrant”. As Ian Dunt put it, it’s not like they’re targeting Canadians. Three months ago, a white man fatally killed a black boy with a sword and yet there was no uproar. When a man armed with a crossbow attacked the wife and two daughters of BBC and Sky broadcaster John Hunt no one took to the streets. Much of this is plain Islamophobia, no question about it, prompted by fake claims of the attacker’s religion and background, and it’s right that we acknowledged it as such.
Any debate on immigration, I sense, might end up raising more uncomfortable truths for Farage than point-scoring opportunities, and an uncomfortable wake-up call for all those who have been brainwashed into thinking it is the root of all evil.
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