Keir Starmer, who won the elections just a month ago, would not have been surprised if he had been greeted by an economic crisis, a crisis in the cost of living or a crisis in public health. But as a former Attorney General of the Kingdom and a staunch defender of the authority of the State and law and order, he did not imagine a public order conflict that has led to half a thousand people being imprisoned, left more than a hundred police officers injured and damaged the country’s international image.
You would expect foreign ministries in countries like Australia to warn their nationals that they might get into trouble if they went to Sudan or the Democratic Republic of Congo, but not to warn them that things are not hot in Britain. And that is what Nigeria, Malaysia, Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates have done after seeing images of neo-fascist hooligans looting shops, burning cars and attacking mosques and refugee hotels.
The Conservatives – as expected, that’s the game of politics – accuse the Labour Prime Minister of having been caught off guard and of taking too long to react. The riots have only just lost steam after eight days of chaos in towns across the country (except Scotland), the deployment of six thousand police officers, express trials with courts open twenty-four hours a day, and severe sentences (to set an example) of up to three years in prison for offences such as hitting a police officer.
Although mosques are in the crosshairs of extremists, Muslims only make up 6% of the population
Another decisive factor in defusing the intimidation of the extreme right has been the mobilization of progressive forces sympathetic to the migration phenomenon, partly spontaneous and partly organized by the unions, which has meant that the neo-fascists have found themselves in a clear minority over the last two days.
The Conservatives have not missed the opportunity to say that Starmer has not been up to the task in his first major test, and that he uses double standards with the far right and with pro-Palestinian or environmentalist protesters, but they have done so quietly and without much conviction, because they cannot avoid responsibility for the underlying problems behind the discontent. After all, it is they who opened the doors to the arrival of 675,000 immigrants last year (650,000 legally, with all the blessings, and only 25,000 in boats across the English Channel), who plundered the Treasury coffers to finance pandemic subsidies (the cause of inflation along with the war in Ukraine), and who, in fourteen years of mandate, turned the United Kingdom into one of the most unequal countries in Europe.
Although mosques have been targeted by extremists, Muslims (4.7 million) make up only 6% of the country’s population. The root of the extremists’ anger is hooligans Far right is the way of life in post-industrial England (places like Bolton, Rotherham, Hartlepool…) where, since Thatcher’s time, well-paid jobs in factories and coal mines have been replaced by precarious ones in distribution centres, slaughterhouses and telephone switchboards. A country where 22% of the population aged 16 to 65 are neither in work nor looking for work, and one in five people receive state benefits of one kind or another, is fundamentally dysfunctional.
20% of the population receives some type of subsidy, and 22% of people of working age do not have or are not looking for work.
Poverty and inequality are behind the anger and frustration that the vast majority accept with resignation, but the far right exploits it to seek prominence and relevance. First, the Conservatives persuaded their victims to vote for Brexit to “free themselves from the chains of Europe and prosper”. Then, Boris Johnson promised them measures to balance the poor English north with London and the rich south. But neither has leaving the EU improved their living conditions (quite the contrary), nor have governments done anything to remedy regional differences.
Los tories They have opened the doors to mass immigration with one hand to meet the need for labour in construction, social assistance and health, and with the other they have blocked the processing of asylum applications (there is a backlog of 1.2 million cases pending), housing the immigrants in hotels in the centre of depressed cities at a daily cost of ten million euros. A magnificent recipe for disaster.
