Keir Starmer: Fanning the Flames

No one knows quite how they will react when absolute power is thrust upon them. For Keir Starmer that test arrived earlier than it does for most Prime Ministers. It is exactly a month since the Labour leader became First Lord of the Treasury, but it feels considerably longer. From the steps of Downing Street, he triumphantly assured the nation he would lead a “government of service”; what we’re fast discovering however, is that the ‘service’ he had in mind was really our ‘service of government.’

To Starmer it seems (no doubt reinforced by his time as head of the Crown Prosecution Service) the little people are fine in their place, provided they can be relied upon to do as they’re told. The tragic events of Southport have almost certainly disabused him of this view. After a mass stabbing by 17-year-old, second-generation Rwandan immigrant, Axel Rudakubana, where three children were slain and another 10 people severely injured, tensions in Southport were running high. Faced with the authorities’ textbook obfuscation, the public decided it was thirty years too late for an honest discussion about mass immigration, and rioting ensued. As PM, you cannot pick and choose the events that define your premiership, but you can of course decide how to react to them. This is a test Starmer has failed abysmally.

In his initial response to the rioting, Starmer gave a public address which was anything but a call for calm:

It was the wrong speech entirely. In lieu of the requisite avuncular reassurances, Starmer offered us his customary wooden delivery, but with the added injection of Big Brother authoritarianism. The adjective “far-right” was deployed six times, while words and phrases like immigration, multiculturalism, open borders, stabbing, and little girls were in markedly short supply. Starmer promised the deployment of facial recognition technology, and preventative action criminal behaviour orders to restrict the movements of “far-right thugs.” He meant the white, working-class, and everyone knew it.

Then he made a fatal mistake. “The law must be upheld everywhere—that is the single most important duty of government,” he admitted, before prioritising one community above all others: “In relation to the Muslim community, let me be very clear: I will take every step that’s necessary to keep you safe.” This was a particularly egregious statement, because it is precisely the Muslim community and the authorities’ kid gloves attitude to it, which has resulted in the legitimate accusations of ‘two-tier’ policing.

This is what Starmer should have said:

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the end of the line. Like all of you, I am tired of the endless slaughter; the lawlessness; the invasion of our country by those who hate us. As Prime Minister, it is not only my honour but my primary duty to keep the nation safe—especially the nation’s children. That is why, as of today—as of this moment—things are going to change. I have instructed the Royal Navy to patrol the English Channel with immediate effect, and to return any illegal immigrants directly to France. We will take steps to leave the ECHR at the earliest opportunity, but in the interim we shall nonetheless be returning all foreign criminals, illegal immigrants, and fake asylum seekers to the countries from whence they came. No ifs, no buts. The police have been instructed in the strongest terms to reinstate equality before the law, and stop and search is going to be implemented as widely and as thoroughly as necessary on the streets of Britain. Law and order will be restored. Any hotbeds of disorder, such as extremist mosques, are going to be openly searched, and closed down wherever necessary. I do not have a message for any particular ‘community,’ but rather my message to the British people is simply this: I shall do everything in my power to ensure that no more innocent lives are lost. Anyone who hates Britain or has no right to be here, must leave. Keep alert, keep together, keep faith, and keep calm—we’re going to get through this, and we’re going to bring Britain back.

However, he did not say anything of the sort. The backlash was swift and predictable. All across the north of England, in Stoke, Liverpool, Sunderland, Newcastle, Blackburn, and Hull, the exasperated British public took to the streets to vent their anger. They were met in places by Muslim mobs, crying ‘Allahu Akbar,’ and clearly forgetting their trademark misnomer ’the religion of peace.’

Surely now, Starmer would find his inner statesman and call for calm? No. Instead, he took to the lectern with an incendiary cocktail of palpable fear, and all the rage of a petulant child. “I guarantee you will regret taking part in this disorder” he seethed, “whether directly, or those whipping up hatred online and then running away”—an obvious swipe at Tommy Robinson, the anti-Islam activist, who is believed to have fled to Cyprus to avoid an arrest warrant. “This is not protest; it is organised, violent thuggery, and it has no place on our streets or online.”

Except that organised, violent thuggery is now the hallmark of Britain’s streets, whether at the hands of Black Lives Matter or the pro-Palestine parades—it’s just that the authorities turn a very willing blind eye.

The media attempts to frame the far-right, only for Muslim extremists to walk past:

The police advising Muslims to leave their weapons at the mosque:

Or simply the Muslim hordes, marauding with impunity:

Faced with the need to blame anyone but themselves for inciting the working-class, the Left are desperately casting around for a bogeyman. Except those usually in the frame, Nigel Farage, Tommy Robinson, or Reform UK have, unlike Starmer, all repeatedly called for calm. No. These riots are not the making of conservatives, but liberals; a political class who have been waving the matches of identity politics around the petrol can of mass immigration for 30 years, and are now ‘shocked’ that it’s suddenly burst into flames!

This is about relentless two-tier rhetoric, which pits communities against each other rather than unite them. This is the ideas of white privilege, institutional racism, critical race theory, and all the sorry woke charade finally come to fruition. If Starmer wants someone to prosecute, perhaps he should try looking in the mirror, naturally with a generous nod to the last 14-years of woeful Tory rule.

The people of Britain are not ‘far-right,’ they are simply in the right. Above all, they are tired. Exhausted from decades of government oppression in the form of enforced mass immigration, and the insult that they are too ‘racist’ to appreciate it—including the grooming, the rape, and the murder of their children. Not only that, but they are exhausted from the government’s solution to the horrors of third world barbarism, which has invariably been to import more of it.

There were no riots after the 7/7 bombings of 2005, the butchering of Lee Rigby in 2013, the Westminster, London Bridge and Manchester Arena attacks of 2017, the 2019 London Bridge attack, the 2020 stabbings in Reading, the 2021 Liverpool Women’s hospital bombing, or when the Kent Army officer was stabbed earlier this year. Perhaps the slaughter of innocent girls in Southport—coupled with Starmer’s sneering condescension—was simply a bridge too far.

Let me be clear for the sake of avoidable doubt: wanton violence and aggression towards the innocent is both morally wrong and deserving of condemnation. We cannot pretend however, that anger, conflict, and civil unrest are not the inevitable consequence of governments that oppress and undermine the people they ‘serve,’ while forcing them to pay for the privilege.

To resolve this situation, Starmer must now show contrition; though I fear he is too weak to do so. We may be only a month in, but at this rate not only is Starmer unlikely to survive his first term, I strongly suspect Liz Truss’ record as Britain’s shortest-serving Prime Minister may very soon be under threat.