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Tommy Robinson is copying the progressive playbook The Right has minimised the rioters' agency

Tommy Robinson, real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (Peter Summers/Getty Images)

Tommy Robinson, real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (Peter Summers/Getty Images)


August 8, 2024   5 mins

A strange and dramatic metamorphosis has happened over the last few days. On the one hand, Tommy Robinson, the Right-wing activist and former leader of the English Defence League, has shapeshifted into a Left-leaning analyst of political protest. On the other, those who formerly occupied that role have suddenly embraced the Right-coded rhetoric of moral disgust and zero-tolerance policing.

Granted, Robinson hasn’t gone as far as to declare that the riots are an inarticulate rebellion against capitalist society, much less a “form of queer birth”, as Vicky Osterweil might put it. But he has suggested that they are an all but inevitable response to white working-class grievances that have been ignored by the elites in the media and government.

At the same time, progressives who once expressed support for those who participated in the George Floyd protests of 2020 have adopted a decidedly harsher line on the current anti-immigration protests. Back in June 2020, for example, the former head of British counter-terrorism policing, Neil Basu, encouraged his colleagues to show empathy towards BLM protesters and their “legitimate anger”. “We need to listen to our communities, and our people, and focus on what we in the UK can do better,” he counselled in a conciliatory tone conspicuously missing from his comments about the riots of the past week. They are “bullies and cowards”, he said of the rioters, coming close to describing those who had tried setting fire to a hotel in Rotherham as terrorists. “Not only does it fit the definition of terrorism, it is terrorism,” he remarked. Basu may well have a good point; it’s just not one he showed much interest in raising about the torching of the Minneapolis Police station amid a George Floyd protest on 28 May 2020.

The ironies here are obvious and worth probing for the light they shed on today’s confused discourse. Consider, first, the Left-sounding apologia of the Right, as expressed by Tommy Robinson in the following post on X: “When British people are ignored and labelled ‘far-Right’, when children’s safety isn’t a priority, and when fighting age men from foreign lands come here to take the piss, something has to happen. This is on the British government, they own this problem, because they created it.”

This is not a fringe view. Matthew Goodwin, for example, wrote in a recent piece on the riots: “What did you expect? Seriously? What do you expect ordinary British people to do given the deeply alarming things that are now unfolding around them, in their country, on a daily basis?” Among those things, he singled out the mass rioting in minority communities in Harehills, the stabbing of a British Army Officer by “a member of a minority community”, and a Kurdish migrant who pushed a man onto the tracks at a London Underground station. Douglas Murray, too, has similarly lamented how “completely predictable” the riots were. “Labour and Conservative governments”, he said, created “a powder-keg”.

It is important to note that Robinson has not openly justified the riots, and both Goodwin and Murray have explicitly condemned them. But the substance of their remarks and the shifting of ultimate blame onto the Government serves, in effect, to minimise the agency of the rioters, who were somehow launched or pushed into violence by circumstances beyond their control. Indeed, the current insistence on “understanding” the roots of the riots bears a striking resemblance to the way that apologists of the 2005 London bombings insisted that they were “only” trying to understand the causes of that atrocity, while also firmly pinning the blame for it on Britain’s involvement in the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

“The substance of their remarks and the shifting of ultimate blame onto the government serves, in effect, to minimise the agency of the rioters.”

Consider, next, the progressive narrative of the riots. This is typically clobbered up in the garbs of an undergraduate-level media sociology that holds that the riots are being fuelled by a combination of misinformation and Right-wing populist demagoguery. As has already been exhaustively documented, many prominent X accounts had circulated false information about the identity of the Southport attacker, claiming that he was a Muslim asylum seeker who had illegally entered the UK by boat; he was, in fact, born in the UK to Rwandan parents. According to a report by Marianna Spring, the BBC’s “disinformation and social media correspondent”, this served to “inflame pre-existing tensions” and likely affected the trajectory of the events that followed. Alan Rusbridger went even further, arguing in Prospect that “a foul virus” of misinformation and far-Right hate speech on X had “led to the rioting” in Southport; Owen Jones blamed “a much broader Right-wing populist ecosystem” that had whipped up ordinary working-class people into an “anti-migrant and anti-refugee frenzy”.

There are two key problems with this line of analysis. The first is that it assumes that, had the rioters in Southport not been exposed to false information, they wouldn’t have taken to the streets in protest or violently targeted a mosque in the town. But this doesn’t really hold up, since the disturbances in Southport happened after it had become clear who the perpetrator was. Indeed, in the violence that unfolded, the police and the mosque had, in effect, become reviled effigies for the Southport attacker and the indifferent government the rioters blamed for producing him.

The second problem is that, by assuming that the protesters had been radicalised by a far-Right online outrage machine, progressives fail to take seriously the possibility that they may have had reasons of their own for protesting. If the rhetoric of Tommy Robinson resonates among this quarter, it might just well be because it faithfully captures their “lived” experiences and not because Robinson himself has mythical powers of rhetorical manipulation.

An alternative and more promising way of analysing the riots would be to focus on the profiles of the violent few at the forefront of them, what links (if any) they have to Right-wing activists, and whether their violence was planned in advance. But we won’t know this until convictions are secured — and this will take a while. Based on online footage of the disturbances, the majority of the violent few appear to be young men and the violence itself looks poorly coordinated and incompetent. There also seems to be a carnivalesque aspect to some of the violent exchanges between rioters and the police: a not-insignificant number of rioters are clearly enjoying themselves and it’s not inconceivable to think that their involvement may have been driven by the sheer thrill of smashing things up and defying authority.

In his brilliant study of English football hooliganism, Among the Thugs, Bill Buford writes of the “state of adrenalin euphoria” that comes with crowd violence and how the euphoria itself, and not deeper social scientific factors, is the key to understanding it. We shouldn’t underestimate this as a factor in the current riots, especially in places where joy is in short supply. Many participants, too, are filming the disorder on their phones, and perhaps they too are getting some vicarious pleasure from doing so, just as the actual rioters are perhaps getting an additional pleasure high from knowing that they are being filmed.

Returning to the issue of the protestors’ grievances, it is obviously important that we understand what they are and take them seriously. After all, many protesters and their supporters have been clear about what they are. They believe that there is a system of two-tier policing in this country that favours Muslims and other minorities over whites; they believe that the mainstream media is biased in its reporting of crime and disorder; and they believe that privileged elites in government hate them and their culture, while going out of their way to appease Muslims and other non-whites.

Keir Starmer was right to unequivocally condemn the rioters. But this should not come at the expense of addressing these concerns. Whether or not you are sympathetic towards them, it’s undeniable that we really do need an urgent and open conversation in this country about uncontrolled migration, the involvement of asylum seekers in violent crime, and how this impacts citizens with already limited opportunities and resources.

At the same time, we also need to recognise the vast causal chasm between deeply or even rightly held grievances and actual violence, property destruction and looting. Most aggrieved people who protest do not carry out acts of violence, while many of those who do commit violence do so for reasons that are not always related to rational grievances. Any explanation that elides or fudges that chasm is unlikely to tell us much about how and why riots happen — and, as we have seen, may even end up excusing those who are responsible for the ensuing carnage.


Simon Cottee is a senior lecturer in criminology at the University of Kent.


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UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
2 months ago

This isn’t particularly profound but there clearly has been in recent decades (particularly since 2016) a triangulation in politics with the right becoming the ‘revolutionary tendency’ against the plutarchy that clings wholeheartedly to a dead ideology of post-war ‘liberalism’, now to the point where it leans towards censorship rather than admit the contradictions it creates are unravelling it (John Gray’s commentary on this has been particularly interesting).
Those most disaffected and damaged by liberalism who have been abandoned by parties like Labour and the Democrats and in France the Socialists chasing luxury-belief holding metropolitans that have no interest in addressing the problems created by globalisation in its 21st century variant, will naturally be drawn towards a Populist ‘rightism’ that clearly represents their interests against the coalitions created by western establishment parties. These parties have no interest in self-analysis as that would amount to drawing up the curtain regarding the destruction they’ve already created.
Its inevitable populist parties will incorporate classic ‘socialist’ and even Marxist rhetoric as they increasingly have the same voter bloc. the old Communist vote in France is now entirely Le Pen’s.

Jonathan Smith
Jonathan Smith
2 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Got a link to John Gray’s commentary? Thanks you.

Andrew R
Andrew R
2 months ago
Reply to  Jonathan Smith

It’s probably paywalled but it’s an article from The New Stateman written in April.

https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2024/04/biggest-threat-freedom-west-liberalism-itself-john-gray

Derek Smith
Derek Smith
2 months ago
Reply to  Andrew R

Thanks Andrew. First three New Statesman articles are free for anyone interested.

Andrew R
Andrew R
2 months ago
Reply to  Jonathan Smith

“Suspending freedom of expression for the sake of liberal values may seem a paradox, but it is not illogical. For latter-day hyper-liberals, free speech is useful only so long as it advances a progressive project. Confronted by criticism, they respond by trying to suppress debate. An ever-widening category of “hate speech” is deployed against any discourse deemed offensive or a risk to public safety”.

j watson
j watson
2 months ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

Eventually folks will work out that the v rich done v nicely under 30+ years of neo-liberalism whilst inequality has increased. The v rich, and malign external actors, welcome how division throws most off the scent of where are real problems reside.

Andrew R
Andrew R
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

You are genuinely unhinged.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

’30+ years of neo-liberalism’

At last! It’s taken a while, but maybe we’re finally starting to get somewhere. Now all you have to do is foreswear Blairism.

Santiago Excilio
Santiago Excilio
2 months ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

Chappeau!!

Andrew R
Andrew R
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

“malign external actors, welcome how division throws most off the scent of where are real problems reside”.

So you DO believe in conspiracy theories, well, well.

Johannes Kreisler
Johannes Kreisler
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

“Inequality” increased because an endless, ever-growing stream of the global lumpenproletariat is being tacked onto the bottom layer of the socioeconomic stratum. Without 3rdworld mass-immigration, the organic (native) bottom of society would have been lifted out of poverty by many decades of more-or-less functioning welfare state.
It’s like pouring water into a bottomless barrel.

Johannes Kreisler
Johannes Kreisler
2 months ago

Article is built upon a rather anachronistic and obsolete interpretation of “left” and “right”, as if “the common man”, protesting, grievances etc. were inherently leftist attributes. They are not. Nor is “law & order” an inherently rightwing concept – every communist dictatorship is ran on the pretext of “law & order”.
Also let’s not mistake today’s “elites” (most of them just jumped-up, miseducated proles made good) for the actual definition of “elite”.

The religion / motive of the Ruandan murderer is wholly irrelevant. What’s relevant is that he was in the country. Why was he in the country? Who made it possible for him to be in the country? Same question applies to every murderer / terrorist / rapist / robber / mugger / assaulter of thirdworld extraction on European soil.

we really do need an urgent and open conversation in this country about uncontrolled migration, the involvement of asylum seekers in violent crime, and how this impacts citizens 

No. The time for that conversation has sailed at least two decades ago. What we need now is urgent action. Preventive action and retroactive action, to undo (at least some of) the harm several decades of mass thirdworld immigration inflicted upon the country. Conversations / postmortems can take place afterwards.

David L
David L
2 months ago

Most importantly, what have the native population gained from the mass importation of hostile colonisers from the third world.

Absolutely nothing is the answer.

j watson
j watson
2 months ago

Agree with much of the sentiment.
Lucy Letby killed at least 9 children. White, British. Strange how no racial conclusions derived from that by the berks on the Far Right and their apologists.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

I think that praying in aid the case of Lucy Letby simply underlines how weak your arguments are. Her motives were clearly not racist or religious so there’s no relevance at all.

Guy Aston
Guy Aston
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

But did she?

N Forster
N Forster
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

I don’t think there are many who claim that white British people are not capable of committing crimes. If you can find one, please share.

Johannes Kreisler
Johannes Kreisler
2 months ago
Reply to  N Forster

Precisely.
And that’s what we have the British justice system for. Sustaining a justice system is not cheap. Spaffing the capacities of the justice system on imported crime is an insult on the taxpayer who funds said justice system.
(For the record, i’m a foreigner here myself.)

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
2 months ago

I wonder what it actually costs to prosecute all those single mothers who can’t afford the BBC’s poll tax? Does the BBC even bear that cost – or is it shunted onto taxpayers?

Johannes Kreisler
Johannes Kreisler
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

There are murderers (incl. serial killers) and all sorts of criminals in every nation / society; always been, always will be. That’s what a nation’s justice system is made for, and paid for by the taxpayer as part of the social contract. Not for imported crime.
Local murderers for local law enforcement, to paraphrase.

Buck Rodgers
Buck Rodgers
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

Like all societies, we have enough of our own criminals to deal with; why would we actively recruit more from elsewhere?

Jeremy Bray
Jeremy Bray
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

Open to correction but were her alleged victims black or ethnic and was this advanced as a motive for her apparent crimes?

Johannes Kreisler
Johannes Kreisler
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

Heh, did you just pull a faww wight on me? Chapeau!

David L
David L
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

There was no attempt at a cover up for Lucy Letby

Sean Lothmore
Sean Lothmore
2 months ago

He was in the country because he was born here.

Johannes Kreisler
Johannes Kreisler
2 months ago
Reply to  Sean Lothmore

And why was he born here? Because somebodies in the position of power decided that settling subsaharans into Europe is an acceptable idea.

Johannes Kreisler
Johannes Kreisler
2 months ago
Reply to  Sean Lothmore

And why was he born here? Why and how were his parents settled in Europe, exactly?

LindaMB
LindaMB
2 months ago
Reply to  Sean Lothmore

He was born here because his parents, fleeing genocide, arrived as refugees when the Hutus & Tutsis were slaughtering each other during the Rwandan civil war.

Point of Information
Point of Information
2 months ago

No. Ethnic English/Welsh/Scots/Irish people are no less capable of committing violent crimes (as those of us who lived through the 80s know well) than immigrants.

There are two main but separate issues:

1. That citizens are treated differently according to their perceived or self-identified ethnicity, religion, language – this appears the claim of “two-tier policing”, but is also levelled at other services such as benefits and recruitment.

2. That immigrants are the cause of civil discord and the majority of violent crime, this argument is usually appended by the reasoning “because of incompatible values” when aimed at Muslims or “because they are not integrated” when aimed at immigrants more generally.

The first claim, as Aris Roussinos observed last week, is hard to assess to a large part because it isn’t discussed. The various British ethnicities aren’t identified except under the umbrella term “white”. (Remember that even the term “United Kingdom” reflects a political settlement of four nations into one state). Politicians, journalists and researchers need to investigate different treatment for different ethnic groups openly.

The second claim is statistically wrong (overall) and also doesn’t take into account the fact that (new) migrants are on average poorer with worse jobs and so more likely to commit crime and experience mental illness.

The question then is whether the dependance on migrants for badly paid jobs is itself (racially) exploitative and fuelling crimes of mental illness as well as ethnic conflict. If so, it is neither migrants nor anti-migrant protestors who have created this system – it is the government and large companies using outsourcing to cut costs – but, even so, both migrants and anti-migrant groups depend on this system for jobs, benefits and healthcare.

The solutions to ethnic conflict must include efforts to create more jobs that people feel are worthwhile doing – this includes care work if it’s properly paid – and an economy that creates sufficient revenue for public provision in the private sector. It also means that those of us who can need to work harder and longer. And we need to make stuff (it can include virtual stuff like games) for export.

Yes, our parents (and grandparents if you’re young) had it easier, but very few men or women did before that – this is a return to the norm.

Johannes Kreisler
Johannes Kreisler
2 months ago

You are confusing / conflating a number of things there.

Firstly, “capable of” with “prone to”. Any individual with comparable physical abilities is equally capable of committing violent crimes, regardless of cultural (= ethnic, geographical) background. The fact that people of certain cultural backgrounds are disproportionately more prone to violent crime is well manifested in the crime statistics of not only their countries of origin, but in the crime stats of their host countries (where they migrated) to as well.

Second, we are talking about thirdworld immigrants here in particular. Not about immigrants in general. Immigration is like the weather – there’s fine weather, catastrophic weather, and everything in between. Conflating French bakers, Irish brewers, Estonian engineers with Somali etc. welfare-seekers is grossly disingenuous.

Thirdly:

(new) migrants are on average poorer with worse jobs and so more likely to commit crime and experience mental illness.

Poverty is not a cause of criminality and/or mental illness by itself.
I was born & grew up an extremely poor European nation, nuked into the stone age by communism. We were all poor (except the looting, robbing communist ruling caste who were rich), yet we somehow managed to remain civilised and compos mentis collectively and individually, during half a century of crippling communist oppression. Those who escaped to “the West” (prior to 1989) arrived there poor as hell, yet most built successful careers in record time, without resorting to crime (let alone violent crime) or succumbing to clinical insanity.
The cultural / civilisational background is the main factor what predisposes the individual to crime. Take a look at the societies, the customs, habits, collective characteristics & behavioural patterns of the countries the migrants hail from. That’s what they will adhere to and recreate in their new host countries. Ruanda boy is just one textbook cliché.

The solutions to ethnic conflict must include efforts to create more jobs that

[….]

It also means that those of us who can need to work harder and longer. 

Eh? Are you suggesting that we create even more pointless, unneeded, polluting ‘jobs’ to sustain people who have no excuse nor justification to be in Europe, and that we work harder and longer to fund their unwanted presence? No, thanks.
The UK is grossly overpopulated. Europe is grossly overpopulated. We need fewer people, not more. Fewer people, fewer ‘jobs’, less consumption, less pollution, & so forth.

Johannes Kreisler
Johannes Kreisler
2 months ago

You are confusing / conflating a number of things there. 
First, “capable of” with “prone to”. Any individual with comparable physical abilities is equally capable of committing violent crimes, regardless of cultural (= ethnic, geographical) background. The fact that people of certain cultural backgrounds are disproportionately more prone to violent crime is well manifested in the crime statistics of not only their countries of origin, but in the crime stats of their host countries (where they migrated) to as well.
Second, we are talking about thirdworld immigrants here in particular. Not about immigrants in general. Immigration is like the weather – there’s fine weather, catastrophic weather, and everything in between. Conflating French bakers, Irish brewers, Estonian engineers with SomaIi etc. weIfare-seekers is grossly disingenuous. 
Thirdly:

(new) migrants are on average poorer with worse jobs and so more likely to commit crime and experience mental illness.

Poverty is not a cause of criminality and/or mental illness by itself.
I was born & grew up an extremely poor European nation, nuked into the stone age by communism. We were all poor (except the looting, robbing communist ruling caste who were rich), yet we somehow managed to remain civilised and compos mentis collectively and individually, during half a century of crippling communist oppression. Those who escaped to “the West” (prior to 1989) arrived there poor as heII, yet most built successful lives in record time, without resorting to crime (let alone violent crime) or succumbing to clinical insanity.
The cultural / civilisational background is the main factor what predisposes the individual to crime. Take a look at the societies, the customs, habits, collective characteristics & behavioural patterns of the countries the migrants hail from. That’s what they will adhere to and recreate in their new host countries. Ruanda boy is just one textbook cliché. 

The solutions to ethnic conflict must include efforts to create more jobs that 

[….]

It also means that those of us who can need to work harder and longer. 

Eh? Are you suggesting that we create even more pointless, unneeded, polluting ‘jobs’ to sustain people who have no excuse nor justification to be in Europe, and that we work harder and longer to fund their unwanted presence? No, thanks.
The UK is grossly overpopulated. Europe is grossly overpopulated. We need fewer people, not more. Fewer people, fewer ‘jobs’, less consumption, less pollution, & so forth.

Micael Gustavsson
Micael Gustavsson
2 months ago

Very good comment!

Jon Barrow
Jon Barrow
2 months ago

Not clear about your point re. crime and ethnicity. If you believe different ethnic groups exist then you will see they have different outcomes across different categories (education, health, income, crime etc etc). What would be very puzzling would be if there were no statistical differences in crime rates among different ethnic groups. Why do we – an existing nation and citizenry – take in people highly disposed towards criminality. Furthermore you haven’t mentioned complex factors eg: diversity creating lower trust hence higher disposition to crime across groups; extremes driving change eg a small number of highly violent ppl having a massive impact on crime rates and accompanying costs.

LindaMB
LindaMB
2 months ago

A home care provider in my county hires from the subcontinent, he can pay them less than he would pay someone born in the UK. He also provides rental housing. For him, it is win win, he pays out less, and recoups a portion of it through rental income.
It is business and the middle class who benefit from cheap labour and support mass migration – it also soothes their white saviour complex. Despite their whining about their sprogs not being able to get on the housing market, they are isolated from any of the deleterious effects of not being able to get any housing, crap schools, or the insufferably long wait to get a Doctor or dentist appointment…

andy young
andy young
2 months ago

I think the division is not between left & right but between authoritarianism & non-authoritarianism; those who think they know what is best for us, & want to run our lives accordingly, & the rest of us who are content to let others be to live their lives by their own compass – just so long as it doesn’t harm anyone else in any obvious, demonstrably & provably certain way.
I am all for PROPER experts – builders, mechanics, surgeons, teachers; anyone whose achievements can be tested & compared to outcomes – but only in their narrow field of expertise. How to live a life is a much more complex & problematic process than any of the above & cannot be solved by any combination of experts, now matter how wise & all-knowing. Each individual is unique, & faces a unique set of problems; we should all listen to anyone, take heed of advice from all quarters, but ultimately our own life decisions, for good or ill, must be our own.

Johannes Kreisler
Johannes Kreisler
2 months ago

They believe that there is a system of two-tier policing in this country that favours Muslims and other minorities over whites; they believe that the mainstream media is biased in its reporting of crime and disorder; and they believe that privileged elites in government hate them and their culture, while going out of their way to appease Muslims and other non-whites.

No, dear. They see all those things occurring. They observe all those things on your list happening. Claiming they “believe” what they see may be technically correct, yet a somewhat superfluous turn of the phrase in the same vein as claiming you believe water is wet after you took a shower.
Objective reality is not a belief system.

General Store
General Store
2 months ago

I would rather hear from Tommy Robinson that this particular sheep

Phil Day
Phil Day
2 months ago

How do you have a full and open debate on this subject when the people responsible for the mess immigration never have to face the consequences and dismiss the concerns of those who do.
‘Diversity is our strength’ my arse.

j watson
j watson
2 months ago
Reply to  Phil Day

The people responsible just been voted out of power. You need to give the new broom more than 4wks.
Right had their chance and engineered this crisis.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

No. The people responsible have just regained power after a fourteen year hiatus in which nothing was done to alleviate the consequences of their misrule – so things will inevitably get worse.

j watson
j watson
2 months ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

Comical. A quick rush over the last 14yrs as if nothing happened and one has been in a coma.

David L
David L
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

If you think the tories were right wing, you’re even more deluded than I thought.

The tories spent 14 years grovelling to the Guardian and its hateful readers.

Steve Nunn
Steve Nunn
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

The party that begun mass, unfettered immigration has just regained power, got rid of the far-from-perfect Rwanda scheme and begun to give out free homes to the migrants whilst leaving Brits homeless or in inadequate housing.

j watson
j watson
2 months ago
Reply to  Steve Nunn

You read too much social media.
And again yet another that whatever the criticism of the previous Lab Govt can’t handle explaining how the Right made it even worse with 14 years of power.

Graeme Crosby
Graeme Crosby
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

Nope, you don’t.

Diane Abbott on Radio 4 on Wednesday has already stated the progressives position. It is that the riots have been caused “by certain politicians inflaming tensions between communities by demonising migrants in the media”.

So she is advocating saying nothing about migration, that discussing migration has been the driver of the discord and as usual she is 100% wrong. It is the refusal of politicians to allow discussion of migration since 1998 that has led us to this situation and yet she wants it to remain that way. She is either disingenuous or wilfully ignorant but her progressive chums are all saying the same. It’s incredible..

j watson
j watson
2 months ago
Reply to  Graeme Crosby

Do you still listen to Diane?
You do know she’s not in the Govt don’t you or is there some conspiracy feed dragging the poor lady yet again into the firing line?
V strange interjection. We’ll have the bloke said the following down the pub next.

Citizen Diversity
Citizen Diversity
2 months ago
Reply to  Phil Day

If it is believed that diversity is strength there would be no need for the exhortations to ‘come together’, to ‘unite’, to ‘stand together’ against whoever and whatever these rioters are.

paul gee
paul gee
2 months ago

Good article. I am curious to notice that in the reams of commentary I have read which seek to look at underlying causes for the wave of unrest, almost no one has mentioned the documentary ‘Silenced’ which Tommy Robinson released a few days before the Southport Killings (and before Harefield and before Manchester airport etc). In little more than a week, it’s had almost 30 million views. (It can be viewed on rumble or X). The film describes the hypocrisy and corruption in mainstream media, politicians and the judiciary using the case study of a 15 year year-old white working class boy who was hounded by the worlds media over what was described by them as as a racist abuse. Robinson meticulously demonstrates how the media had simply jumped to a conclusion without proper evidence . They demonise the boy-Piers Morgan called him ‘vermin’ – destroying his life and causing the closure of a well regarded primary School.

My hypothesis is that this documentary is also one of the contributing factors which has added to a wave of fury running through working-class Britain. I’ve seen no reply to the documentary, or indeed a comment in any shape or form, from mainstream media, No politicians of any colour have commented on it. This documentary in my opinion is the “elephant in the room’ .

You may not like Robinson, but his documentaries, I would argue, articulate the lived experience of many white working class people : with clarity and compassion. To me, it seems both awfully arrogant and supremely self-serving for us to simply ignore these cries to be heard.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
2 months ago

I find it interesting that Twitter is always singled out for special attention. Like these people aren’t using other social media, like Facebook and Instagram, or much more likely texting each other. Reminds me of the Jan. 6 riots, when Parlor of all platforms was singled out for spreading misinformation. Of course it was eventually shut down.

Ian Barton
Ian Barton
2 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

The cult of Musk hatred is all over the MSM.

Derek Smith
Derek Smith
2 months ago
Reply to  Ian Barton

Yet they’re all complaining about Twitter… on Twitter.

LindaMB
LindaMB
2 months ago
Reply to  Ian Barton

He took away their echo chamber

Brett H
Brett H
2 months ago

Good work Simon.
”A strange and dramatic metamorphosis has happened over the last few days.”
This metamorphosis does bring into question the integrity of those who are doing the shape shifting. If the riots of whites in Britain are legitimate then the black riots in the US are legitimate. That means questioning your original position. It also does suggest a touch of prejudice if you condemned the black riots but not the British white riots. Maybe that’s the fact, that blacks and whites, all those disenfranchised people, have a common enemy. Perhaps too the young disenfranchised Muslims share the same enemy. Imagine the impact of all these disenfranchised people coming together against their common enemy?

N Forster
N Forster
2 months ago

We’ve been having open and frank discussions for years. I’ve seen it many times on the telly. 
It goes like this:
A politician says “We need an open and frank discussion about immigration and race”
Next, we hear the views of someone working class. Preferably middle aged and white, or elderly and white. Just as long as they are white and have a regional accent. They try to explain their position, but do so in language considered dated by the young or politically minded. Whilst their feelings are deeply held, they might well struggle to articulate them is a way acceptable in middle class company.
We let them speak for a short while then we all call them a racist, a bigot, or a nasty person
And that is the end of the honest and frank discussion until the next time a foreigner blows himself up, beheads a soldier or stabs children. 
Then we do it again. And we keep doing it until people have had enough and kick off. Then we call them a racist, a bigot, a nasty person and attempt to close down avenues of communication, prosecute those who voice their feelings whilst simultaneously allow tens of thousands more immigrants who entered illegally to stay.

j watson
j watson
2 months ago
Reply to  N Forster

No we haven’t had open discussion at all. Why would a Right wing Govt, including a Home Sec Braverman, sign off thousands of visas after industry requests and then look to use migration as an electoral weapon.
Why aren’t we straight with folks that illegal migration requires we seriously consider things like ID cards. And that furthermore the failure to invest in accommodation to hold illegal migrants and processing capacity, again by a Right wing Brexit supporting Govt, has left us with a right mess.
Starmer had 4wks. Let’s see where we are once he’s had half the time the last lot had.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

The answer to all your questions above is that mass immigration makes the middle class richer at the expense of the working poor and nowadays both parties depend on middle class votes.

Jeremy Bray
Jeremy Bray
2 months ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

Mass migration may drive down the wages of the lower paid ununionised workers but the extra taxation that has to be levied to pay the extra benefits and address the extra pressure on public services has to be met predominantly by the nominally richer middle class. So at the end of the day the middle class are not beneficiaries of immigration.

N Forster
N Forster
2 months ago
Reply to  Jeremy Bray

But they are not the ones who have to do the sharing. That cost is shouldered almost entirely by the Working Class. So the Middle Class get the benefits – cheaper employees, without the direct personal costs – Migrants usually don’t live in their nice areas.

Johannes Kreisler
Johannes Kreisler
2 months ago
Reply to  N Forster

Indeed they don’t typically do, not in the cities’ nicer bits anyway. They do get increasingly smeared around on the countryside though, even in the ‘nice’ parts (Cotswolds etc.).
Nor are they typically “employees” either, other than within their own endemic kebabshop/barbershop/deliveroo economies. Even then, one “employed” 3rdworldmigrant typically has a fairly large (and growing) number of dependants attached, all perusing the infrastructure / NHS / housing / etc. / welfare system.

elaine chambers
elaine chambers
2 months ago
Reply to  N Forster

No, the middle classes won’t be doing the sharing. The lower classes have the smallest bite of the housing pie and they will be sharing that tiny portion with the immigrants. And when all hell lets loose they will be called racist thugs.

elaine chambers
elaine chambers
2 months ago
Reply to  Jeremy Bray

But did they realise this? I think not.

j watson
j watson
2 months ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

Asset price inflation much more a factor, but no doubt getting cheaper labour into things like agriculture and social care benefits some more than others and can deflate some wages. What the Govt of last 14 years done about that? Sod all really wasn’t it whilst misleading that Brexit would sort.

N Forster
N Forster
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

When many of the Poles left because of Brexit then Covid, wages for many jobs – driving comes to mind, went through the roof. Supply and demand are pretty impossible to ignore.

Andrew R
Andrew R
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

All they did was to follow New Labour’s playbook. You really are desperate.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

Oh dear. What do you think causes the ‘asset price inflation’ FFS!

People voted for Brexit (in part) because they thought the ruling class would then have no excuse for flooding the country with immigrants. But guess what? They decided they didn’t need an excuse and carried on anyway. Now the s**t is hitting the fan as a result and it’s going to be ugly for a long time.

I’m surprised that you’re still peddling the pro-EU narrative. Do you have any idea just how stagnant the eurozone has become? And it’s going to get a lot worse. At least we have some growth.

Mark Phillips
Mark Phillips
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

Brexit was sabotaged at every turn. You, and all others like you, of every political hue turned yourselves inside out and used every means, fair or foul, to prevent it. When you succeed in watering it down and making it so much less than it could have been you b***h and whine about the government (Conservative, of course) not ‘getting it done’. I won’t print the word I am calling you JArthur’ers, but I can think it, and a few others.

elaine chambers
elaine chambers
2 months ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

Yes.

N Forster
N Forster
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

I think you failed to spot my sarcasm.

Andrew Dalton
Andrew Dalton
2 months ago
Reply to  N Forster

It wasn’t subtle, but j watson hasn’t spotted that there’s a cigarette’s paper difference between Labour and the Conservatives yet.

Santiago Excilio
Santiago Excilio
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

A rather short-sighted (but entirely predictable) perspective on history.
The seeds of the current crisis in the UK were planted and watered by Blair, propagated by Brown, tended by Cameron and Clegg and simply ignored by the subsequent bag of tutti-frutti PM’s. Multi-culturalism, devolution, human rights act, ECHR, supreme court, mass immigration, quangocracy, property price boom and failure to build houses. It all started with New Labour in 1997. Everything you see today around you; the failed institutions, the mass immigration, the ineffectual HoP, the sclerotic congestion of the bureaucracy, the identity politics, the inversion of human rights, two tier policing and splintering society – it is all the legacy of Blair.
And if you you fondly imagine that Starmer is going to improve anything you are going to be sorely disappointed, unless of course you aspire to live in a divisive, impoverished, grey, hopeless, socialist dystopia – in which case you shall have your wish, although I can promise you there will be no ball.

j watson
j watson
2 months ago

Blair get everything right? No and not too many in the Centre, or the reasonable Left of that view.
But you know you had 14 years and made it worse. Now folks on the Right want to avoid culpability. It’s pathetic.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

It isn’t that Blair didn’t get everything right, it’s that he got everything catastrophically wrong.

That happened because he was not motivated by any concern for the welfare of his countrymen, but by personal ambition and narcissism.

j watson
j watson
2 months ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

Blair-fixation must be a diagnosable condition. I’ll look it up.

Santiago Excilio
Santiago Excilio
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

No, that’s just made up. Whereas you, however, clearly exhibit all the characteristics of anti-social personality disorder (ASPD), an individual who consistently shows no regard for right and wrong and ignores the rights and feelings of others.

“People with antisocial personality disorder tend to purposely make others angry or upset and manipulate or treat others harshly or with cruel indifference. They lack remorse or do not regret their behaviour.

People with antisocial personality disorder often violate the law, becoming criminals. They may lie, behave violently or impulsively, and have problems with drug and alcohol use. They have difficulty consistently meeting responsibilities related to family, work or school.”

David Harris
David Harris
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

If you believe that the last 14 years of pretend Conservative govts are of the ‘Right’ then I’ve a bridge to sell you. Vote Reform.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

The Tories were not right then and are not right wing now.

j watson
j watson
2 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Oh yes they were. An incompetent Right I grant you that.

elaine chambers
elaine chambers
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

The free and easy infux of migrants legal or illegal is not the prerogative of The Right. This began with The Left and Tony Blair. It has indeed been a huge benefit to both Right and Left governments. It has saved the expense of providing training for professional jobs, e.g.doctors and nurses, when they can be poached from other coutries. It has saved the expense of re-training the workers whose jobs were in industries when Thatcher closed them down and turned us into a country of service industry. These industries required very little expertees,waitors, etc. This meant that the now out of work indiginous men and women could be usurped by a new foreign influx poached from other countries again and able to take wages that an indigenous worker could not compete with interms of maintaining rent and C/Tax.
It’s all a mess, a greedy shortsighted mess. And for how much longer can ‘They’ use Tommy Robinson as the boogeyman?
Time is running out for the West as the likes of Abul A’laMaududi of Jamaat-e-Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood etc. quietly and non-violently penetate our cultural values playing victim while vying for support from the Guardian reading Awfully Nice Brigade.

Johannes Kreisler
Johannes Kreisler
2 months ago
Reply to  N Forster

^ This.
I’m fairly new to this whole politics thing, been oblivious up until 2014/15 or so when it was getting really into the face of even the most doggedly oblivious bystanders like me.
Esp. in the run-up to the Brexit referendum, to see the BBC / C4 etc. reporters doing their vox populi, meticulously searching the streets for the most downtrodden-looking, oldest with the fewest teeth, most predictably inarticulate and emotional individuals to interview. Then, in stark contrast, the smooth-looking, edumacated thirtysomethings, to present the dichotomy in terms of thick/obsolete/primitive/embarrassing (“the thick proles”) vs. the intelligent/decent/civilised. And thus reframe the landscape in terms of a ‘class war’, to alienate people from the “thick prole” line of views, as nobody wants to be regarded as a prole. (Esp. not the culturally insecure arriviste new-middle-classes for whom their roots are still too close for comfort.)
What is worrying though is that many on the normal side seized this ‘working class vs the elites’ classwar narrative (and still run with it), as if having a functional brain & a backbone was an exclusively workingclass trait. It is not.

andy young
andy young
2 months ago

Not forgetting the way interviews with Brexit supporting MPs or well known advocates of Brexit were conducted, i.e. to do so outside with a mob of EU supporters chanting slogans throughout, making the interviewees all but inaudible, & maintaining the fiction that Brexit was an opinion confined to a few cranks, racists & fascists. Egregious, Soviet-style tactics.

Clara B
Clara B
2 months ago
Reply to  N Forster

Yep, that’s about the sum of it. Though you missed out the flowers and singing post-atrocity bit, and the earnest appeals by our leaders to ‘unite against hate’ or some other such cobblers.

Arthur King
Arthur King
2 months ago
Reply to  N Forster

Well said. It soon becomes clear that native British people are non-persons. Worse than that, it is a form of soft cultural genocide where the celebration of the good of British history is erased through statue removal, curriculum changes and the rewriting of history.

Josef Švejk
Josef Švejk
2 months ago

The disaffected working class responded to a chimera, that the killer was a Muslim immigrant, by rioting. Would they have rioted were the killer misdescribed as a middle aged female member of the local Anglican Church community? I doubt it. The fact that migrants are over represented by young Muslim, male, volatile and single men has escaped the attention of the police and our political parties. These men have no intention of becoming “British” but wish to continue their lives as they did in their countries of birth. When an atrocity such as the Manchester Arena bombing occurs there are suspects who conform to a special script. Until the migration is stopped from countries foreign to Britishness riots such as we experience now will continue with frequency in Great Britain.

j watson
j watson
2 months ago
Reply to  Josef Švejk

I strongly suspect you know v few young Muslim men and get too panicked by social media in your bedroom. You need to get out more.

Andrew R
Andrew R
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

How many fallacies are you going to use in your spittle flecked posts.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

How many volatile young Muslims are there in Surbiton?

Johannes Kreisler
Johannes Kreisler
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

Pull your head out of the 1970s, watson.

Mark Phillips
Mark Phillips
2 months ago

Out of his fundament, is, I think, closer to the truth.

Mirax Path
Mirax Path
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

Take a look at what is going in Bangladesh right now.

Jeremy Bray
Jeremy Bray
2 months ago

Tommy Robinson is not copying the Progressive playbook he is simply analysing the events in terms the MSM have found convincing and acceptable when applied to previous BLM and other “community” riots. In this case it is a minority of his “community” that is kicking off and not unreasonably he has applied a similar analysis. The fact that it will inevitably be rejected as inauthentic by progressive commentators merely highlights the superficial, biased and inauthentic nature of the “progressive” analysis of previous violent and riotous events.

In both cases authentic grievances have provided the excuse for some members of the communities affected to enjoy treating some trigger incident as a legitimation of a carnival of otherwise illegitimate violence, arson and looting. The fact that Tommy Robinson’s analysis will be rejected by those who advanced the sympathetic analysis of previous disturbances by “minorities” merely highlights their biases. They are happy to view unacceptable violence as an authentic and legitimate response from their favoured communities but not the despised white English community. It is not just Two Tier Kier that is at risk of having their simple bigotry exposed by applying a different analysis to similar events.

Civil disorder is illegitimate in every instance but is a risk of occurring if legitimate grievances are not addressed. Unfortunately addressing some “minority”grievances but not other “majority” community grievances and responding to civil disorder in a biased fashion are themselves inflammatory. Unfortunately, the fact of bias will be publicly rejected, as will the authentic nature of the grievance over excessive immigration. However, with luck, while denying the legitimacy of the grievance, policies will hopefully be adopted to address them rather than simply upping the level of authoritarian control.

A J
A J
2 months ago
Reply to  Jeremy Bray

I was breathlessly awaiting a comma in that last sentence . Preferably several. But very good points made.

Jeremy Bray
Jeremy Bray
2 months ago
Reply to  A J

Yes, good point on my last sentence which has, I hope, been improved since your observation.

j watson
j watson
2 months ago
Reply to  Jeremy Bray

The two-tier Keir stuff is a handy trope but it’s twaddle. He wasn’t in power when the Gaza demos took place, or the BLM demos. It was the Right that was in power.

Andrew R
Andrew R
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

He took the knee though, going by your logic he condoned the riots, the looting and didn’t believe in due process. Captain Hindsight?

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

But he was in power and did nothing when tens of thousands of young girls were being abused by Pakistani gangs.

Jeremy Bray
Jeremy Bray
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

I am happy to be corrected but I don’t recall calls by Starmer for rapid deployment of the full weight of the law in respect of the recent Leeds riots or the recent inter ethnic riots nor any emphasis on the importance of rapid and severe punishment for any other riots that have occurred here or overseas. In any case my point was directed at the class of whom Starmer has been a member one way or another for some time who have been only to keen to explain and empathise with rioters provided they are ostensibly advancing some cause of which they approve.

Your suggestion that the right have been in power in recent years is not something significant swaths of the population accept. The fact that the conservatives and before that the coalition government were slightly to the right of Labour does not make them right wing governments.

I am keen to see rioters and disruptive protesters of all stripes and ideologies punished but as Martin Kettle has written in the Guardian the government can’t simply regard the riots as far right thuggery and use it as an excuse not to tackle the socially disruptive levels of immigration – particularly illegal immigration.

Santiago Excilio
Santiago Excilio
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

No that’s right he wasn’t in power. Yet he, and his odious deputy, grovelled on their knees in obeisance to and support of a racist, marxist, ideology which caused 25 deaths and $1 billion of damage in the US. And yet now, it seems, he decries violence and damage to property. Goodness me how the worm has turned.

I think we can add the moniker two-faced to Starmer as well:

“Two-faced, two-tier Kier” – It has a catchy ring.

Derek Smith
Derek Smith
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

You are observably correct to say that it didn’t start with Two-Tier Kier.

Two-tier policing is a necessity under asymmetric multiculturalism, which has defined the UK since Tony Blair opened the doors wide.

David L
David L
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

The tories were in government, but the far left held all the power

John Tyler
John Tyler
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

“The right were in power” do you mean the mainly left of centre Conservative government?

Santiago Excilio
Santiago Excilio
2 months ago
Reply to  Jeremy Bray

With regard to your last sentence, I think that the outcome you hope for will be unlikely. The problem resides in the complete inversion of human rights. Originally conceived post WWII to protect the individual from the overreach of the State (which is where Churchill was coming from) they have been perverted to instead assert the rights of minorities over the majority. So the grievances of the majority, no matter how legitimate, will always be ignored over those of the minority.
What we have witnessed over the last few decades is, if you like, the Marxification of human rights in the name of equality.

Johannes Kreisler
Johannes Kreisler
2 months ago

Precisely.
“Human rights” is an irrational, make-believe, quasi-religious dogma system. Its temporary purpose was valid and necessary at the time the concept (and its clumsy misnomer) was invented in the aftermath of WW2, but the moment they tacked the “universal” prefix to it it became a malignant, toxic travesty of its purported meaning.

Jeremy Bray
Jeremy Bray
2 months ago

I said with luck. Sometimes violence is effective in altering policy but usually when the policy makers are already half inclined to change or where the violence is sustained. I suspect the current violence will not be sufficiently sustained.

LindaMB
LindaMB
2 months ago
Reply to  Jeremy Bray

You’d have better luck winning the lottery than that of TwoTier Starmer and the Labour government altering their policies. You can see by the facial expressions of Cooper when she address the riot in Harehills compared to the vigil that morphed in to a riot in Southport. In the firsts she yaps on about community, in the second it’s far right, & thugs. They abandoned the white working class & the poor under Blair, now they despise them

Tyler Durden
Tyler Durden
2 months ago

The fact that the automatic suggestion online was that the killer was this or that kind of immigrant entails that the protests would have happened anyway.
The protestors anticipated that this was an immigrant narrative at play. The Establishment then tried neutralise the immigrant narrative by naming the killer as of African Christian background with a family present in the country for a couple of decades.
None of this would have changed the mind of the protestors. Starmer sent a weak message out on the day of the crime and the nationalist Right became a conduit for widespread anger.

j watson
j watson
2 months ago

Sorry but this is apologist rubbish. Robinson makes a small fortune out of sowing Division. And he and the Far Right use the Russian backed Telegram messaging system to spread their bile and conspiracies. Not calling that out means you are categorically an accomplice.
Last night we saw much more where the core of the country is and what we can be proud of. It is also true that immigration and crime are now the priority concerns as indicated in Polls. No surprise given the fear of social unrest.
The failure of the last Govt and the Right per se to manage immigration effectively has stoked this. Likes of Braverman signs off thousands of legal visas and then refers to an ‘invasion’. How much more malign can you get? Language counts. Truth is the Right, esp the authoritarian Right, wants an immigration crisis. Classic dog whistle tactic for personal and potential electoral gain.
We have a complex problem with demographics and our need for migration to plug gaps. Untackled for a decade by the Brexit spouting idiots. And you won’t hear Farage give any practical solutions either.
We have a complex problem with illegal migration which is not easily solved and that will require strategic solutions with partner countries. Again we’ve stood aside from partnership working and reaped the consequences.
The answer to a concern is not the encourage and excuse loutish bullies attacking people, who whatever we might feel about them being here, almost certainly had half the good fortune in life we all have. Shameful.

Sj Kay
Sj Kay
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

“We have a complex problem with illegal migration which is not easily solved and that will require strategic solutions with partner countries. Again we’ve stood aside from partnership working and reaped the consequences.“

Errrr – isn’t this what the article said? It certainly doesn’t encourage anything.

Andrew R
Andrew R
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

Project, project, project…

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

Yep, it’s all someone else’s fault, isn’t it.

You’re still unwilling to concede the role played by the greed and parasitism of your own class and the venality and incompetence of your New Labour heroes in all this. Until that changes, nothing else will.

j watson
j watson
2 months ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

The fact you paint a portrait to justify your own contention I obviously can’t stop, silly though it is.
14 years. Just keep remembering that.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

14 years? Where do you get that from? Blairites have been in power continuously since 1997 and pretty well all of our current discontents are ultimately the consequences of decisions taken between 1997 and 2005: Iraq, Afghanistan, the ditching of RPI, the lazy mismanagement of immigration from the accession states, the sloppy deregulation of the City that led to the financial crash … The list just goes on and on.

Still, what’s so great about history that you shouldn’t rewrite it, eh?

Santiago Excilio
Santiago Excilio
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

“Robinson has made a small fortune” – as reported in the Guardian and Express, those paragons of objectivity, according to whom apparently Robinson has a shadowy “international network of wealthy bankers and receives donations from all over the world.” – just un-evidenced scuttlebutt.

“the Russian backed Telegram messaging system” – Telegram was developed in Russia, but it is not back by the Russian state. The two brothers who started it did so in order to avoid Russian State surveillance, and it is currently headquartered in Dubai.

“Not calling that out means you are categorically an accomplice.” – Ahhh, the good old false dilemma fallacy. Between black and white there are many shades of grey.

“We have a complex problem with illegal migration which is not easily solved and that will require strategic solutions with partner countries.” – Not really. The solution is not complicated, it simply requires courage and political will, neither of which qualities are much in evidence with Starmer.

j watson
j watson
2 months ago

‘Not backed by the Russian state’ – what a joke that you are so naive to the camouflage. Just another apologist.
Express and Guardian not natural bedfellows, and coming to the same conclusion on Robinson – uncomfortable isn’t it despite your contortions.
And your solution to illegal immigration is?

Mr Tyler
Mr Tyler
2 months ago

The far-right is the scapegoat the people in power need to distract from the destruction their ideas have brought upon us.

Derek Smith
Derek Smith
2 months ago

“Keir Starmer was right to unequivocally condemn the rioters. But this should not come at the expense of addressing these concerns.”

He will not, because he cannot.

To do so would be to admit that the immigration policy of the last 20-odd years was a mistake, and would be seen as a capitulation to the ‘Far Right’, which his kind of leftie could never tolerate for a second.

It is fitting that this should happen under a Labour government. They started it, while the Conservatives merely ‘conserved’ their mistake.

Andrew Horsman
Andrew Horsman
2 months ago

It’s the same diabolical 13 point playbook that was deployed “in Covid”:

1. Incident.

2. Disinformation pushed by various well-resourced interests online.

3. Reaction: anger, fear, insecurity. Do something! (“Riot”, and “stop hate” being two sides of the same coin).

4. Witting or unwitting puppets are induced by one means or other to do stuff in real life to make people scared, their actions played and replayed on TV and online to mass audience.

5. Media frenzy, amplifying anything consequent to (4) which appears to align with the newly established fear Narrative (eg “bloke gets punched in the face in a provincial city” or “old man dies of pneumonia” becomes national news).

6. Government says it’s going to take a tough line but doesn’t really do much; it lets the pressure build rather than releasing it for now. Regime outriders float the idea of strict controls but this isn’t the official view, for now.

7. Pile on by well meaning, good but virtue signalling, normal people in real life, further amplifying the fear Narrative, feeling like they are doing the Right Thing by condemning the irresponsible or evil outgroup and protecting the Vulnerable. “Stay safe, stay scared”. It’s well intended but it is divisive.

8. Shops and businesses shut, employees stay at home out of genuine fear and perhaps, for some, a desire for participation in a national psycho-drama from which they derive meaning and purpose. For others it’s simply the latest excuse to WFH in their pyjamas.

9. Demands from the newly house-bound that everyone else do the same, and that they themselves be both lauded for their high moral virtue and financially compensated. Pressure on the government to act ramps up.

10. Government announces new controls (that it had mysteriously cooked up extraordinarily quickly) that a) accrete power to itself at the expense of the individual, b) serve the political and / or commercial interests of at least some of the folk referred to in (2), c) perpetuate the psycho-drama at a time when there’s nothing else good on the telly.

11. Many people who describe themselves as “awake” panic, decrying the government’s assault on liberties and conjuring up all kinds of explanations for what is happening and what Should Be Done About It. Many of them play out their role of vociferously adopting the mirror image opposite position to the virtue-signallers in (7), and in so doing disempower themselves from taking a cold rational view of it all, and contribute to the divisiveness.

12. After a period of time it all dies a death, as the next thing gets wheeled out. This one probably has a shorter shelf life than “Covid” and the US election is around the corner.

13. Profits are taken, trust in government and media is further diminished, some people are left with life-long psychological trauma from it all, and some more people wake up. The underlying socio-political and economic imbalances and divisions that allowed it to all to play out in the first place are deepened. The super-rich get even richer, and the powerful consolidate their power.

And so it goes.

Pamela Booker
Pamela Booker
2 months ago

An excellent, reasoned article

Adrian Smith
Adrian Smith
2 months ago

There is a lot of total BS and lies being put around about Tommy Robinson, but I am not sure calling him progressive is meaningful either.
The fact that the government MSM wants to pin it all on the far right and then lie about the EDL which has not existed for a decade and about Robinson makes me think that other than a few of the yobs having swastika tattoos none of the violence is really about the far right – they are just hooligans. Certainly the protests are not far right and are not being orchestrated by the far right and most definitely not Robinson who I am not convinced is himself “far right”.

LindaMB
LindaMB
2 months ago
Reply to  Adrian Smith

If you call someone a far right racist thug, you demonize them and undermine any legitimate concerns they may have. It’s all about controlling the narrative

Daniel Lee
Daniel Lee
2 months ago

Liberals are so desperate to avoid the charge of Islamophobia that they’ll not only tolerate illiberal Sharia principles, they’ll actively suppress those who protest against it.

Robert Haigh
Robert Haigh
2 months ago
Reply to  Daniel Lee

Not sure which liberals you’re talking about. As far as I understand liberalism it is about people having freedom to live their lives as they please within reason. What I know of Sharia law would be in total conflict with this concept. Surely criticising Sharia law is not islamaphobic in the same way criticising the actions of the IDF / Netanyahu is not anti- semitic

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
2 months ago

Good point in how the left’s view toward protest shifted from it being a noble cause that should be exempt from lockdowns in the aftermath of George Floyd to something authorities should harshly crack down upon. Guess it all depends on whose ox is being gored.
Never mind that people were killed and billions in property was destroyed during the BLM and Antifa rioting, and never mind that the resulting “defund” idiocy has wreaked havoc in one city after another. It’s all about principals over principles.

Malcolm Knott
Malcolm Knott
2 months ago

If you encourage your ‘impartial’ employees to take the knee in support of a left-wing movement and then crack down hard on a right-wing movement you mustn’t be surprised if people accuse you of two-tier policing.
Similarly if you provide a uniformed escort for left-wing protesters who are loudly shouting anti-Semitic slogans and tell a much smaller and quieter Jewish group to take their placards home or face arrest.
Similarly if, when confronted with a video of a balaclava-clad young men (one of whom has a knife) menacing a television reporter, you explain that it’s OK because you have had conversations with community leaders to understand the style of policing you need to deliver.
Similarly if you snatch away a journalist’s microphone when he asks an unwelcome question about two-tier policing.

Brian Doyle
Brian Doyle
2 months ago

Please refrain from using that word
‘ Britain ‘
Not one stone has been thrown or Union Jack been waved upon any Street In Scotland

John Tyler
John Tyler
2 months ago
Reply to  Brian Doyle

That doesn’t sound like a Saturday night in Glasgow! 🙂

General Store
General Store
2 months ago

‘Robinson has not openly justified the riots, and both Goodwin and Murray have explicitly condemned them. But..’ BUY WHAT? The left endorsed, encouraged, celebrated left wing violence and still does. In America Kamala Harris supported bail. Progressive pundits claimed that looting as a kind of reparations. And this just in – Labour councillor calling for throats to be cut. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f575k1p-vUkThis is such a bunch of ****

Andrzej Wasniewski
Andrzej Wasniewski
2 months ago

Two tier policing is not about favor tp Muslims and minorities. It is about actively prosecuting people of any race and religion for opposing, in actions or speech, the multi culti, failed state.
The idea that the only people opposing invasion of the UK by illegal immigrants are white Britons only is the next stupid scam of teh state that will be exposed soon.

Johannes Kreisler
Johannes Kreisler
2 months ago

As far as i’m aware, everybody from our Central European quarters is standing firmly with the British people against 3rdworld mass immigration. Polak, Wegier, Czeski, Chorwacki, all of us who happen to be here.

Ruthven sweet
Ruthven sweet
2 months ago

One of the most sickening aspects of these riots is the classism. How gladly the middle class left and chattering classes deride white northern working class men as thick, toothless, and violent. But that apart, it’s the reluctance of the ‘shy right’, whose voices remain anonymous, active and loud on Unherd’s comment section, but deafeningly silent outside of the internet. We are very glad to let our northern working class brothers do the foot soldiering, while we sit on our arses in our managerial careers, perhaps even discussing the riots and nodding along with liberal colleagues scarcely voicing our own deeply held opinions for fear of offending in polite company. Too much cowardice. It’s why a genuine right movement will never take off in this country outside of street protest firms and ‘thuggery’.

John Tyler
John Tyler
2 months ago

The hypocritical behaviour of the government is astonishing. The man who took the knee in solidarity with violent rioters in Portland (USA) is now condemning violence on a smaller scale in our own country. The only difference is that the main rioters this time are “right wing thugs”. Why were charges against Islamists screaming for Jews to be raped and killed discreetly dropped? Why, for that matter, are the current “anti-racist” demonstrators praised when they are the same crew who march in London and elsewhere demanding the right of Palestinian terrorists to murder Jews. Or is that not racist? Why are anti-capitalist rioters so often described as protesters or activists? Where were the police when cities and motorways were brought to a standstill by green so-called activists?
Of course the extreme right are only too happy to highlight the different approaches to extremism. The left, not least through successive governments falling for the critical social-justice nonsense and multiculturalism, have sown division and discord. It’s coming back to bite us all in the arse!
It’s all very well the PM and Met chief saying that policing and the justice system are applied the same way across communities, but actions speak louder than words.The government and police need to be SEEN to be acting impartially and without fear of offending anyone.
Violence is wrong. The rioters should be stopped. So should those from the left wing, eco warriors, anti-racists and pro-terrorists who are violent, disruptive, threatening and incite violence. Three years sentence for some right-wing thug punching a policeman during a riot; good! More! More! But we’ve all seen equal violence leading to much lighter sentences for other groups.
When a large swathe of the population feel mistreated and marginalised in their multi-generational home it always leads, in the end, to pandemonium. If the current hypocritical approach does not change you can pretty much guarantee further trouble.

Vici C
Vici C
2 months ago

The situation, which affords prosperity to journalists, pundits and all forms of media, doesn’t need analysing, or relaying who said what to whom. It really is very simple: stop the boats (leave ECHR if ness.), cap immigration, and level up the North. Simples. We were promised weren’t we?

LindaMB
LindaMB
2 months ago
Reply to  Vici C

I suggested to my former Tory MP, that if the Tories could do any one of those, or even decriminalizing the BBC licence fee, -keep one of their election promises-they might swing votes back….crickets.

Dougie Undersub
Dougie Undersub
2 months ago

Communities can’t “come together” when some of them have no desire or intention to interact with people who aren’t like them.

michael harris
michael harris
2 months ago

A notable habit of the British Empire was moving large groups of people – often as indentured labourers – around the world. Many of these people were from (greater) India. And so Indians of various origins (Tamils, Gujaratis, Brahmins from the Ganges valley) were moved to East Africa, to Natal, to Fiji, to Trinidad, to Guyana. Where, after their indentures ended, they enjoyed very mixed fortunes and were, in Uganda, expelled.
The last more or less unreconstructed colony of the Empire is, of course, England. And population movement has been continued by the heirs of the old colonists to reshape the old country. Nothing new, then. Since the old manufacturing industries were let go and the working class that manned them replaced early on by immigrants and after the workers in industries that stayed traditionally local and unionised were beaten down in the Thatcher years that great mass, majority, of English people has been a defeated group, ruled over by blown up District Commissioners and Collectors, never more so than by Starmer and his committee.
Empire also survived by pitting one group against another. Communities! And while there were subject and beaten down groups there was always one that was feared. Afghans (Pathans) for instance, who had the finger on India well before the English came.
It’s clear in the last weeks who is feared by our District Commissioners and who can be kettled and imprisoned.
But it’s because of that fear, I think, that there is boastfulness, even a hint of cruelty, in the pronouncements of the PM and the DPP against the hitherto defeateds.

Adrian C
Adrian C
2 months ago

Agree with every liked comment – but these are only words what is the solution? our politicians won’t listen (or lie to gain power) there is no democratic resolution to mass immigration.

David Lindsay
David Lindsay
2 months ago

The two best things about Elon Musk’s fake Telegraph headline that Keir Starmer was going to send the rioters to the Falkland Islands are that people believed that the Telegraph might have printed it, and that people believed that Starmer might have been planning it.

Fascists? In their dreams. What do they think of Julius Evola, or of the most recent edition of Rivarol? To those on the Continent whom they flatter themselves are their counterparts, they need to explain why, at the mere suggestion that they might have faced any opposition, they decided to watch those counterdemonstrations on television instead.

Our governing party ordered its MPs to stay away from those events, which were vastly larger than anything that the other side had managed, and tried to tell everyone else to stay at home as well. The Government wanted 100 riots last night so that it could proceed with the assault on civil liberties that it had been planning all along, just as it had always planned to take away the winter fuel payment while keeping the two-child benefit cap. Its outriders are furious that the people whom they had driven out of the Labour Party, and those people’s allies, brought the People to the streets and took them back, thereby foiling their plot. Today, they have been trying to revive their favourite scam. But no one is listening anymore.

Will anyone listen to the “legitimate concerns” of the far more numerous people who have more recently taken to the streets? If not, why not? Why has the Labour whip not already been withdrawn from Sarah Edwards, from Alex Baker, and from Lauren Edwards, all examples of Starmer’s “high quality candidates”, unlike, say, Faiza Shaheen? At the very least, those three need to take one for the team. As do the Manchester Airport Police Officers, so that the Muslim base that the Police have successfully cultivated in the last 10 days should not be lost. In both cases, that’s politics.

Likewise, Reform UK needs to reconnect with, as much as anyone else, the great majority of its own supporters. YouGov has support for the riots at 21 per cent of them and nine per cent of Conservatives. Sympathy with the rioters’ views, 25 per cent and eight per cent. Thinking that the riots are justified, 33 per cent and 16 per cent. So not thinking that the riots are justified is running at 67 per cent even of Reform supporters and 84 per cent of Conservatives. Not in sympathy with the rioters’ views, 75 per cent and 92 per cent. Not in support of the riots, 79 per cent and 91 per cent. At -4, compared to +7 at the end of last month, Nigel Farage now has a negative approval rating among Leave voters for the first time ever. It was already -10 among Conservative voters, but it is now -27. His overall figure has fallen from -35 to -42. Reform and Farage have urgent work to do.

hey need to get behind the campaign to lift the two-child benefit cap while retaining the universal winter fuel payment for pensioners. The world’s sixth richest country could easily afford that without breaking Labour’s manifesto commitment not to raise income tax, National Insurance or VAT. The first part of it, for which Farage has already called and on which Reform has already abstained, is very much in line with the pronatalism with which Reform will be familiar from its ties to today’s American Republican Party, while the second is exactly what the British Right’s base is demanding.

But Reform needs to accept that the leadership was being provided by the Independent Left. Of the five MPs who were elected on that ticket, four are Muslims. Of the 12 who are now sitting as Left Independents, seven are Muslims. And by far the most famous Independent Left MP is the man with whom Farage needs to settle after having libelled him. Again, take one for the team.

Colin Bradley
Colin Bradley
2 months ago

Nothing new here really. Look back into the history of ascendance of fascism, neo-fascism and nazism in pre 1940 Europe and you’ll find plenty of examples of ultra right wing demagogues copying the socialist playbook. Hitler called his party a “national-socialist” party and Mussolini was a devout socialist until socialists themselves denounced him for his anti socialist behaviour. Franco’s falangist version of fascism had perhaps a slightly different perspective, but none of these movements could have got off the ground if they hadn’t been played out against a backdrop of world-wide economic recession where the crisis made already pre-existing social injustices stand out in bold relief. But to get the masses behind you, you have to concretise the explanation for their misery, and that normally involves finding a scapegoat to punish. Hitler showed us how to do that. Par excellence.
Rioting such as that we have seen in Britain the past week or so, only occurs in societies where people genuinely feel aggrieved due to unfair distribution of social goods; both of the material kind and also in terms of civilian rights like justice and equality before the law. Societies which operate from the standpoints of “few having too much and even fewer having too little”, “to each according to his need, from each according to his ability” and freedom of conscience and the right to speak freely, do not experience these kinds of riots. Britain has far too many people sinking below the poverty line, simultaneously with a privileged minority who grab untold wealth they never will be able to spend, with impunity.
Immigration if it really is as proposed “out of control” could be a problem or part of a problem needing to be addressed, but it is not THE problem. But right wing opportunism will always make it THE problem. Because that works. We’ve seen it succeed so many times in history. And it’s succeeding again.

Christopher Chantrill
Christopher Chantrill
2 months ago

I think that Simon Cottee is writing “esoterically” here. He is going along with ruling-class narrative while suggesting a hidden meaning that only smart kids like you and I can see.
If you can’t see the hidden meaning it means you are not part of the cognoscenti.

elaine chambers
elaine chambers
2 months ago

Puzzled as to how my post could be seen as spam!!!!