The Biggest Question for Britain

And why it needs an answer, quickly

In the wake of the UK General Election, after I had had written a dissection of the results, I wanted to write a more thoughtful piece about what the campaign and the results tell us. As I took the time to read and research — barely a month into Keir Starmer’s reign — the racist riots began in the wake of the stabbing of three young girls in Southport. This made what I was writing feel all the more urgent, but, equally, the sort of thing I wanted to take more time to consider, rather than write another ill-informed, reactionary opinion blurted out online.

These riots did not come out of the blue. For decades racist sentiment has been whipped up, specifically targeting non-white communities (especially migrants) by self-promoting bigots like Nick Griffin, Tommy Robinson and Nigel Farage. They were then platformed by the media, featuring them wherever possible, legitimising their terrible opinions and in the case of Farage, even rehabilitating his public persona with a game show. Their rhetoric was adopted not just by the national press but by the UK government too, who consistently used dog-whistle, racist talking points about immigration to distract from their appalling record in power. With Reform UK’s (one of the many names for Farage’s ongoing political project) success in dethroning the Conservative…