Speaking on a visit to Germany, Keir Starmer expressed concern at the growing threat from far-right groups, calling on progressive political parties across Europe to collaborate to deal with the shared challenge (The Euractiv).
Starmer’s comments follow widespread anti-immigrant riots earlier this month. The disturbances were sparked by a deadly knife attack on a children’s dance class. This was then followed by false claims that the attacker was a Muslim asylum seeker.
Starmer said populism would be defeated by making people better off, promising that life in Britain would improve before the end of his first term
“We should be alive in the UK to the challenge of the far right and populism and nationalism,” he told reporters. “There are a number of reasons for my concern, partly what’s happening in the UK, partly what you can see happening in other European countries, including in France and in Germany.”
In contrast to recent gains by the far right in Europe and in Germany, where the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany has reported a surge in membership, Starmer’s centre-left Labour Party won a landslide election victory in early July. However, the anti-immigration riots have already created his first major crisis.
Since the rioting began, British police have arrested more than 1,160 people.
Starmer has pledged to tackle the far-right and the “snake oil of populism and nationalism” Contrasting himself with these forces, Starmer promised to be honest about the country’s problems and how to solve them.
This task has proved difficult given the UK’s challenging economic and political situation, characterised by taxes and deteriorating public services. Just this Tuesday, Starmer warned that his government’s budget statement in October would be “painful”, asking people to accept “short-term pain for long-term good”.
Worth reading in full.
Despite Starmer’s international posturing, his recent clamp down on free speech is deeply worrying. Since the beginning of August, we’ve witnessed the greatest assault on free speech in this country since Oliver Cromwell passed a law banning all theatrical performances in 1642.
In the wake of the civil unrest that spread across the UK following the murder of three children in Southport, Sir Keir Starmer has blamed ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’ on social media for whipping up violence and urged the authorities to prosecute people for saying supposedly inflammatory things online.
As a result, a man who has been sent to jail for 18 months for sharing something “offensive” that someone else said on Facebook, another man was sent down for three years for posting “anti-Establishment rhetoric” and a third man was jailed for 18 months for chanting “Who the f*** is Allah?”.
Stephen Parkinson, the Director of Public Prosecutions, has even warned that people sharing footage of the riots online may be prosecuted. “People might think they’re not doing anything harmful, they are, and the consequences will be visited upon them,” he said.
This threatening language is more reminiscent of a tin-pot dictatorship than the birthplace of parliamentary democracy and it has unleashed a wave of terror across the country, with hundreds of thousands of people now worried that they may be sent to prison for posting something un-PC online.
This has to stop.
We need to remind the Prime Minister, a former human rights lawyer, that free speech is the most important human right of all because without it we wouldn’t be able to defend any of the others.
If you’re concerned about the Prime Minister’s assault on free speech, please use our campaigning tool (here) to write to your local MP, using our template letter.
Completing the form is a simple, fast process that can have a significant impact. We’ve even provided a template to help, but feel free to personalise it – and make sure you write in your name, address and email address at the foot of the letter (in addition to filling out the boxes requesting the same).
Your voice matters and it’s vital that you make it heard.
