A years-long tale of xenophobic scapegoating in the UK
Last summer Simon Childs reported on a series of racist and xenophobic riots around the UK. It was the culmination of years of anti-immigrant rhetoric in the press and from across the political spectrum.
Luke O’Neil
Rioters have smashed the windows of hotels housing asylum seekers and attempted to set them on fire. They have rampaged around a non-white residential area smashing windows. They have formed vigilante traffic checkpoints and asked drivers if they are white before letting them pass. They have dragged an Asian driver out of his car and smashed it up. A former anti-terror police chief has said that some of the violence could be classified as terrorism. Not to mention the videos of people casually using racist slurs on streets up and down the country.
Today he joins us again to write about the somehow still increasing anti-immigrant sentiment and further shift to the right from Labour and Keir Starmer.
A years-long tale of xenophobic scapegoating in the UK
by Simon Childs
It has been less than a year since England erupted into horrifying race riots that saw hotels housing migrants set on fire and mosques attacked. With a new, ostensibly left wing government now in command of a decent parliamentary majority, you might have hoped that this would mark something of a turning point. One where politicians became determined to articulate a more positive vision of a multiracial country in which everyone can prosper. Instead we’ve come to just the latest grim chapter in a years-long tale of xenophobic scapegoating and possibly a precursor to something even worse hurtling towards us at frightening speed.
For years politicians have blamed migrants as the cause of Britain’s problems, all while encouraging migration to stimulate the economy. Now the economy sucks, migrants are still coming and resentment is boiling over.
On Monday prime minister Keir Starmer made a speech in which he claimed that migration makes us an “island of strangers” and pledged to make net migration fall. In striking language he announced a raft of anti-migrant policies, declaring that a “squalid chapter” of British history which saw migration increase is over. The similarities with the infamous “rivers of blood” speech by Enoch Powell – a Conservative politician from the post-war era beloved by racists – have seen Starmer christened “Enuch Powell” in my left wing corner of the internet.
Starmer hasn’t always spoken like this about immigrants. “We must never accept the Tory or media narrative that often scapegoats and demonises migrants,” he wrote in 2020. “Problems of low pay, housing and public services are not caused by migrants – they are caused by a failed economic model.”
He's right about that. Or was at the time.