Farage talks about “something going wrong in our once beautiful country”. Yes, something is going wrong with this country, it is grifters like him, aided and abetted by the hard right media, who for years have sown the seeds of hate and division for personal and political gain.
However, it is vital that ALL politicians counter the lies being peddled by the hard right and not stay silent for perceived political gain. It is not enough just not to be racist, we must be actively anti-racist.
Of course, the thuggery we are seeing on our streets must be dealt with, but we need to do far more than that. Johnson and his ilk let the xenophobia genie out of the bottle during the Brexit campaign, and it may well take a generation to fix. However, I do not hear enough politicians talking about the huge benefits immigration has brought to the UK, both culturally as well as being the bedrock of our institutions such as the NHS.
I despise Farage, who does not give a toss about the UK or the communities where he lights the blue touch paper. He is the worst of us and certainly no patriot. However, it is the responsibility of all politicians not to normalise the rhetoric from the hard right, otherwise they have won anyway.
We need more empathy and compassion in our politics, but too often there has either been complicit silence, or a willingness to appease the hard right by talking tough on immigration using toned-down but similar rhetoric.
You cannot appease the far right, they will always demand more, and by attempting to appease them you just hand them the narrative. Let’s be clear, the violence we are seeing on our streets is on Farage, Johnson, the Daily Mail and GB News and ‘influencers’ such as Tate and Musk, but by seeking to pacify the far right, it pains me to say it Labour must bear a degree of responsibility too.
2017 tweet
The new Labour government must be tough on the rioters and it is deeply disappointing that the sentences handed out to date are far more lenient than those given to the climate protesters. However, rather than just seeking to be more efficient at dealing with immigration than the previous Conservative government, we must seize the narrative and promote the significant benefits that immigration has brought to the UK as well as providing safe routes for those seeking asylum.
Further, we must robustly counter the lies of the far right that immigration rather than austerity is the cause of the malaise endured by many communities across the UK.
While free speech must be defended, there must be consequences for people who deliberately spread disinformation.
My response to the attack in Southport. pic.twitter.com/CCyjKpC7aQ — Nigel Farage MP (@Nigel_Farage) July 30, 2024
Farage drip feeding misinformation in a 30th July tweet just before the riots in Southport
I fear the damage has already been done, and we have a significant challenge on our hands. If Labour fails to turn the country around, the threat of a populist alternative looms large and the same voting system that gave Labour a landslide majority on a minority vote could potentially hand power to a hard-right administration.
Farage and others have drip fed their bile into our society for years and the result is a polarised society, fed on the algorithms of social media. We all have a role to play in fixing it and challenging racism whenever we find it. The stakes could not be higher. Silence is complicity.
Julian Vaughan
7th August 2024
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