Some issues have been neglected for so long that it only takes a single spark for everything to go up in flames.
Now, every summer, Canada is gripped by wildfires. Some exploit the disasters to promote an agenda, arguing that they are a surefire sign of climate change and ignoring that the lack of environmentally unsound controlled burning is the real culprit. The same could be said of the riots that have swept Britain since three children were murdered in Southport at a day camp by a 17-year-old British man of Rwandan origin.
The British government has long known that the migration issue was out of control, and newly elected Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer has found the culprit. It is the “far right” British who are “targeting” Muslim and “other minority communities”. Because whoever, on their way to do some shopping in Mayfair, never tires of passing by its “Nazi salutes in the street” as they stretch their arms between beatings they give to police officers, as Starmer suggests.
O “far right” is for these riots what “Climate Change” is for forest fires: a politically useful pretext to divert attention from the persistent neglect of the political class.
It’s not as if the average Brit is buying Starmer’s gaslighting. In fact, Starmer himself owes his recent election victory to the rising popularity of the right, with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party eating significantly into the popular vote of the centre-right Conservatives last month. These are voters who feel that Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives didn’t go far enough in an election where “immigration and asylum” was the second most important issue for voters (after cost of living), according to a YouGov Poll. When nearly a fifth of your population just told pollsters that the issue of immigration dictates their vote, it’s probably a dumb idea to get in front of them and suggest that the real problem is those who are just imagining this is a real problem because they’re a bunch of racists.
It probably doesn’t help that the British man accused in this particular attack is of Rwandan origin, when Rwanda has been all over the UK headlines for former Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s plan to deport asylum seekers there – a move that Starmer has now called off. Much has been made in the Western press of all the erroneous claims circulating in the initial wake of the attack, suggesting that the alleged perpetrator was himself an asylum seeker. The fog of war always thickens around breaking news, particularly online. But what’s the real argument here? That the guy isn’t actually a migrant, so people should calm down? Is that all right then, because this single case, on closer inspection, doesn’t meet the criteria for what the establishment considers to be a legitimate expression of anger?
Further complicating the matter is the fact that Southport itself was for a long time described by locals as a festering cesspool of crime, drugs and violence, where teenagers seem to be out of control. High Parkers Drug Gang The crime that has plagued the area does not appear to have a visible minority in sight among its photographs, but several things can be true at once without being mutually exclusive. Southport clearly has a long-standing, documented crime problem. Crime is not committed exclusively by minorities. The suspect is of minority origin in this case. The UK has a migration problem that transcends this single incident, but which it clearly served to catalyze. And not everyone who is evoking the problem within the convenient context this incident provides is just a racist idiot.
While every protest or riot is an opportunity for special interests to exploit, that doesn’t mean there aren’t also legitimate underlying issues that desperately need addressing. How hard would it have been for Starmer to acknowledge all of these realities instead of just covering it all up by trying to make people believe there’s no real problem anywhere here other than the “far right”?
Current science would like to have a say. According to data from the University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory Published in June 2024, “net migration was unusually high in 2023, at 685,000, driven by a rise in non-EU citizens arriving in the UK” what it was “well above pre-pandemic estimates of 200,000 and 300,000.” The researchers highlighted that government data “tells us little about who is coming and going or what their impacts are.” It seems that this is for local residents to experience and perceive, and for politicians like Starmer to conveniently manipulate.
Oxford also reports that the number of migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats was around 12,600 at the start of this year, 16% more than during the same period in 2023, with the vast majority being from Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Iran and Albania. How terribly bad is the British government at controlling the situation? Worse than the African country they tried to outsource to. “Nationals of Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen had a 0% success rate in claims processed by Rwanda from 2020 to 2022. In contrast, in the UK over the same period, success rates were 74% for Afghans, 98% for Syrians and 40% for Yemenis,” according to Oxford.
Officials were caught by the British press last year plotting to send migrants across the Channel to Ascension Island if they weren’t allowed to dump them in Rwanda. We’re talking about one of the most isolated places in the world – a British overseas territory that’s part of the same chain of islands where the British exiled French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte so he couldn’t plan a return after losing the Battle of Waterloo. Who needs cruise lines when you can just ditch your papers and have the UK government ship you around the world, courtesy of the British taxpayer?
It’s not bad policy at all when the UK runs out of affordable places to house migrants who manage to cross the Channel from France. They set up a barge called the Bibby Stockholm off the Dorset coast to house hundreds of migrants, from where they could travel back and forth to the coast and enjoy excursions and all sorts of activities, including sports. But not swimming. NGOs like Care4Calais have blocked transfers of migrants to the barge, claiming it’s inhumane because some migrants don’t want anything to do with water or boats because they’ve seen people drown on the boat ride. One Conservative MP said they could simply “Go back to France.” Maybe they did! “Refugee Olympic Team” was recently spotted floating down the Seine during the Paris Olympic Ceremony. Or maybe France is just sending them back.
Jokes aside, establishment politicians pretend to be open and welcoming towards migrants as a way of differentiating themselves from the far-right populists they blame for everything, but at the same time, they know the general public is getting fed up. So what’s the solution? Simply call the entire public far-right populists, apparently.
Finding other countries to serve as a giant carpet to sweep up the results of their bad policies seems like a pretty strong clue that things are way out of control. The latest riots are yet another symptom of that, and like a Canadian wildfire, maybe it all has to burn down for the establishment to really wake up. But probably not before they try to throw water everywhere but the actual flame, and use it all as a pretext to implement the kind of security state that is typically attributed to that pesky ‘suspect’.far right’.
The statements, opinions and views expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.