STEPHEN GLOVER: Sir Keir can promise harsh punishment. But unless he grasps the causes of these... (original) (raw)

Nothing quite like this has ever happened in this country before.

There have been previous race riots, to be sure. In 1958, white youths attacked West Indian homes in Notting Hill in London.

In 2001, there were racial disturbances in several northern towns and cities. The most serious was in Bradford after white thugs attacked Asian businesses. Some 300 police were injured, and as many people arrested.

That violence in Bradford was more explosive than anything we have seen in the past week in one place. What is probably unprecedented is the range of the present racial unrest – from Sunderland in the North-East to Hull on the East coast to Bristol in the West, and across the Irish Sea to Belfast.

This is alarming. It's also a challenge for a Government that assumed power a month ago today. Has Sir Keir Starmer risen to the occasion? I'm afraid not.

A man is detained by police officers as far-Right activists hold a demonstration in Middlesbrough

Violence escalates as protesters throw garbage bins on a fire outside a hotel in Rotherham

While the United Kingdom, or at least England, burned, the Prime Minister was at his country estate, Chequers, holding talks with ministers but not emerging to show leadership until yesterday afternoon. He's said to be planning a holiday.

Sir Keir's approach and that of the hectoring Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, has been to pledge an immediate crackdown on the rioters. The PM sounds like a bang-em-up-and-throw-the-key-away old-school Tory. It is a reasonable reaction – as far as it goes.

When people burn down shops (and in Liverpool a newly built library), throw rocks at police, knock one officer off his motorcycle, surround mosques, kick to the ground an apparently innocent black man in Manchester – well, the proper response of the authorities is a robust one.

Let there be round-the-clock courts, as there were during the largely non-racial disorder that swept London and other cities in 2011. Let the most egregious miscreants be packed off to prison, assuming cells can be found for them.

Yet there's something one-dimensional about the Government's approach, which is to threaten retribution and blame everything on the far-Right. This is not very intelligent because it takes no account of underlying causes or the feelings of ordinary people.

When the 2011 riots began in Tottenham, North London, sparked off after the police shot dead a black Briton called Mark Duggan, the local MP was sensible. Having appealed for calm, he said that 'true justice can only follow a thorough investigation of the facts'.

That MP was David Lammy, now Foreign Secretary. His point was that people don't take to the streets for no reason. When the disturbance is over and the perpetrators have been carted off, intelligent politicians concern themselves with the causes.

In the midst of unrest it may be asking a lot to expect this Government to pose deeper questions. This is not the moment for a detailed post mortem. Yet it would be cheering if there were some clue that Sir Keir and Ms Cooper had the slightest inkling that this is more than a simple law and order issue.

While the United Kingdom burned, the Prime Minister was at his country estate, Chequers, holding talks with ministers but not emerging to show leadership, writes Stephen Glover

Asylum seekers watch scenes unfold as the protests continue outside their hotel

By all means blame social media, on which it was falsely claimed (with the help of a foreign news website with Russian links) that the man who murdered three children and injured others in Southport last Monday was a recent illegal immigrant called Ali Al-Shakati.

(The misinformation isn't all on one side. Nick Lowles – a leading light in Starmer's circle and head of the anti-racist campaigning body Hope Not Hate – referred in a tweet last week to a report that acid had been thrown at a Muslim woman in Middlesbrough. Police found no trace of this incident.)

By all means, point the finger at the bovver boys of the far-Right, and leaders such as Tommy Robinson, who has been stirring up racial hatred as he enjoys a holiday in Cyprus.

But any analysis of the unrest that concentrates on social media and the pernicious influence of the far-Right is bound to be defective unless it also addresses deeper questions. The PM's statement yesterday from Downing Street added nothing to what he had already said, which is that in his opinion 'far-Right thuggery' is to blame.

Some disturbances – such as the one in Whitehall last Wednesday – have been dominated by thugs who are professional troublemakers. But the participants at others have included white working-class people who are fed up with the effects of uncontrolled immigration in their communities.

The local police chief in Hartlepool, where there was disorder, said that of the first 11 people arrested most were local. Even the BBC's Mark Easton – whose lack of interest in causes seems to mirror that of the Government – conceded that hundreds of ordinary people, including children, were present while there was rioting in Sunderland.

Easton found this 'very troubling', as of course it is. We can easily dismiss hefty, shaven-headed blokes who battle with the police as representatives of the far-Right. It's not so easy if some of the protesters are normal people not in the habit of taking to the streets.

Unless the Prime Minister can show that he understands the concerns of abandoned communities, perilous times lie ahead, writes Stephen Glover

Easton, by the way, delivered a lecture on BBC1's News At Ten last Friday, reproving those who believed that violent crime had gone up. He assured us that it has gone down. This is not the experience of many people. It's also a strange thing to say after three young girls have been stabbed to death, and at a time of so much knife crime.

I fear that Sir Keir Starmer and Yvette Cooper are similarly removed from the feelings of frustration that many people have about uncontrolled immigration.

And yet one of their close colleagues is not, or was not. In September 2016 Rachel Reeves – now Chancellor, then a backbencher who had refused to serve in Jeremy Corbyn's shadow cabinet – presciently said that Britain could 'explode' into rioting if immigration wasn't curbed after the Brexit vote. There were 'bubbling tensions'.

Ms Reeves was, and is, an MP for a Leeds constituency, and may not see the world through the metropolitan lens employed by our London- centric Prime Minister.

Alas, immigration wasn't controlled after Brexit. The Tories allowed it to soar to record levels before belatedly seeing the error of their ways. This was the major reason why Reform UK won over four million votes in the election – about 60 per cent of the amount achieved by the Conservative Party.

Nothing that Labour has said suggests it will fare any better in restricting immigration. In fact, I fear it will do worse. Having scrapped the Tories' admittedly flawed Rwanda plan, it has no plausible policy to reduce illegal immigrants coming across the Channel. Numbers are already climbing.

As for legal immigration – which has been running at more than ten times the rate of the illegal variety – Labour has refused to set any kind of target. Without measures designed to bring down numbers, they are bound to remain high.

Sir Keir can agree with Yvette Cooper that the punishment of rioters must be swift and harsh. He can inveigh against the 'far-Right' as much as he likes. But unless he understands the causes behind the riots, and determines to do something about them, there will be more racial strife.

Britain actually has remarkably good race relations. But they are being jeopardised by a cavalier attitude towards mass immigration exemplified by the Tories and now carried on, seemingly with even more abandon, by Labour. Rachel Reeves's warning is being ignored.

After the Southport atrocity, Sir Keir reassured Muslims: 'I will take every step possible to keep you safe.' That was fine. Many Muslims, whose rights must be upheld as much as everyone else's, are understandably frightened.

But many white people (and not just white) also wait for reassurance from the Prime Minister that he will look after them too and protect their communities from the consequences of mass immigration.

They believe with good reason that the police can be harder on them than on protesting Muslims – witness the video, shown even by the BBC, in which a police officer addressed a Muslim crowd outside a mosque in Stoke-on-Trent: 'If there are any weapons, get rid of them. We're not going to make any arrests.'

Does Sir Keir Starmer regard the white working class as – to borrow Hillary Clinton's awful phrase – 'deplorables' whose motives should be demonised? Is he a narrow Lefty lawyer? Or is he a broadminded statesman who cares about the whole country?

On the basis of the past week I can't say I am optimistic. Unless the Prime Minister can show that he understands the concerns of abandoned communities, perilous times lie ahead.