‘VIOLENT THUGGERY’

The following is an extract from Sir Kier Starmer’s speech to the Labour Party conference this week:

‘If we want home ownership to be a credible aspiration for our children, then every community has a duty to contribute to that purpose. If we want to tackle illegal migration seriously, we can’t pretend there’s a magical process that allows you to return people here unlawfully without accepting that process will also grant some people asylum. If we want to be serious about levelling up, then we must be proud to be the party of wealth creation. Unashamed to partner with the private sector…

And let me tell you something else I won’t let happen. I will never let a minority of violent, racist, thugs terrorise our communities.

Look, I have always accepted concerns about immigration are legitimate. It is – as point of fact – the policy of this government to reduce both net migration and our economic dependency upon it. I have never thought we should be relaxed about some sectors importing labour when there are millions of young people, ambitious and highly talented, who are desperate to work and contribute to their community. And trust me, there are plenty of examples of apprenticeship starts going down at the very same time that visa applications for the same skills are going up, and so we will get tough on this…

But Conference, whatever anyone thinks about immigration, I will never accept the argument made not just by the usual suspects, but by people who should have known better, who said that millions of people concerned about immigration are one and the same thing as the people who smashed up businesses. Who targeted mosques. Attempted to burn refugees. Scrawled racist graffiti over walls. Nazi salutes at the cenotaph. Attacked NHS nurses. And told people, with different coloured skin, people who contribute here, people who grew up here, that they should ‘go home’.

No Conference, people concerned about immigration were not doing that because they understand that this country, this democratic country, is built on the rule of law. The ballot box. The common understanding that we debate our differences. We do not settle them with violent thuggery. And racism is vile. And Conference, so to those who equivocate about this, I simply say – the country sees you and it rejects you.

And to those who say that the only way to love your country is to hate your neighbour because they look different, I say not only do we reject you, we know that you will never win. Because the British values we stand for, not just the rule of law, but a love for this country and our neighbours, the respect for difference under the same flag, that is stronger than bricks and you know it. It’s what you cannot stand about our country – our reasonable, tolerant country – but it is absolutely who we are.

No, the debate is not about the worth of migrants. That is toxic and we must move beyond it. It’s about control of migration. It’s always been about control. That is what people have voted for time and again. And look – they weren’t just ignored after Brexit, the Tories gave them the exact opposite: an immigration system deliberately reformed to reduce control – because, in the end, they are the party of the uncontrolled market.’

The only unproblematic part of that extract is the observation that the Tories deliberately adopted an open borders immigration policy (he worded it differently). The Tories are solely responsible for the immigration crisis the UK now faces. Labour are responsible for remedying that crisis, and it is clear from what Sir Keir Starmer said that he has no intention of doing so.

The comment about home ownership dodges the fact that the inflow of immigrants, both legal and illegal, is creating and worsening the housing shortage. This trend cannot be stopped, nor reversed, without stopping mass immigration.

The comment about having to grant people asylum if we want an agreement to return illegal immigrants from whence they came is nonsense. It is a feeble ruse to con people into allowing the EU to export illegal immigrants to the UK despite the fact that we are no longer in the EU. The asylum system is simply an organised crime racket and should be shut down. That might cause those growing fat on the system (lawyers, activists, people smugglers, as well as the asylum spoofers themselves) to complain loudly. But that is no excuse to continue funding organised crime and these malcontents will need to be faced down.

Sir Keir Starmer rightly points out the problem of cutting back on training and importing more immigrants to fill skilled places instead. The government does need to ‘get tough on this’.

While it is true that being ‘concerned about immigration’ is not the same as ‘violent thuggery’, neither is an allegation of racism sufficient to condemn the accused of guilt of ‘violent thuggery’. Yet in his speech, Sir Keir Starmer conflated racism with criminality. He did not explain what he meant by ‘the worth of migrants’, but pointing out that immigration comes at a cost is perfectly legitimate in a democracy even if politically-correct politicians denounce the issue as ‘toxic’. He might wish to confine the debate to one of how large the ‘net migration’ figure should be, but in a free society people are allowed to reject mass immigration – net or otherwise.

Further, the British public were aghast at the scale of immigration into the UK from the EU. They opposed mass immigration and colour did not come into it. It is true that ethnicity is an added factor and that immigration from the Third World poses additional problems. However, it is Sir Keir Starmer who brought skin colour into matters. As an observation, the rioting arose out of protests at the cruel murders of three children and the wounds inflicted on others. The police were being evasive and dishonest as to the background of the alleged murderer. This left room for rumours to circulate.

In his speech, Sir Keir Starmer sought to restrict the debate to being about net migration only, sought to smear those whose views he disagrees with, and, picking his words carefully, to imply that those who oppose mass immigration are criminal.