UK Elections 2024: Starmer Has Cast Minorities Aside To Pander To Bigotry
By Peter Oborne
By Peter Oborne
July 4, 2024
Source: Middle East Eye
In a betrayal of progressive politics, Labour has run a racist campaign. At a time when Britons are desperate for principled leadership, it has been a disgraceful spectacle.
At the height of this election campaign, UK Labour Party leader Keir Starmer promised he would “clean up” politics to “ensure the highest standards of integrity and honesty”.
An admirable ambition. But what a peculiar way of setting about it.
Starmer has fought one of the ugliest and most scurrilous election campaigns I can remember in 30 years of covering Westminster.
Tory Zac Goldsmith’s attempt to become London mayor eight years ago has gone down in history as one of the most Islamophobic election campaigns of all time.
Starmer’s campaign has been even nastier. In a betrayal of progressive politics the Labour leader has turned ruthlessly on minorities.
Last week, Labour weaponised the plight of Bangladesh migrants. “At the moment,” Starmer told the Sun newspaper’s Election Showdown debate, “people coming from countries like Bangladesh are not being removed, because they’re not being processed.”
After a row blew up, he told ATN Bangla, a Bangladeshi TV station, that he meant no offence and that he only mentioned Bangladesh because good British/Bangladeshi relations happened to be “front of mind”.
Labour’s record of racism
I don’t believe Starmer’s protestation that he referred to Bangladeshi migrants by chance.
On the same day as Starmer’s outburst, shadow cabinet minister Jonathan Ashworth used exactly the same phrase when he told the BBC that Labour would send migrants “from countries like Bangladesh or wherever” back to their countries of origin.
As an experienced political reporter, I know how political campaigns work. Party strategists prepare grids which set out, on a daily basis, where the party leaders will go and what subjects they plan to highlight.
It feels too much of a coincidence that Starmer used exactly the same language as Ashworth – on the day when our likely future prime minister was meeting the right-wing Sun. This felt pre-meditated to me. To invoke Oscar Wilde’s famous line: “To lose one parent, Mr Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”
All the more so because Starmer’s Labour already has a record of racism against Muslim and Black voters.
Remember when a party “source” told the BBC they believed Labour was on course to lose the West Midlands mayoralty vote as a result of the “Middle East not West Midlands” and called Hamas the “real villains”?
Or the Labour Party briefing following the May council election that described Muslim councillors leaving Labour over Gaza as “shaking off the fleas”? Or the shocking treatment of Faiza Shaheen, removed from the candidates list at the last moment without warning or chance of appeal.
The equivocation around Diane Abbott, Britain’s first Black female MP, at the start of the campaign, falls into the same pattern.
As does the grotesque treatment of Muslim Labour members, as exposed in Al Jazeera’s The Labour Files, including evidence of a secret dossier that was used to disenfranchise approximately 5,000 largely Muslim Labour members, who were accused of trying to “infiltrate” the party in the London borough of Newham.
Imagine comparable evidence surrounding Jewish members surfacing during the Corbyn era. The roof would have fallen in. Rightly so.
Labour has denied accusations of racism, but the accusations gained credibility when Martin Forde published his 2022 report into antisemitism and other forms of discrimination inside Labour. Forde identified a “hierarchy of racism”, including “serious problems of discrimination”.
The Labour Files, essential for any serious understanding of Starmer’s Labour Party, were completely ignored in the mainstream media. It is easy enough to guess why. The Murdoch media empire and its rivals share the same contempt for British Muslims that Al Jazeera exposed at the heart of the Labour Party.
Facilitating Farage
The common bigotry uniting British mass media and the Starmer camp helps explain many features of the Labour campaign that otherwise make little or no sense coming from a so-called progressive political movement.
Starmer’s silence over the repellent anti-Muslim bigotry from Nigel Farage after he took over the leadership of Reform is one example. One would have expected a magisterial denunciation from a future prime minister. It was not forthcoming.
One shocking case study concerns Clacton, the Essex constituency where Farage is standing for parliament. One would have expected Labour to have fought as hard as it could to stop Farage from winning.
In fact, the opposite is the case. According to a report in the Guardian, sources from the local campaign in Clacton said “it had been banned from printing leaflets, blocked from using campaigning software and had access to the campaign’s social media overridden, with posts deleted on X”.
The Guardian reported that the official Labour candidate, Jovan Owusu-Nepaul, had been ordered to down tools, leave Clacton, and campaign in the West Midlands.
The newspaper quoted one Labour activist, Tracey Lewis, who quit the constituency Labour Party in the wake of that deployment. “I’m a lifelong Labour supporter,” she said, “… but if they can’t put a fight up against Nigel Farage, then who are they fighting for?”
Last night the Voice newspaper – which speaks for British-Caribbean people – commented that Labour “had a chance to rally around its candidate, a young Black man under the age of thirty – a rarity in politics.
“Others, however, will likely interpret Labour’s dropping of Jovan Owusu-Nepaul as Starmer pandering to the very thing he should be fighting – racism – worried about strongly backing a confident anti-racist Black candidate, in the eyes of racists. We saw this with the handling of Diane Abbott.”
To sum up: Keir Starmer’s Labour Party is running a racist election, while facilitating the election of far-right Farage as a Reform MP. Labour has thrown Muslim voters overboard in what looks to me like a deliberate strategy to pander to bigotry.
This is so desperately sad.
Starmer is poised to win the general election on 4 July. The Tory government, one of the worst in British history, richly deserves to be thrown out.
Millions of ordinary, decent people yearn for a more competent and principled government.
Yet Starmer has chosen to fight a cynical and dirty battle, targeting some of the most vulnerable people in our country while appeasing the resurgent far-right.
These tactics bring disgrace both on the Labour Party and on Starmer himself.
In a betrayal of progressive politics, Labour has run a racist campaign. At a time when Britons are desperate for principled leadership, it has been a disgraceful spectacle.
At the height of this election campaign, UK Labour Party leader Keir Starmer promised he would “clean up” politics to “ensure the highest standards of integrity and honesty”.
An admirable ambition. But what a peculiar way of setting about it.
Starmer has fought one of the ugliest and most scurrilous election campaigns I can remember in 30 years of covering Westminster.
Tory Zac Goldsmith’s attempt to become London mayor eight years ago has gone down in history as one of the most Islamophobic election campaigns of all time.
Starmer’s campaign has been even nastier. In a betrayal of progressive politics the Labour leader has turned ruthlessly on minorities.
Last week, Labour weaponised the plight of Bangladesh migrants. “At the moment,” Starmer told the Sun newspaper’s Election Showdown debate, “people coming from countries like Bangladesh are not being removed, because they’re not being processed.”
After a row blew up, he told ATN Bangla, a Bangladeshi TV station, that he meant no offence and that he only mentioned Bangladesh because good British/Bangladeshi relations happened to be “front of mind”.
Labour’s record of racism
I don’t believe Starmer’s protestation that he referred to Bangladeshi migrants by chance.
On the same day as Starmer’s outburst, shadow cabinet minister Jonathan Ashworth used exactly the same phrase when he told the BBC that Labour would send migrants “from countries like Bangladesh or wherever” back to their countries of origin.
As an experienced political reporter, I know how political campaigns work. Party strategists prepare grids which set out, on a daily basis, where the party leaders will go and what subjects they plan to highlight.
It feels too much of a coincidence that Starmer used exactly the same language as Ashworth – on the day when our likely future prime minister was meeting the right-wing Sun. This felt pre-meditated to me. To invoke Oscar Wilde’s famous line: “To lose one parent, Mr Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”
All the more so because Starmer’s Labour already has a record of racism against Muslim and Black voters.
Remember when a party “source” told the BBC they believed Labour was on course to lose the West Midlands mayoralty vote as a result of the “Middle East not West Midlands” and called Hamas the “real villains”?
Or the Labour Party briefing following the May council election that described Muslim councillors leaving Labour over Gaza as “shaking off the fleas”? Or the shocking treatment of Faiza Shaheen, removed from the candidates list at the last moment without warning or chance of appeal.
The equivocation around Diane Abbott, Britain’s first Black female MP, at the start of the campaign, falls into the same pattern.
As does the grotesque treatment of Muslim Labour members, as exposed in Al Jazeera’s The Labour Files, including evidence of a secret dossier that was used to disenfranchise approximately 5,000 largely Muslim Labour members, who were accused of trying to “infiltrate” the party in the London borough of Newham.
Imagine comparable evidence surrounding Jewish members surfacing during the Corbyn era. The roof would have fallen in. Rightly so.
Labour has denied accusations of racism, but the accusations gained credibility when Martin Forde published his 2022 report into antisemitism and other forms of discrimination inside Labour. Forde identified a “hierarchy of racism”, including “serious problems of discrimination”.
The Labour Files, essential for any serious understanding of Starmer’s Labour Party, were completely ignored in the mainstream media. It is easy enough to guess why. The Murdoch media empire and its rivals share the same contempt for British Muslims that Al Jazeera exposed at the heart of the Labour Party.
Facilitating Farage
The common bigotry uniting British mass media and the Starmer camp helps explain many features of the Labour campaign that otherwise make little or no sense coming from a so-called progressive political movement.
Starmer’s silence over the repellent anti-Muslim bigotry from Nigel Farage after he took over the leadership of Reform is one example. One would have expected a magisterial denunciation from a future prime minister. It was not forthcoming.
One shocking case study concerns Clacton, the Essex constituency where Farage is standing for parliament. One would have expected Labour to have fought as hard as it could to stop Farage from winning.
In fact, the opposite is the case. According to a report in the Guardian, sources from the local campaign in Clacton said “it had been banned from printing leaflets, blocked from using campaigning software and had access to the campaign’s social media overridden, with posts deleted on X”.
The Guardian reported that the official Labour candidate, Jovan Owusu-Nepaul, had been ordered to down tools, leave Clacton, and campaign in the West Midlands.
The newspaper quoted one Labour activist, Tracey Lewis, who quit the constituency Labour Party in the wake of that deployment. “I’m a lifelong Labour supporter,” she said, “… but if they can’t put a fight up against Nigel Farage, then who are they fighting for?”
Last night the Voice newspaper – which speaks for British-Caribbean people – commented that Labour “had a chance to rally around its candidate, a young Black man under the age of thirty – a rarity in politics.
“Others, however, will likely interpret Labour’s dropping of Jovan Owusu-Nepaul as Starmer pandering to the very thing he should be fighting – racism – worried about strongly backing a confident anti-racist Black candidate, in the eyes of racists. We saw this with the handling of Diane Abbott.”
To sum up: Keir Starmer’s Labour Party is running a racist election, while facilitating the election of far-right Farage as a Reform MP. Labour has thrown Muslim voters overboard in what looks to me like a deliberate strategy to pander to bigotry.
This is so desperately sad.
Starmer is poised to win the general election on 4 July. The Tory government, one of the worst in British history, richly deserves to be thrown out.
Millions of ordinary, decent people yearn for a more competent and principled government.
Yet Starmer has chosen to fight a cynical and dirty battle, targeting some of the most vulnerable people in our country while appeasing the resurgent far-right.
These tactics bring disgrace both on the Labour Party and on Starmer himself.
The Media’s Election: Big Up Farage And Don’t Mention The War
The media’s election coverage has shown an outsize interest in Nigel Farage and Reform UK and a lack of interest in scrutinising power and addressing key issues, argues Des Freedman
By Des Freedman
The media’s election coverage has shown an outsize interest in Nigel Farage and Reform UK and a lack of interest in scrutinising power and addressing key issues, argues Des Freedman
By Des Freedman
July 4, 2024
Source: Counterfire
Gage Skidmore - Nigel Farage. Flickr.
Despite having no MPs at this time, the Reform leader has received significantly more airtime and column inches than his counterparts in the smaller parties. According to researchers at Loughborough University, Farage ‘has confirmed his position as the clear alternative party voice to the two main contenders’, eclipsing all other challengers. Meanwhile, Reform UK has earned 10% of overall press quotations compared to 2% for the Lib Dems with ‘the Greens, SNP and Plaid Cymru collectively accounting for less than 1% of quotation time’. This obsession with Farage has served only to normalise right-wing arguments on immigration and the economy and to further marginalise candidates with progressive ideas.
In terms of content, the media are overwhelmingly preoccupied with the ‘horse race’ aspect of the election – reporting on opinion polls, PR strategies and TV debates – rather than holding parties to account in relation to a broad set of policies. The Loughborough researchers found that coverage of the ‘electoral process’ has taken up 35% of all coverage on TV and in newspapers since the start of the campaign. Adding in stories on corruption, scandals and sleaze (such as the recent betting scandal that has plagued the Tories) and you find that 42% of all coverage is related to ‘process’ more than substantive policy debate.
The only policy issue that even gets into double figures is that of taxation, at 11% of total coverage. However, much of this, at least in the press, is due to outrageous claims, for example, that Labour is devising ’17 ways to come after your cash’ or that there is a secret Labour plan for a wealth tax. If only.
In reality, there is a complete consensus on fiscal austerity (and an implicit understanding that both main parties will make spending cuts should they win) and Labour has long made it clear that it has no intention to make the wealthiest pay more. Little wonder that in recent days both the Financial Times and the Economist have come out in support of Labour at the polls, as the party best placed to support business.
Media silences
So what are the media not talking about? Despite the crisis in funding together with its central place in British life, health provision and the NHS account for only 5% of coverage, while stories on the environment and climate change make up a staggeringly small 2% of the total. Such has been the paucity of coverage of policies to cut back on investment in fossil fuels and the need to move fast to net zero that the Green Party actually complained to the BBC accusing it of failing to cover the ‘most important issue of our times’.
Gaza, a pressing issue for millions of people, has also been virtually non-existent. According to the Loughborough researchers, issues of ‘defence/military/security/ terrorism’ account for 3% of total coverage, though much of this has simply focused on plans to increase defence spending or the competition between Labour and Tories about who is more pro-Nato.
As SNP MP Tommy Shepherd wrote in the Daily Record, there has been a ‘deafening silence when it comes to the conflict in Gaza’ during the election. ‘It has got little or no mention, and you can’t help but think it’s deliberate.’ High-profile interviews with Keir Starmer in the Guardian, for example ones by Pippa Crerar and Charlotte Edwardes have singularly failed even to ask basic questions about the Labour leader’s disastrous failure on Gaza.
Indeed, one of the main absences in election coverage has been the lack of systematic and independent scrutiny of Starmer and Labour. Of course, there is still no end of shrill scaremongering from the right-wing press and the requisite Boris Johnson article in the Mail that ‘Keir Starmer would be the most dangerous and Left-wing prime minister since the 1970s’.
Apart from this kind of nonsense, few journalists have taken the time to look at Labour’s growing links with big business and support from ‘prominent former Tory backers’ such as Lord Salisbury, billionaire John Caudwell and hedge-fund manager Martin Taylor. Labour, as Peter Geoghegan puts it, ‘is now Britain’s big money party’.
Such has been the absence of detailed reporting on Labour’s proposed policies and partnerships that the veteran political journalist Michael Crick tweeted:
‘In two to three years time, when Starmer and his government are no doubt deeply unpopular, I hope we in the media will ask ourselves: “Why were we so supine during the long 2024 election; why didn’t we hold Labour properly to account while we could, and ask more probing questions, and explore their records, rather than give them such an easy ride?”.’
There are a few isolated exceptions. There is a story in the FT that focuses on Starmer’s acceptance of £76,000 worth of free football tickets, concerts and clothing but, interestingly, it fails to mention the huge amounts of money donated to Labour from pro-Israel lobbyists since Starmer took over from Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader. Similarly, a Guardian story about the return to Labour of ‘mega donors’ simply glosses over the issue of politicians being captured by big business and presents Labour as vastly more transparent and honest than the Tories.
Failing media
What we have really had during the course of the campaign is a plethora of puff pieces on Labour. Many journalists, aware that they will be dealing with a Labour prime minister from 5 July, appear all too happy to cosy up to senior Labour figures.
So we have had a very upbeat profile of shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves in the Guardian arguing that, despite her free-market commitment, she ‘carries little ideological baggage’. There is a rather sickening Guardian interview with Starmer in which we learn very little about his politics, but do find out that he doesn’t have phobias and doesn’t dream at night. And there is an utterly unrevelatory feature in the Financial Times on Starmer which characterises him as a ‘rational, diligent, ruthless’ lawyer but somehow fails even to mention his dealings with Julian Assange when he was the head of the Crown Prosecution Service.
Not surprisingly, one of the issues the media haven’t reported on during the course of the campaign is our broken media system. Of course, this is mostly to do with the fact that the main parties had nothing to say about changing the media in their own manifestos. Labour, desperate to seek an endorsement from Rupert Murdoch, refused even to acknowledge the need for press reform following on from phone hacking and other crimes identified during the Leveson Inquiry, nor to call for measures to address what the Media Reform Coalition describe as ‘the UK’s twin crises of concentrated media ownership and a collapsing local media sector’.
True, the Telegraph, in a story eccentric even by their own high standards, did run a comment piece arguing that ‘the media has led the country into an anti-Tory fervour’. Overall, however, a media system dominated by billionaires and bureaucrats is hardly likely to call for its own destruction, and an incoming Labour government is definitely not going to want to upset the editors and broadcasters who demonised Jeremy Corbyn, thus allowing Starmer to take over, and who are still continuing to vilify him.
As always, real change – whether in relation to political issues or prospects for independent journalism – will have to come from the movements and candidates who stand up to the stultifying political consensus, whether that be on Gaza, the climate crisis, public ownership or taxing the wealthy.
Gage Skidmore - Nigel Farage. Flickr.
Despite having no MPs at this time, the Reform leader has received significantly more airtime and column inches than his counterparts in the smaller parties. According to researchers at Loughborough University, Farage ‘has confirmed his position as the clear alternative party voice to the two main contenders’, eclipsing all other challengers. Meanwhile, Reform UK has earned 10% of overall press quotations compared to 2% for the Lib Dems with ‘the Greens, SNP and Plaid Cymru collectively accounting for less than 1% of quotation time’. This obsession with Farage has served only to normalise right-wing arguments on immigration and the economy and to further marginalise candidates with progressive ideas.
In terms of content, the media are overwhelmingly preoccupied with the ‘horse race’ aspect of the election – reporting on opinion polls, PR strategies and TV debates – rather than holding parties to account in relation to a broad set of policies. The Loughborough researchers found that coverage of the ‘electoral process’ has taken up 35% of all coverage on TV and in newspapers since the start of the campaign. Adding in stories on corruption, scandals and sleaze (such as the recent betting scandal that has plagued the Tories) and you find that 42% of all coverage is related to ‘process’ more than substantive policy debate.
The only policy issue that even gets into double figures is that of taxation, at 11% of total coverage. However, much of this, at least in the press, is due to outrageous claims, for example, that Labour is devising ’17 ways to come after your cash’ or that there is a secret Labour plan for a wealth tax. If only.
In reality, there is a complete consensus on fiscal austerity (and an implicit understanding that both main parties will make spending cuts should they win) and Labour has long made it clear that it has no intention to make the wealthiest pay more. Little wonder that in recent days both the Financial Times and the Economist have come out in support of Labour at the polls, as the party best placed to support business.
Media silences
So what are the media not talking about? Despite the crisis in funding together with its central place in British life, health provision and the NHS account for only 5% of coverage, while stories on the environment and climate change make up a staggeringly small 2% of the total. Such has been the paucity of coverage of policies to cut back on investment in fossil fuels and the need to move fast to net zero that the Green Party actually complained to the BBC accusing it of failing to cover the ‘most important issue of our times’.
Gaza, a pressing issue for millions of people, has also been virtually non-existent. According to the Loughborough researchers, issues of ‘defence/military/security/ terrorism’ account for 3% of total coverage, though much of this has simply focused on plans to increase defence spending or the competition between Labour and Tories about who is more pro-Nato.
As SNP MP Tommy Shepherd wrote in the Daily Record, there has been a ‘deafening silence when it comes to the conflict in Gaza’ during the election. ‘It has got little or no mention, and you can’t help but think it’s deliberate.’ High-profile interviews with Keir Starmer in the Guardian, for example ones by Pippa Crerar and Charlotte Edwardes have singularly failed even to ask basic questions about the Labour leader’s disastrous failure on Gaza.
Indeed, one of the main absences in election coverage has been the lack of systematic and independent scrutiny of Starmer and Labour. Of course, there is still no end of shrill scaremongering from the right-wing press and the requisite Boris Johnson article in the Mail that ‘Keir Starmer would be the most dangerous and Left-wing prime minister since the 1970s’.
Apart from this kind of nonsense, few journalists have taken the time to look at Labour’s growing links with big business and support from ‘prominent former Tory backers’ such as Lord Salisbury, billionaire John Caudwell and hedge-fund manager Martin Taylor. Labour, as Peter Geoghegan puts it, ‘is now Britain’s big money party’.
Such has been the absence of detailed reporting on Labour’s proposed policies and partnerships that the veteran political journalist Michael Crick tweeted:
‘In two to three years time, when Starmer and his government are no doubt deeply unpopular, I hope we in the media will ask ourselves: “Why were we so supine during the long 2024 election; why didn’t we hold Labour properly to account while we could, and ask more probing questions, and explore their records, rather than give them such an easy ride?”.’
There are a few isolated exceptions. There is a story in the FT that focuses on Starmer’s acceptance of £76,000 worth of free football tickets, concerts and clothing but, interestingly, it fails to mention the huge amounts of money donated to Labour from pro-Israel lobbyists since Starmer took over from Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader. Similarly, a Guardian story about the return to Labour of ‘mega donors’ simply glosses over the issue of politicians being captured by big business and presents Labour as vastly more transparent and honest than the Tories.
Failing media
What we have really had during the course of the campaign is a plethora of puff pieces on Labour. Many journalists, aware that they will be dealing with a Labour prime minister from 5 July, appear all too happy to cosy up to senior Labour figures.
So we have had a very upbeat profile of shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves in the Guardian arguing that, despite her free-market commitment, she ‘carries little ideological baggage’. There is a rather sickening Guardian interview with Starmer in which we learn very little about his politics, but do find out that he doesn’t have phobias and doesn’t dream at night. And there is an utterly unrevelatory feature in the Financial Times on Starmer which characterises him as a ‘rational, diligent, ruthless’ lawyer but somehow fails even to mention his dealings with Julian Assange when he was the head of the Crown Prosecution Service.
Not surprisingly, one of the issues the media haven’t reported on during the course of the campaign is our broken media system. Of course, this is mostly to do with the fact that the main parties had nothing to say about changing the media in their own manifestos. Labour, desperate to seek an endorsement from Rupert Murdoch, refused even to acknowledge the need for press reform following on from phone hacking and other crimes identified during the Leveson Inquiry, nor to call for measures to address what the Media Reform Coalition describe as ‘the UK’s twin crises of concentrated media ownership and a collapsing local media sector’.
True, the Telegraph, in a story eccentric even by their own high standards, did run a comment piece arguing that ‘the media has led the country into an anti-Tory fervour’. Overall, however, a media system dominated by billionaires and bureaucrats is hardly likely to call for its own destruction, and an incoming Labour government is definitely not going to want to upset the editors and broadcasters who demonised Jeremy Corbyn, thus allowing Starmer to take over, and who are still continuing to vilify him.
As always, real change – whether in relation to political issues or prospects for independent journalism – will have to come from the movements and candidates who stand up to the stultifying political consensus, whether that be on Gaza, the climate crisis, public ownership or taxing the wealthy.
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