UK
A Year Of Dangerous Concessions to the Far-Right – Stand Up To Racism on Starmer’s First Year
Sabby Dhalu, Stand Up to Racism, reviews Starmer’s first year in office, looking at his continued concessions to the far-right and the disturbing prospect of a Reform UK victory at the next election.
One year on from the election of Keir Starmer’s Labour government, polls indicating Nigel Farage’s Reform UK could win a majority at the next general election – a historic first for the far right in Britain – is a damning verdict. This is the dismal result of Labour’s catastrophic continuation of austerity and concessions to the far right.
We are also approaching the first anniversary of the racist and Islamophobic riots, which culminated in pogromist attacks on Mosques, refugees, African, Caribbean, Asian and migrant communities. These riots coincided with the scrapping of the winter fuel allowance, the failure to lift the two-child benefit cap and the withdrawal of the whip from Labour MPs who voted to lift the cap. Apsana Begum, John McDonnell and Zarah Sultana have still not had the whip restored. (Sultana has now left the Labour Party.)
This, mixed with over a decade of blaming refugees and Muslims for austerity, and racist, Islamophobic falsehoods spreading online regarding the Southport killer being a Muslim refugee, resulted in a toxic cocktail that led to a frightening summer of racist violence.
After Suella Braverman’s “Islamist threat” slur on the Palestine movement and Rishi Sunak’s “stop the boats” campaign – sentiments echoed in the riots – many expected the Labour government to properly acknowledge and tackle head-on Islamophobia and racism towards refugees and others. At the very least the government should have reinstated proper relations with the Muslim Council of Britain – the most representative body of Muslims in Britain.
In September 2024, Starmer met with fascist Italian PM Giorgia Meloni and announced the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill, continuing the Tory framework on the issue instead of placing human rights at the heart of refugee and asylum rights. Reports suggested Starmer discussed with Meloni “offshoring” asylum seekers. The scrapping of the Rwanda Act immediately after Labour gained power was very welcome, but it seems the government intends to replace it with another country to deport people to.
With raids on hair and nail salons and car washes, sadly the hostile environment is continuing under Labour. Instead, we need the government to implement safe passage for those crossing the Channel to stop the horrific drownings, give asylum seekers the right to work & live with dignity, and fast track compensation for those affected by the Windrush scandal.
By Christmas 2024, Reform UK was level pegging with the Tories and Labour – with all three on around 20 per cent in the polls. In response, Labour ramped up its anti-asylum seeker campaign by filming deportations and producing anti-migration adverts with Reform UK branding, bragging about the number of deportations delivered by the government. By Spring 2025, Reform edged ahead with polls indicating Farage could be in number 10 in coalition with the Tories.
Since then, the government’s response to the rise of Reform UK has been catastrophic concession after concession.
In April, the government rejected the Sentencing Council’s updated guidelines, which would have required magistrates and judges to consult a pre-sentence report before deciding whether to imprison someone of an ethnic or religious minority, alongside other groups including young adults, abuse survivors and mothers. This would have taken into account structural disparities in sentencing outcomes. Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick labelled it “two-tier justice,” echoing Tommy Robinson’s “two-tier policing” slogan from last summer’s riots. That Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood played along in an attempt to win over Tory and Reform voters, was appalling.
Labour’s election campaign featured daily announcements attacking refugees and a call to “reclaim the flag” ahead of St George’s Day. The failure of all this, along with the various disastrous austerity policies, was underlined by the surge in support for Reform UK in the May elections.
In response, the government’s approach on racism, Islamophobia and immigration, has gone from bad to worse – as have the opinion polls. Starmer said last week that he “deeply regrets” that shameful Island of Strangers speech which included similar language to Enoch Powell’s infamous Rivers of Blood speech. However the damage has been done and he has not withdrawn the plethora of problematic policies outlined in the immigration white paper. The impact of this speech was the Electoral Calculus poll of polls at the end of May for the first time showing Reform UK could win a majority at the next general election. Concessions to racism benefit the far right not Labour.
And yet the concessions continue. Ahead of a far right “Football Lads Against Grooming Gangs” demonstration in central London, the government announced a national inquiry into grooming gangs with a focus on the ethnicity of perpetrators. Grooming gangs account for a small fraction of child sexual abuse and exploitation. The Child Sexual Exploitation Taskforce reported that in 2023, there were 115,489 child sexual abuse and exploitation crimes and 717 of these were grooming gang crimes. Figures from the Office of National Statistics show the ethnic background of perpetrators of these crimes are proportionate to the population as a whole.
A serious response to these heinous crimes would be a national inquiry into child sexual abuse and exploitation as a whole. Focusing on a minority of such crimes and the ethnic background of perpetrators is simply a concession to the far right, who for decades have been hijacking the issue, whipping up Islamophobia and racism by wrongly linking these crimes with Pakistani culture and Islam.
People voted for a Labour government to make them better off and stand up for the most vulnerable in society, from those experiencing financial hardship or crossing the Channel and fleeing war, genocide and persecution. Labour can reverse the trends reflected in opinion polls but to do so it must rapidly switch course by standing for a human rights approach to racism, Islamophobia, immigration and asylum, ending austerity and the cost of living crisis.
- Over the next period, Labour Outlook is running a series of daily articles, reviewing one year of the Starmer Government across different key areas.
- Sabby Dhalu is Co-Convernor of Stand Up To Racism, you can follow her on Instagram and Twitter/X and follow Stand Up To Racism on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Bluesky.
- If you support Labour Outlook’s work amplifying the voices of left movements and struggles here and internationally, please consider becoming a supporter on Patreon.
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