Calling out the people in suits behind the rioters

This Green and Surprising Pleasant Land calls out the so called respectable politicians who have been encouraging the mobs

They are not throwing bricks, assaulting policemen or smashing into hotels housing asylum seekers but the riot enablers share the mob’s guilt.

Inexplicably there appears to be some reticence in identifying the people who laid the grounds for the mini-riots that are sweeping across the UK. This unrest did not come out of the ether but emerged from a background where allegedly respectable politicians have made it their business to demonize asylum seekers, spread racist poison and promoted a highly toxic form of nationalism.

Predictably these politicians are disinclined to get their hands dirty as the consequences unravel. So they are quick to denounce violence and absolve themselves from blame. Yet, even while the mobs are rampaging, they remain intent on providing a tattered shred of respectable cover for the rioters.

Donna Jones, unbelievably is the Hampshire police and crime commissioner with direct responsibility for policing policy yet she has made it her business not to defend the police or indeed the communities affected by rioting. Instead she has been asserting that what matters is not the symptoms but the causes of the riots. In other words, immigrants.

She is not alone in fueling the flames from behind a smokescreen. Predictably Nigel Farage, the pound shop populist, hailed by thugs on the rampage in London as the next prime minister, swept into action as things were kicking off by suggesting that the authorities were hiding something about the youth responsible for the tragic stabbing of three small girls in Southport. Carefully choosing his words he suggested that there was a dark coverup hiding the culpability of an asylum seeker. It was sheer nonsense but the Honorable Member for Clacton has never been bothered by nonsense as long as it serves his purpose.

Once the flames were lit he demanded a recall of parliament to discuss ‘deeper problems’ (code for immigration) and to provide a platform for his evidence-free assertion that the police were handling the rioters more vigorously than breaches of the peace ignited by the Black Lives Matter movement.

What came before these events was a relentless drum beat of encouragement for racism from senior politicians like Suella Braverman who has gone out of her way to dehumanize immigrants, suggesting that they are invading Britain. As the unseemly scramble gets underway for the Tory leadership contest, candidates are vying with each to demonize immigrants.

The fruity accented and double breast suited Sir Jacob Rees Mogg added a posher yet equally insidious element to British xenophobia precisely because he appears to be an epitome of the British establishment. Maybe he is, it’s a terrifying thought.

These politicians are talking about people who are ‘guilty’ of fleeing from persecution, who are often already traumatized and have dared to seek a better life for themselves and their families. Straining the outer boundaries of hypocrisy their tormentors occasionally say that they have every sympathy for the plight of asylum seekers but, they claim, Britain is full up and cannot let in hordes of foreigners, the majority of whom are clearly not white.

They refuse to acknowledge a remarkable story of integration and the role immigrants have played in developing British society, preferring a narrative that paints incomers as scroungers feeding off ‘decent hard working people’ and depriving them of jobs and homes.

No matter how many studies demonstrate the enormous contribution of immigrants to Britain’s development the bigots ignore them and, worse, suggest that they are part of some giant conspiracy to fool the good old British people.

This is how populism works, inconvenient facts become conspiracies, people’s real insecurities are seized upon to create scapegoats and then, quite unsurprisingly a small but vociferous bunch of no hoppers are fired up to riot.

While the majority of British people have reveled in the success of our multi-ethnic band of successful athletes brandishing the Union flag at the Olympic Games, the three lions at the Euros and even on the pristine grounds of tennis courts, the thugs dig out these same flags, literally drape them around their shoulders, get equipped with cans of beer and go out on the rampage.

The Starmer government is right to mobilize resources to punish the rioters and go after the online influencers fueling the flames but this is not enough. The enablers who created this toxic atmosphere egging on this lawlessness must be called out and, at the very least, be ostracized from decent society.

Fortunately most British people are decent and we have seen how ordinary women and men have been quick to go out and clear up the mess left by the rioters. Where the mob has sought to intimidate they have offered solidarity.

This is real British patriotism, something to be proud of.