Monday, August 05, 2024
Time to take responsibility
But at the same time action needs to be taken against those public figures who have helped to fuel this disorder.
The Guardian reports on comments by one Liverpool MP who says that the Commons standards watchdog should hold Nigel Farage to account over his “dangerous comments” following the week’s violent disorder in the wake of the Southport murders.
Kim Johnson, Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside, said Farage’s comments “cannot be left to fester” and should be examined by the parliamentary standards commissioner:
Farage has released two videos since three children were murdered in Southport last week. In the first, he questioned whether police were withholding information about who was responsible for the murders.
It came at a time when false information was circulating on social media that a Muslim asylum seeker was responsible, which fuelled disorder at a mosque in Southport.
In a second video, Farage challenged Keir Starmer’s argument that the violent protests were the fault of the far right, saying it was “a reaction to fear, to discomfort, to unease that is out there shared by tens of millions of people”.
Lee Anderson, the Reform MP and former Tory deputy chair, made a similar argument, writing on X: “This problem has been caused by smug politicians who have refused to listen to the concerns of British people. It has festered and now it has boiled over. Parliament must listen, parliament must act but it must not blame the British people.” He also referred to the prime minister as “Keir Stalin” in a reference to the Russian dictator.
Senior politicians have held back from being too critical of Farage, although the deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, said on Wednesday that there was “a level of responsibility … and it’s not to stoke up what conspiracy theories or what you think might have happened”.
However, several members of the public claim on social media to have submitted complaints about the Reform leader to the parliamentary standards commissioner, who can investigate any behaviour that brings parliament into disrepute.
Johnson said: “Nigel Farage’s dangerous comments cannot be left to fester. He is the voice of the EDL [English Defence League] in parliament, using his platform to spread fear and misinformation. Tensions are high and our politicians should be doing everything in our power to advocate for peace and unity, and support our communities standing resolutely against the racism and hatred displayed over the last few days. With so much at stake, we need urgent action from the Commons standards committee and the police to hold him to account.”
People in positions of authority have a duty to uphold the law, not incite lawlessness. If Farage had questions he should have doen his job and turned up to Parliament to ask them. He needs to be held accountable for his actions as well.
Meanwhile, the Guardian also reports on the view of Dame Sara Khan, who was Rishi Sunak’s independent adviser for social cohesion and resilience until May this year and acted as counter-extremism commissioner under both Theresa May and Boris Johnson, that the Conservative government left the UK wide open to the far-right violence erupting across parts of the country by ignoring red flags and stoking fires with a culture war agenda.
In a damning intervention, Khan said that repeated and urgent counsel that far-right extremists were exploiting gaps in the law to foment violence on social media had been ignored while top-rank politicians over a number of administrations sought to gain advantage by waging culture wars:
“The writing was clearly on the wall for some time,” Khan told the Guardian. “All my reports have shown, in a nutshell that, firstly, these extremist and cohesion threats are worsening; secondly, that our country is woefully unprepared. We’ve got a gap in our legislation which is allowing these extremists to operate with impunity.
“Previous governments have astonishingly failed to address these trends, and they’ve taken instead, in my view, approaches that have actually been counterproductive and actually just defy any logical rationale.
“They scrapped the counter-extremism strategy [in 2021], including all the resources and funding for local areas across the country who are struggling with extremist activity and extremist actors. And the government, at that time, did not replace it with anything. They left local authorities struggling to deal with consistent extremist challenges in their area.
“Political leadership is really important and how our politicians behave is really, really critical, because I’ve seen, and I’m sure other people have seen, politicians who have actually, indirectly or directly undermined social cohesion because they’ve used inflammatory language.”
Khan, who has previously criticised those who described the pro-Palestine protests as “hate marches”, a formulation of words used by the former home secretary Suella Braverman, said the rhetoric used by some senior politicians in recent years had given a green-light to those holding racist views.
She said: “I went to parts of the country where they were very upfront with me and just said, ‘Look, because of some of the inflammatory language used by politicians, the same language would then be co-opted by, you know, far-right extremists and others, who would then use that to undermine cohesion in a local area’.
“There’s a serious duty on our politicians to not engage in inflammatory language; to not use, for example, dehumanising language about asylum seekers, refugees and, you know, people who are coming to our country.
“Of course, there’s a legitimate debate about immigration, about numbers and all of those things, but there’s a way that you can talk about these issues without using dehumanising and inflammatory language. Because, by using that language, you just see extremists co-opting that. You see people saying, well, if politicians can use that language, why can’t we?”
It seems that it is not just Farage and his Reform party who have things to answer for.
