This was posted on Twitter last night by Zack Polanski, who is currently the deputy leader of the Green Party, and who wishes to be its leader:
I made the same link yesterday.
Starmer deserves to be put in the same category as Enoch Powell - way beyond the boundaries of societal acceptability.
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Goes with his utterance that it was perfectly reasonable for Israel to blockade and starve the 2 million people in the Gaza strip as part of it ‘self defence’.
Its difficult to believe the times we are living through.
‘ We risk becoming an island of strangers’. That could be the Parliamentary Labour Party.
Correct.
Starmer is playing with matches next to a powder keg.
I have no idea what he thinks he is doing.
But, being a puppet and not in charge of his mouth or anything else, what do we expect?
This, by Michael Rosen:
I lay in bed
hardly able to breathe
but there were people to sedate me,
pump air into me
calm me down when I thrashed around
hold my hand and reassure me
play me songs my family sent in
turn me over to help my lungs
shave me, wash me, feed me
check my medication
perform the tracheostomy
people on this ‘island of strangers’
from China, Jamaica, Brazil, Ireland
India, USA, Nigeria and Greece.
I sat on the edge of my bed
and four people came with
a frame and supported me
or took me to a gym
where they taught me how
to walk between parallel bars
or kick a balloon
sat me in a wheel chair
taught me how to use the exercise bike
how to walk with a stick
how to walk without a stick
people on this ‘island of strangers’
from China, Jamaica, Brazil, Ireland
India, USA, Nigeria and Greece.
If ever you’re in need as I was
may you have an island of strangers
like I had.
Many thanks
This will go in the blog, very soon.
Rosen was echoing William Butler Yeats: “There are no strangers here; only friends you haven’t yet met.” But that is more of an stereotypically open Irish attitude than the closed-minded flag-waving Little Englander gammon that Starmer was aping.
Starmer is pandering to prejudice. The lump of work fallacy. The idea that immigration makes us economically and culturally poorer, when Starmer himself knows the opposite is true and has said so many times. Likening immigration of about 1% in a country of 70 million to the size of a large city. As if the immigrants all appear in a single place rather than spread 1:100 across the country.
Where there is a grain of truth is the chaos at the Home Office. The appalling bureaucracy, the huge number of decisions that are unnecessarily delayed and then overturned on appeal. The appalling delay in dealing with Windrush claims, hundreds not settled (Post Office claims too, and contaminated blood). Perhaps they could sort themselves out before launching into further divisive culture wars.
Good work Zack. You’ve got my vote 🙂
I made the same connection to the Rivers of Blood speech, as I listened open-mouthed to Starmer yesterday. Pure dog whistle cowardice, and of course it won’t work. This is cynical disregard of the best interests of UK, in the doomed pursuit of electoral popularity.
Well the tory leader Bad-Enoch is certainly in the same category & if a name fits?
In fairness (eh?) to Powell he was part 19th century throwback and part headbanger. That said, he was certainly his own man.
By contrast, Starmer is a whoilly-owed, wholly-controlled man, which begs the question: who cooked up this latest stupid/evil idea?
One gets the impression that since 2010, successive govs have WANTED to make the UK a poorer, shittier more authoritarian, more evil place to live. Alternatives to the policies forced on the populace were there for all to see – & ignored by those in power. What’s the agenda here?
While agreeing with all you say Mike, I would go back even further, say 1979.
As I explained in a comment on one of your blogs from yesterday, I too think it no accident that what Starmer said so closely echoes the remarks of Powell.
All I can add is that if that really was accidental then whoever wrote Starmer’s speech needs to be sacked today, because it only took me two minutes on Google to find the Powell quote in full.
And given the obvious sensitivity and scope for upset/insult with the topic and tone of the speech ANY politically aware person – and especially the leader of a political party/government – should have kept well clear of any wording that could be associated with Powell’s hate filled racism.
So, we shall see shan’t we. If nobody takes the heat and blame for that line in the speech today – and apologises for it/takes the fall – then I think it more than safe to assume the association with Powell’s ‘strangers in their own country’ was deliberate.
I am sure it was.
Why did it take Labour and Starmer to wake up to the fact that vast swathes of the electorate view illegal immigration as the biggest problem the country faces? It’s very obvious for a long time that is the case. I fear it is too late and Reform will keep their momentum and probably form the next Govt. And that definitely rests on the last two Governments who have failed to take the kind of decisive action people wanted.
Of all the problems we face that is about 149th on the list
Legal migration is keyt to all solutions.
Now, politely, go and be a fascist elsewhere.
Yes Richard, anyone who is concerned about illegal immigration is a facist – what a highly ignorant viewpoint, and one that has historically been highly successful in bringing people to your way of thinking. Not!
No wonder Reform are riding so high in the polls.
Abuse apart, what is your argument? Have you got one?
Genuinely interested here, because I don’t/can’t see the problem…
Taking all the heat out of it for a second, tell me why immigration is the “biggest problem the country faces”?
And if anybody could identify the “incalculable damage” our immigration policy is supposed to have caused, I’d be grateful.
Funny business isnt it
Not my idea I know but those who profess to love their country just dont like most of the people in it………..
In 2008 when I had a heart attack, my life was saved initially by three white paramedics, then in hospital I had further treatment administered by a doctor of Indian origin, and then by a consultant from the West Indies. And the subsequent medical procedure to remove a clot in an artery, was carried out by an Irish surgeon.
Thanks
Absolutely bang on target.
Are you listening, Labour MPs? It’s time to act.
Only Labour MPs can stop this.
Or you can sit on your hands and just say you “were obeying orders”.
Proof, if ever it was needed, that Starmer and his advisors have drawn all the wrong conclusions from their losses at the recent local elections. Some hopefully thought ‘maybe this will lead to a policy reset – investment in people, public services etc, to reduce the growing desperation amongst the populace that would lose them more ground to Reform’. Fat chance. Instead, they have doubled down on apeing Reform. In so doing they are seemingly ignorant of the basic facts that are painfully clear to everyone else: going down this route validates Reform’s politics rather than opposes it. As a consequence those minded to vote for far-right chaos are even more likely to choose the real thing rather than a Labour facsimile, whilst destroying its own natural base of support in favour of non-fascist-adjacent parties like the Lib Dems and Greens. LINO must be haemorrhaging members now. And perhaps will also start to lose those MPs who still have a conscience.
“Some hopefully thought ‘maybe this will lead to a policy reset – investment in people, public services etc, to reduce the growing desperation amongst the populace that would lose them more ground to Reform’.”
Keir Starmer is telling the UK “swing” vote actually what they want to hear without really saying anything. The “tone” of Keir Starmer’s pronouncements allows the UK “swing” vote to think what they want to think, fill in the blanks they way they choose to fill them in and then believe whatever they want to believe.
This is a rerun of the 2024 USA Presidential election. People who voted Reform or will “swing” and vote reform want increases in public services that will directly benefit them. If they do not get this benefit then they will vote reform believing they will get what they they” think” they are promised. When Reform “gets in” they will do actually absolutely nothing because they really have promised absolutely nothing. The UK will have a dirty mess on its hands equal to or greater than the dirty mess currently corroding the hands of the USA.
My thoughts and prayers are with the UK as I am currently going through this now. Keir Starmer has 3-4 more years so hopefully Starmer & Company will course correct and save the ship from hitting the rocks.
I love your optimism.
Early in his “premiership” I thought Starmer was to the right of Macmillan and One Nation Tories.Later,I reckoned to the right of Ted Heath’s government and now we have 3 main far right parties.
Labour and the Tories have done huge,almost irreparable ,damage to themselves.A Farage led Reform,as you mentioned recently,could easily implode.
This leaves a massive space in the centre and to the left to be exploited by other parties ,such as SNP,Plaid Cymru,the Greens and especially the Lib Dems.
Strange isn’t it, that a country like this has three far-right parties. It makes one think whether, under the neoliberal economic system we have, only right-wing parties are allowed to exist. To escape the problems that neoliberalism creates, inequality, erosion of government and public services, and increased corporate power, it appears that the only solutions allowed are authoritarian.
I asked my friend to cancel his Labour Party membership over this yesterday. He hadn’t seen the news yet; he cancelled right after he had watched it. He should have cancelled it long ago, but this was the last straw.
They are trying the line that it was “completely unintentional” and that Starmer also talked about the contributions migrants have made to the country.
It’s impossible to believe that this was not deliberate. Perhaps Starmer himself was oblivious, as he often is, but the wording in the context could not have been an honest mistake.
Another thing missed in the noise is that the speech should have been given to the house of commons first. We still live in a parliamentary democracy and parliament reviews and approves policy not the number ten press office. I’m pretty sure the Labour ran on improving governance rather than carry on like the last lot, but perhaps it’s inconvenient.
The biggest worry is in your last paragraph, “speech should’ve been given to the HoC first”. Two points, firstly much of their action needs parliamentary approval not PM fiat, especially the focus of police action against pro Palestinian demonstrators. Sadly and secondly, too many of the MPs are place (wo)men like Akehurst and my MP Robertson, who are of the right wing ilk. They’ll vote whatever way Starmer tells them, which is why left and centre candidates like Russell Moyle, were denied nomination via any means possible.
This so reminded me of Theresa May’s speech in 2016, in which she stated that if people considered themselves citizens of the world, they were ‘citizens of nowhere’ (in relation to when we were members of the European Union). She also said she hadn’t meant it in that sense! Who writes these tone-deaf speeches? Words are important. Words matter.
Words very definitely matter.
But there are some people who think they are inconsequential.
It is interesting that Starmer (and Cooper) are having to ‘completely deny’ any links between Starmer’s “island of strangers”, and Powell’s “rivers of blood…strangers in their own country”. The link is as clear as day. It is good that these ‘denials’ have been leading in the Guardian online all day, suggesting some unease perhaps (?).
“Island of strangers” will surely be remembered in years to come, alongside “rivers of blood”; “citizens of nowhere” and the “hostile environment”. A very sad and lamentable rollcall.
Cooper is deeply uncomfortable on ITN
The terrible irony is that these far right people who believe the rivers of blood / strangers mantras are the ones who support the colonisation of Palestine by Israel, and who seem not to be able to understand that much of our (legal) immigration which amounts to some 700,000 a year, is made up of British passport holders from countries we colonised and plundered to make Great Britain so wealthy!!
I think the reason for Starmer shocking shift to the right is to prove to the likes of Trump along with Musk—who threatened to overthrow him for not being part of their right-wing club— that he is indeed more right wing like them. Perhaps it’s an attempt to gain their approval. I guess this pivot seems driven by a fear of political marginalisation as far-right movements gain momentum across the Western world. It’s a mark of a weak leader with no clear vision whatsoever. I might be wrong in my observation.
This article offers a compelling critique of Keir Starmer’s recent rhetoric on immigration. The comparison to Enoch Powell’s divisive language is particularly striking and underscores the potential societal harm such narratives can inflict.