As The Guardian reports this morning:
Prominent women including cultural figures, politicians and campaigners have signed a letter criticising rightwing attempts to link sexual violence in Britain to asylum seekers.
Signatories include the musicians Paloma Faith, Charlotte Church and Anoushka Shankar as well as Labour, Green and independent MPs including Kim Johnson, Ellie Chowns, Diane Abbott and Zarah Sultana.
“We reject the far right's racist lies about ‘protecting' women and girls. They are not defenders of women – they exploit violence against women to fuel hate and division,” the letter says.
The open letter, titled Women Against the Far Right, follows a surge in protests outside accommodation housing asylum seekers and far-right attempts to exploit a number of cases of alleged sexual crimes involving asylum seekers.
They are right to protest, of course. The claims made by right-wing protestors have no basis in fact. That is not to say people do not have a right to be angry about the failings of the neoliberal state, but to claim that because people are migrants, they are a disproportionate threat to women and girls is wrong; there is no evidence for that.
At the same time, I note the FT reporting:
A leading organisation of genocide experts has passed a resolution declaring that Israel's conduct during its almost two-year war in Gaza meets the legal definition of genocide.
The move by the International Association of Genocide Scholars adds to the growing number of legal experts warning that Israel has committed war crimes in its conflict against Hamas in the besieged Palestinian territory.
Unsurprisingly, I again share the view of these scholars. They, too, are right to protest. What they have to say is very obviously correct. There is genocide going on in Gaza.
So, why link these two pieces? That is because we have now reached the point where we are dependent upon academics, public intellectuals, politicians on the fringe of the mainstream, and others to point out what our mainstream political parties will not say - because they are too frightened, intimidated, cowardly, and politically inept - to address the defining issue of this moment, which is the threat from fascism that has to be called out. That is the action they are refusing to undertake.
I admit, I can understand why the Tories are not calling out fascism. They embrace it. All that Kemi Badenoch is seeking to do is claim credit for the move to the far right that is going on inside our politics.
Labour has no such excuse. Firstly, it is the government, and so it is tasked with our defence—including the threat from extremism—which is what we are seeing on our streets, in our media, and in our political future. It is failing to do that. As a government, few failings can be ranked higher than this: it is consciously ignoring the greatest existential threat to the UK state since World War II, and is desperately hoping that we will not notice.
Secondly, the Labour Party, as I always understood it, should have had no hesitation or difficulty in opposing those ideas that fascists are now succeeding with. Instead, it is cowering behind the Union Jack and the cross of St George—as if these will provide some form of totemic resistance against the forces of evil that are so obviously threatening this country. Keir Starmer actually said in a BBC interview yesterday that he and his family have a cross of St George in their flat in Downing Street. As the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, what does he think he is doing?
Thirdly, if there was anyone capable of forming an argument in Labour, they very obviously either quit or were handed a P45 some time ago. We are now dependent on others picking up the political cause of fighting fascism in this country, as Labour is clearly incapable of doing so—all those with sufficient fire to resist having long departed the scene, culled by Starmer in his ruthless quest for power, which has, in so many ways, created the opportunity for Farage to flourish.
The moves by the two groups do, then, encourage me. They say there are still people of courage, intellectual credibility, and conviction who will fight for what is right, even if our government has given up doing so, having already agreed to concede the 2029 election. We will need everyone we can with those qualities if we are to preserve what is of value in this country, as the basis for what could be even better still. That is a promise fascism can never provide.
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”having already agreed to concede the 2029 election”. I agree – Labour will certainly lose the next election unless they very swiftly change course in a fashion that is almost inconceivable. So what about Clive Lewis MP (who I admire, and who comes across very much like a Green/Your Party politician) and those few other principled Labour MPs? (Forgive me – I can’t mention any other names as none spring to mind right now – I’m just optimistically hoping there are some lurking in the shadows). Presumably Clive and friends CAN conceive of a way for Labour to return to grace, which is why they are hanging on. Otherwise their political position is untenable. What are they doing in a fascist-enabling ‘island of strangers’ Labour Party?
Good question.
Clive was engaged in the now funtionally defunct Green New Deal group – so I do not see him so much now.
and Badenoch has gone full Reform over North Sea oil. A most irresponsible policy. But one that aligns her with the Trump administration. So the oligarch owned media will be playing it loudly.
Agreed
https://www.gndrising.org/about/
Our kids and grandkids can keep hope going.
https://labouroutlook.org/2025/09/02/richard-burgon-mp-its-the-super-rich-who-are-responsible-for-the-crisis-not-refugees/
Another principled MP along with Clive Lewis?
The direction that this country appears to be heading in is very, very worrying. The government is marching us towards the abyss full throttle having destroyed the brakes.
The two letters referred to above do offer hope but I can see the right wing media vilifying and demonising those signing the letters as ‘lefty, woke, snowflake activists who hate this country’ (cue front page headlines on the Fail etc.).
It is so important that those on the progressive side work together and do so now and as hard as possible. As the late MP Jo Cox said ‘There is more that unites us than divides us’.
Craig
On the far right’s claims about ‘protecting’ women and girls, following last year’s anti-asylum-seekers riots it emerged that 41% of all suspects detained had previously been in trouble with the police for domestic abuse.
For some reason this also reminded me of an old insight by Alexei Sayle…
“The left of the Labour Party are nice, decent people and it was a privilege to meet them. The right of the Labour Party are some of the most f***ing horrible people – vile, gruesome people. I’ve never met such awful people as those on the right of the Labour Party.”
He may well be right.
I fear with Labour it is worse than you say. 16 months ago I feared they would be so bad that their failure would give us a Farage government. There are always problems of definition of course, but it seems reasonable to say such a government would be a fascist government. What I didn’t see was Labour themselves becoming that. The proscription of Palestine Action, moves to curtail the HRA/ECHR, and talk of violent racist demonstrators having “legitimate concerns” take us in that direction.
On the question of fascism, it does not always fall within the well known definitions – Eco’s for example – I think,
but a telling sign for me is the existence of groups who use political violence on minorities and on their opponents and which (despite or because of this) get effective support from the state. Your saw this in both Germany and Italy. You see it too with settler violence in the West Bank.
The Home Secretary has union flags, union bunting and union tablecloths, St George flags and St George flag bunting in her home, oh, and the Yorkshire Rose – or so she says. The mind boggles.
Now the St George flag/bunting I can understand, to a certain degree, though it seems a rather strange interior design choice but, hey-ho, each to their own.
It’s the union flags, etc., that I don’t understand since LINO doesn’t give a rat’s arse about the colonies in the UK. Loves the wind power generated electricity, the gas and the oil but not the countries or the people in them. Unless, of course, you accept that the union flags don’t actually refer, in her mind, to the other countries in the UK but instead to England as the UK.
LINO’s discomfort is strangely comforting. The party is falling apart rather nicely and much faster than I thought it would. F***** will be cock-a-hoop.
Much to agree with
The blog and the sentiments it reports upon about scapegoating asylum seekers as a marginalised group applies equally well to transgender issues too (and undoubtably a range of others), where a tiny proportion of the population are being demonised without evidence as a convenient punchbag, when the real threat of sexual violence comes from the the far-right, and in the longer term from the consequences of cowardly politicians not taking a stand for what is right, thereby allowing the Overton Window to swing ever wider open on the growing winds of fascism, rather than firmly and consistently setting its bounds. Very disappointed with Labour…
The troubled Roman people want only bread and circuses. That observation, attributed to the poet Juvenal, is apt in today’s political situation. A surprisingly large percentage of the population are allowing themselves to be distracted by the immigrant shannanigans and it is concerning that percentage appears to include the gov and ministers of state.
Are they mad? Any year 1 politics student should be able to tell them they are being played by someone. We know who is playing them; Farage and his backers.
What to do in such circumstances?
I’d suggest changing direction very abruptly with policies directly opposed to those who are playing you.
That should be easy for Labour; it must get back to it’s roots rapidly by:
Announcing:
1. It intends to scrap the two- child limit for family allowance.
2. Guarantee the minimum wage will rise in line with inflation and/or average wages.
3. Scrap zero-hour contracts with limited exceptions.
4. Improve workers rights
5. Endorse ECHR
6. Renegotiate membership of EU custom’s union.
7 Restore freedom of movement of UK citizens in Europe.
…. and the list could go on…. they are all things Labour supported in the past.
If Starmer announced these, he would seize the narrative.