Every Prime Minister says defence is their first duty, and I agree. But defence means more than protection from foreign enemies. Serious threats to people are now arising within the UK, and millions of people are living in fear as a result.

Around 30% of the electorate now supports openly racist political parties that are deliberately threatening many in this country. The rights of disabled and neurodivergent people are being questioned. Hostility toward the LGBTQ+ community is rising. These communities are being targeted.

The resulting fear is not accidental. It is deliberately manufactured by politicians through threatening language and policy. And the people whose job it is to defend us, inclduing the Labour leadership, and Andy Burnham in particular, have met it with silence, inaction, and cowardice.

When Jason Arday died, Burnham offered no condemnation of those who had harassed him and has proposed no new legal or regulatory protections in response. He has not even said he might consider them. That silence is what allows intimidation to become politically normalised.

This video argues we need a radical new definition of defence: one that protects every citizen from fear and intimidation within our own society, not just from threats across our borders. Our current political leadership - from Labour and the Tories - is failing to provide that defence, and it is time that it did.

This is the audio version:

There is no Debate Ammunition for this video. I did not have time to make it,

This is the transcript:

Who is defending the people of the UK? Prime Ministers in this country, and we've had a lot of them of late, say that defence is their first duty, and I tend to agree with them. But defence does surely mean more than protection from foreign enemies. Serious threats to people are now arising within the UK. Millions of people have reason to feel threatened. So what does the duty to defend really mean, and who is standing up to do it?

The threat is increasingly coming from within the UK. Racism is fuelling support for significant political movements in this country. Around 30% of people are supporting openly racist political parties, and disabled and neurodivergent people are also seeing their rights questioned, whilst LGBTQ+ people face a culture increasingly hostile to their rights. Other ethnic minority communities are also being targeted. There are therefore millions of people in the UK who are living in fear because of the threats that they face, and I stress we are talking about many millions of people.

Around 15% of people in the UK are thought to be neurodivergent. That's around 10 million people.

Around 2 million people at least are thought to be in the LGBTQ+ community.

And around 16% of the UK population is from non-white ethnic communities.

There are also white minority communities to consider as well.

There are overlaps between these figures, but without a doubt, we are therefore talking about more than 10 million people who feel threatened at this point in time, and maybe 20 million or more.

Fear among these people is being deliberately created. Politicians are threatening to take away the support from some of these people. Politicians are threatening some people's rights to live here, and deliberately chosen political language is making people frightened. The result is an intimidatory and hostile environment for millions of people, and that fear exists whether or not every threat is eventually carried out.

In my opinion, defence is about something much more than the freedom from physical threats. It is about the freedom from fear. Any government's duty is about more than the protection of our borders. It's about the need to protect people from intimidation. People who are at risk of that need protection from deliberately induced fear. People who are at risk need protection from political cultures that deliberately threaten their security, as many are now doing by threatening to forcibly remove them from the UK.

This makes this a question of UK national defence, but where is our Prime Minister when people are being intimidated? What is he saying, and why is he letting politicians promote openly racist policies? I have no answers to those questions.

At the same time, he isn't answering questions about the rights of LGBTQ+ people, and he is letting people demonise those with disabilities and those who are neurodivergent and is saying nothing of any consequence in their defence.

Where is then the government plan and the government investment to defend all of those who are under threat at this moment, who are living in this country?

Where is the unequivocal defence from Labour and the Conservatives, the two parties who think they have the natural right to govern this country, when people's right to live in fear is under threat? Political leadership against these threats is missing.

Those who are threatening people should be challenged by those who are our actual political leaders. Our Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition should be leading those challenges to the racists, but they're not.

Kemi Badenoch almost aligns with these policies.

Andy Burnham is too frightened to call them out.

They are not calling out intimidation when it is being used as a political strategy. They are tolerating it, and yet millions - more than 10 million, maybe as many as 20 million people - are suffering as a result.

And they are not willing to confront those who are promoting these policies because they themselves are living in fear, and that failure on their part leaves vulnerable people increasingly exposed.

In this context, the response to Jason Arday's death matters.

Andy Burnham said that we needed time to reflect upon this. He did not condemn those who hounded, abused and harassed Arday, literally to his death.

He did not say that the campaign against him must never happen again.

He did not propose the revival of the Leveson Inquiry into media abuses.

He did not propose new legal protections against such attacks.

He is not then defending the people of the UK. Instead, he appears to be a coward, too frightened to confront those who intimidate. He has let himself be constrained by the right-wing media who have perpetrated many of the abuses about which I am talking. He is then part of the problem.

Meanwhile, threats against minorities are becoming politically normalised and proposals to force people from the country involving coercion are also being normalised. And that threat of coercion is itself a form of violence being threatened against people who live here. But about that, Andy Burnham appears to have nothing to say.

This country is becoming more dangerous as a result. Recent events have exposed the scale of hatred now being expressed. Social media has revealed people doubling down on their extremist beliefs in the aftermath of Jason Arday's death. Millions of people who have good reason to expect the state to defend them are instead seeing political power contributing to their fear. That represents a profound moral failure in our politics.

Where is the leadership at this moment? That is the question I'm asking. It is not coming from Andy Burnham. He is revealing his true colours. He is one of those who will go along with abuse. It is largely absent as well from his Labour Party colleagues, particularly at cabinet level. We have to rely on people like Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, and a small number of backbenchers to be the exceptions to this rule within the Labour Party. And amongst the Conservatives, no voice is being raised at all as far as I can hear. Political silence from these people is allowing intimidation to become increasingly acceptable.

Britain now needs a defence policy that protects people from fear, and that defence policy must include protection against intimidation within our society.

The government must defend people's rights to be who they are.

Politicians who promote anxiety, fear, and dread must be challenged.

Some of their language must be made illegal.

Some of the actions of our newspapers must be prohibited.

Radical change is required to recognise this duty on the part of government. The question is, when will we get the defence policy we actually need in this country? The defence policy that guarantees that people who live here can do so free from fear? And when will we see an end to the dithering of people like Burnham who say they have a duty to defend people, but are letting them live in fear?

That's my question. What's yours? What are your comments? There's a poll down below. Tell us what you think. Please do like and share this video if you do indeed like it. And please do subscribe to our channel and ring that bell so that you're told when we make new videos. And if you'd like to buy us a coffee, that would be great.

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