Enough Platitudes: Starmer Must Confront Racism With Courage, Not Flags
The Far-Right is. Emboldened, Lies Go Unchallenged and Labour Looks Like Deer in Headlights. It's Past Time For Real Leadership
Yesterday was my non-working day - my one day a week where I plan out what, exactly, I’ll be writing over the next seven days, getting the research together and just doing general adminny things to make sure I have sort of, kind of a plan.
I got a fair bit done, and overall, was a very productive Bear Man. The plan, for today, was publishing a nice piece about British identity as a migrant. A hopeful discussion about all the positive things about the UK that really do make me proud to live here.
And then Keir Starmer tweeted.
“I’m proud of our flag as a patriotic symbol of our nation, like lots of people I’ve proudly got one up at home.
Using our flag to divide devalues it.”
All plans - out the window. Nice piece, put aside. Because I’ll be honest with you - I nearly fell out of my office chair at the sheer, unadulterated flaccidity of that statement.
Flags, in and of themselves, do not cause me any issue. I have said before - they can be a perfectly nice, acceptable way of showing your patriotism or love of your country (or any of the other things that have flags). Really, go crazy - have as many as you like. Hang one in your window, attach it to your car, paint one on your face at the Euros, stick one on your damned kettle if you’re so inclined. They are fine.
But, we are rapidly moving in a direction far away from just flags. Because none of this has been about bunting. The English flags that we’ve seen used in ways that are not fine is causing damage. It’s emboldening racists who feel more confident than they have in years - and I would stress here that these are not new racists, they’re the original ones, just louder, nastier and now with far fewer inhibitions.
Douglas Carswell, ex-MP and now think tank lead (which is not a thing) took up the foghorn this weekend:
He spewed this forth because he is emboldened. He has likely always been a racist, but with the way that discourse has been going over the past several months, he is now merely letting it all hang out. And this isn’t happening in a vacuum.
Last week, we saw racist pensioners accosting a Filipino woman and her family in the park - a woman who has lived in the United Kingdom for fifteen years, is more than likely an actual British citizen, who has worked for the NHS for well over a decade, and whose only “crime” was asking them to leash their dog. They are being emboldened by the rhetoric that is being shoved down our throats, day after day after day.
The number of reports of attacks on Muslims and mosques are growing by the day, one of the most recent being the vandalism of a Mosque in Basildon. Red crosses and “This is England” being gratuitously added to the building and signage. There is absolutely nothing patriotic about this. There is no “valid concern” that in any way or form justifies this kind of behaviour.
Online abuse is skyrocketing - the comment sections under posts from people like Narinder Kaur or Taj Ali look less like they need moderation1, and more like they need a qualified exorcist and a flamethrower.
This is no longer a fringe problem. It never was. This is a problem that’s been allowed because lies go unchallenged, narratives go uncorrected and action is not taken. Just last week, Nigel Farage blatantly lied about the Epping Hotel Ruling, not just hinting at, but outright saying that the ECHR had been used by the government in the ruling - when the ruling itself said that it had no bearing on their decision.
Did the media correct him? Did a government spokesperson challenge it? Of course not. That would mean actually bloody doing something.
And then, after all of this, Starmer’s contribution is an utterly limp platitude about it being bad when flags are used to divide us.
For fuck’s sake. It is utterly maddening, it is unacceptably weak and it is not nearly, anywhere close enough to a response we need.
We find ourselves in a position where it feels like we are cowering at the feet of right-wing ideologues who want nothing more than to bring out the very worst in this country. That want us, as a population to feel fearful of each other - for us to be divided. They are desperate for us to be screaming at immigrants in parks and spray-painting mosques and take-aways because it keeps us from taking notice who’s really holding the purse strings. Who’s really responsible for the housing crisis, the NHS crisis, the sheer and relentless sense of stagnation.
And yet Labour, the party of government, are responding with timidity that borders on dereliction - and even worse than that, while they’re very actively not doing a damned thing to address community tensions, they are now introducing policies that would bar successful refugees from bringing their families.
Families who, by definition, would also be in danger. Families who will now be punished for having the audacity to just want to feel safe.
That is not leadership - it is capitulation.
What, exactly, is stopping Keir Starmer, from getting his damned spine in order and properly intervening? Uniting us. Calling out the racism that we see infecting so many people’s lives.
I want him to go to a podium somewhere and give a speech. I want him to intervene - I want him to say:
We have seen, in recent weeks, acts of racism that shame this country. Vandalism. Verbal abuse. Violence. Lies spread deliberately to turn neighbour against neighbour. And I want to say, clearly: enough.
Britain is better than this. We are a country built not on fear, but on resilience. Not on division, but on solidarity. Not on hate, but on decency.
When a Filipino nurse is told to “go home” after twelve years of service in our NHS, that is not patriotism. It is disgrace. When a Mosque is vandalised with England flags, that is not love of country. It is vandalism of everything we claim to stand for.
Our flag is not the property of the far right. It belongs to everyone in this country, and every time it is used as a weapon to intimidate, it is diminished. But symbols alone will not save us. What matters are the values behind them: fairness, dignity, compassion, courage.
Reform UK, and those who copy them, want to tell you Britain is broken beyond repair. They want you to believe immigrants are to blame for the housing shortage, that human rights are to blame for crime, that Europe is to blame for every problem we face. They are wrong.
Britain is not broken. It is neglected. Neglected by those who profit from division, who sit on wealth while others go hungry, who sell out our future for short-term gain. And it will not be healed by scapegoating the people who came here to work, to live, to contribute, to build lives alongside us.
We are not a fearful people. We are not a hateful people. We are not a people who turn on our neighbours because the loudest voice tells us to. We are better than that. And my government will prove it.
That is the intervention we need. Not a half-hearted mutter about “oh, bunting is really nice, I really like it, but it’s bad when it’s used to do a racism”. We need a full throated defence of who we as citizens of the United Kingdom actually are, and what we could be.
Alongside that speech, I also want to see policies. Real policies. Not the cynical nonsense of smashing the gangs, or sheepishly sidling up to Farage’s rhetoric.
We need practical solutions to stop the small boats crisis, things like
Establishing a refugee processing centre in France, so claims can be made safely and legally.
Creating safe routes (like we have for Ukrainians) so people don’t have to get onto a damned dinghy.
Speed up asylum applications dramatically so people aren’t trapped in tax payer funded limbo for years, unable to work and vulnerable to exploitation.
Completely take the oxygen away from these gangs we’re supposedly smashing by providing alternatives.
That’s how you stop the damned boats. Not by endlessly repeating slogans or making your policy “Farage is right, don’t vote for him.” You offer workable, humane and enforceable solutions.
And even more than this, Labour needs to stop letting Reform UK set the terms of the debate. Yes, they got four million votes in the last election, that is a sizeable chunk - but that does not mean in any way or form that they get to dictate what is supposedly the majority view of the people of this country.
If you add up the Lib Dems, Labour and Greens, there is still far more support for progressive policies than the bile that Reform has been spouting for the past year - yet Labour are acting, for some reason, as though Reform has the country in a chokehold.
They don’t - but they absolutely will if Labour keeps cowering and looking like particularly frightened deer in headlights.
Now, I know, some of you might be uncomfortable with me criticising2 Labour. I get that. After my post yesterday, I had a few messages from readers worried that this sort of rhetoric just hands ammunition to Labour’s enemies. But here’s the thing - Labour’s enemies already hate them. The Mail. The Telegraph. Reform. GB News. They aren’t going to turn into cheerleaders because I shut up.
Criticism isn’t what’s going to harm Labour - cowardice on the other hand, most absolutely will.
Flags do not house people. They do not staff hospitals. They will not put food on tables. They will not stop the boats.
But leadership can - and until we see it from Keir Starmer and his government, we have to keep calling for it. And we need to do so far more loudly, clearly, and maybe just a bit angrily. The alternative is silence, and that silence and cowering is exactly what the far-right is counting on.
Which they don’t have anyway.
Read: completely losing my rag.
oh, I couldn't agree more Bear!
Every day I scream at the screen, asking WHY Labour are being so bloody useless?
It's beyond frustrating
Well said as always. To have come out yesterday and the first policy announcement is to do with immigration and a crackdown is directly because of Reform having used the airways for their own rhetoric throughout the summer.
Then the lazy, weak, yes flaccid (oh the imagery) nonsense about having a flag at home. It could have been used to draw a line on the sand but of course it wasn’t. It never will be. This Government is going down the pan fast and whilst it allows Reform or anyone else to manipulate the narrative for its own advantage. It is shameful.