On July 30th, as extreme-right riots were beginning to spread across the country, the Labour MP for Tamworth Sarah Edwards fanned the flames of discontent in the House of Commons by complaining that the town’s Holiday Inn has been used for asylum purposes, and claiming that "residents want their hotel back".
Less than a week later the exact same hotel was attacked by an extreme-right lynch mob who attempted to set it on fire with people inside, smashed windows and doors, and covered it in racist graffiti.
The crowd whooped and cheered as the flames rose, and chanted "burn it down, burn it down, burn it down".
Here are images of the aftermath (note the racist graffiti).
Amazingly Edwards reacted to the attack on the hotel she had doxxed just five days previously with a Tweet criticising the violence as "shocking" and "disgraceful" and praising police for ensuring the safety of the residents (the residents she was demanding the removal of in Parliament), as if her irresponsible rhetoric had absolutely nothing to do with it!
This kind of rabble-rousing isn’t just limited to backbench Labour MPs like Edwards either. Starmer’s Labour ran a viciously xenophobic general election campaign, cribbing the extreme-right "send them back" rhetoric, and whipping up hate against Bangladeshis for some inexplicable reason.
It’s beyond doubt that the likes of Nigel Farage, Richard Tice, right-wing Tories, and online extreme-right agitators have fanned the flames of violence with conspiracy theories, xenophobic rhetoric, and the scapegoating of immigrants for the consequences of 14 years of diabolical Tory economic misrule.
However, it’s impossible to pretend that Starmer’s Labour haven’t been playing with fire in exactly the same way for their own political advantage.
And just like Reform, the Tories, and many of the extreme-right online agitators, Labour MPs can turn to plausible deniability to distance themselves from the dreadful consequences.
"We were only raising legitimate concerns" they’ll say. "We never expected anyone to actually go out and do anything".The last working-class hero in England.
Clio the cat, ? July 1997 - 1 May 2016 Kira the cat, ? ? 2010 - 3 August 2018 Jasper the Ruffian cat ? ? ? - 4 November 2021
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