Great Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer is having problems dealing with the rally last Saturday that featured 150,000 people demonstrating against open borders. Naturally, they were all racists.
In an interview with Channel 4, Starmer described the demonstration as “plastic patriotism," saying it had been more than “just very bad behaviour."
He said: “It sent a shiver through so many of our communities who now feel more scared than they did before. I understand that.”
I rarely use this word to describe a politician, but Keir Starmer is a d**k.
Why should 150,000 demonstrators in the streets "send a shiver" through anyone who isn't a politician? It's plain old fearmongering by Starmer and the left, who see the coming tsunami and don't know how to deal with it.
There were the usual violent soccer hooligans who marred the protest. There were five soccer matches in Greater London on Saturday, which is one reason the primary organizer, Tommy Robinson, scheduled the rally for that day.
And Elon Musk made an appearance on the video screen, telling the crowd, “fight back or die” over the “destruction of Britain” caused by “massive uncontrolled migration." He recommended getting rid of the British Parliament.
Musk, no stranger to hyperbole, can't quite get the hang of political combat. Rule #1: Don't show up in a foreign country and tell them how to run their affairs. Musk's incendiary remarks gave Labourites an easy target and forced the rally itself and the reason people were there off the front pages.
Besides Musk, the other speakers were a sideshow, as were the small number of hooligans who attacked police, injuring 24 of them. The massive turnout, despite Robinson, should give Starmer and the rest of the Labour Party pause and force them to reflect on what just happened.
Starmer doesn't get it: “Britain is a nation proudly built on tolerance, diversity and respect. Our flag represents our diverse country and we will never surrender it to those that use it as a symbol of violence, fear, and division.”
Begging your pardon, Sir Keir, but are you really trying to make the case that 150,000 (at least) people poured into the streets of London because they want to strike fear into the hearts of immigrants and people of color?
Maybe there was something more at work.
UnHerd posted this piece by a Labour MP that suggested another motivation for people attending the rally. MP Clive Lewis went to the rally with a friend. Lewis asked his friend, an electrician, why he was going.
The first reason he gave was that “the Government doesn’t listen to us.” The second reason was more to the point: “I want to feel proud of my country again.”
Clearly, this is about something bigger than immigration slogans or GDP numbers. For decades, we have hollowed out our national life, underfunding and undermining the very institutions that once brought us together. The Austro-Hungarian economist Karl Polanyi, in his 1944 book The Great Transformation, argued that when markets are “disembodied” from society — when land, labour, and life itself are treated as commodities — then society pushes back. He called this the “double movement”: people seeking to protect themselves, to reclaim dignity and meaning when everything solid seems to melt into air. When my friend showed me photos from Saturday, that is what I saw: not just anger, but a demand for belonging.
Starmer is clueless. If he's playing to the crowd, trying to garner cheap approval numbers for condemning racism, he is way off base. He's calling a very large segment of UK voters bigots and racists. What the rally shows is that the racist trick isn't going to work anymore.
Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, is currently leading in the polls. Last night, an election took place in the Labour stronghold of Cardiff, Wales. Reform won with 40% of the vote, Labour's share of the vote dropped by 31 points, while just 3% voted for the Conservatives.
Starmer can keep calling the people anxious about unfettered immigration "racists," or he can address their concerns. One way leads to a landslide defeat and the other to a possible win.
Time for the British establishment to choose.
