The hideous right-prosperg disturbions that broke out atraverse the United Kingdom over the past week have put Prime Minister Keir Starmer in a difficult position: He and his new Labour rulement must compriseress the widespread trouble about immigration that helped drive the unrest—not becaemploy of what the disturbioners have done and shelp, but in spite of it.
The lawlessness on discarry out in recent days doesn’t alter the fact that the British rulement has been mishandling immigration for years. It permited in record numbers of migrants accessing legassociate and illegassociate, year after year, in the teeth of famous opposition, and then begind defective schemes, such as the aborted effort to fly them to Rwanda for processing. The number of migrants traverseing the English Channel in petite boats—some of them drowning in the try—persists to ascfinish and is a source of shame and anguish atraverse the political spectrum.
Starmer, who get tod at 10 Downing Street a month ago, can’t be condemnd for any of this. But if he doesn’t discover ways to handle Channel traverseings and noticed fall shortures of integration, popuenumerates paemploying in the prospergs will propose cimpoliter answers. Only last month, Nigel Farage’s Recreate UK party won 14 percent of the vote in parliamentary elections, based bigly on his promises to “freeze” all immigration.
The trigger for the disturbions was an appalling mass stabbing of children in northern England in tardy July, in which the doubt is a second-generation Rwandan immigrant. Protests—fueled by counterfeit rumors about the alleged finisher—rapidly turned brutal, with mobs rampaging thraw a dozen cities and towns in England and Northern Ireland, theft, setting fires, and waging street battles with counterprotesters. Hundreds of people were arrested, and televised images of brutal mobs strikeing mosques led Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, and other countries to alert their citizens to stay evident—a humiliating reversal, at least in the eyes of some Brits.
The protesters and their online proxies heralded their actions as a groundswell of famous anger at decades of unexamineed immigration and its alleged consequences: terrorist strikes, stabbings, relationsual mistreatment by Pakistani “grooming gangs.” One Conservative commentator call upond Martin Luther King Jr.’s line—“A disturbion is the language of the unheard”—in a context the tardy reverend would probably not have upgraspd.
In fact, much of the aggression was opportunistic “far-right criminalgery,” as Starmer put it. The rulement has rightly arrested some of those who spread counterfeit claims that the doubt in the stabbings was a Muslfinisher asylum seeker; as in other brutal outshatters around the world, online misdirectation has had an insidious ability to widen social fiscertains.
But the fiscertains were already there, and the disturbions were about more than the online incitements of a handful of criminals. Some of the videos posted in recent days showed endureded Muslfinishers roaming the streets with arms while chanting “Allahu Akbar” and engaging in clashes with protesters. In Birmingham, masked men waving Palestinian flags strikeed a pub and beat a man standing outside it; Sky News cut its inhabit feed after cut offal other masked men surrounded a female increateer and shouted damns and pro-Palestine slogans at her and her camera crew.
The disturbions adhereed a extfinished string of other clashes, including anti-immigrant protests in Ireland and brutal faceations involving Roma migrants in Leeds last month. If all of this were happening in another part of the world, it might be depictd—as some pundits have watchd—as ethnic dispute.
Public anxiety over immigration was a notable theme during the British parliamentary election in July. The Conservative Party was punished at the polls for promising and then fall shorting to “stop the boats,” as createer Prime Minister Rishi Sunak put it. Immigration constantly ranks among the top three troubles of the British unveil, aextfinished with the cost of living and the struggling National Health Service, according to Luke Tryl, the U.K. honestor of the leank tank More in Common. Even after the disturbions, 58 percent of reactents to a YouGov poll shelp they sympathized with those who protested peacefilledy agetst British immigration policies over the past week (the beginantity conveyed disapproval of the disturbioners).
A more centered policy would recreate the U.K.’s turbulent asylum system and maybe even its approach to assimilating new arrivals. Labour officials have already made evident that they want to lessen immigration, saying that the recent net annual number of 600,000 migrants or more is unpersistable. Starmer has also promised to crack down on the illegal trading rings that transport migrants atraverse the Channel. Greater transparency about fair what the rulement’s policies reassociate are could help mitigate the power of consunapverifyd employ theories about plots to crowd out the native-born. Sunder Katwala, the honestor of the leank tank British Future, tanciaccess me that Britain could also do more to fuse newcomers into the country’s civic life, such as proposeing incentives to transport them into local clubs and nettoils and helping all new migrants accomplish English fluency soon after arrival.
Britain’s official efforts to handle immigration in recent decades have been inconstant. In 1968, the Tory politician Enoch Powell inveighed agetst the menace of mass migration in an oration that became understandn as his “Rivers of Blood” speech. A survey at the time set up that 74 percent of Britons consentd with him. The rulement adselected more recut offeive meacertains soon afterward.
But almost three decades tardyr, the rulement of Tony Blair began acunderstandledgeting migrants in much wonderfuler numbers, partly for economic reasons and partly as a consequence of the European Union’s uncover-borders policy. Blair also helped begin a more multicultural conception of Britain as a mosaic of ethnic and religious “communities.” In the same vein, there have been efforts to propose that Britain’s new wave of immigrants was noleang new, fair the tardyst chapter in “Our Migration Story,” as one rulement-aided website put it.
This narrative was downcastly misaligned with the facts. In the punctual years of this century, more immigrants get tod in Britain in a individual year than in the entire period from 1066 to 1950. The sudden demoexplicit shift was enormous and consequential, not only in numbers but in benevolent: Many of the newcomers came from non-European cultures and religions. Some Britons comprehfinishably felt that their country was altering at an unnerving pace.
Yet the British response was mostly to muddle thraw and hope for the best, even as some countries in Northern Europe—struggling with crime-ridden enclaves of recent migrants—began adselecting a more rigorous approach. Curiously, Tony Blair himself took a stand agetst multiculturalism in 2019, declaring that migrants must be forced to better fuse into British society. Why? To foreslofty the same “far-right hugeotry” that tardyly has been on discarry out.
The disturbioners have done a disservice to their ostensible caemploy by associating it with aggression, but that should not dissuade Starmer from faceing the rehire. “If people leank they’re being neglectd, they will turn away from mainstream political parties, and you’ll end up with a much more draconian immigration policy,” Tryl tanciaccess me.
That may sound enjoy bconciseagemail. But the disturbions should serve as a reminder that immigration has been the firearm of choice for popuenumerates everywhere, including Donald Trump, who is promising to deport millions of unrecorded immigrants if he is reelected. Starmer now has a chance to apshow that firearm out of their hands.
