Sir Keir Starmer has had a busy few weeks.
Making good on his promise to crack down on the "far-right thuggery" seen on our streets, the Prime Minister has meted out swift justice to the rioters.
More than 1,000 people have been arrested so far and around 90 adults have been sentenced after riots gripped towns and cities across the UK.
The conflagration was sparked by the senseless murders of three young girls in Southport on July 29.
Misinformation about the suspected stabber's identity on social media fuelled incidents of racialised violence towards immigrant communities.
In one of the most egregious moments, a mob attacked a hotel housing asylum seekers before moving on to a mosque. Cars were torched and bricks were hurled at police officers.
Those who perpetrate acts of violence should be met with the full force of the law regardless of their class, colour or creed.
Linger on that platitude for a second and you may spot some glaring double standards in Starmer's response to the riots.
Violent anti-immigration riots shook the country following the stabbing of three young girls in Southport
GettyAccording to Spiked Political Editor Brendan O'Neill, the speed with which justice has been meted out and the scale has been "telling".
His analysis comes as Starmer moves to release 2,000 prisoners early next month to make room for his new inmates.
"The fact that he's freeing up so much prison space suggests there's more to this than just a law and order clampdown," Brendan claimed, adding: "He knows that they [the rioters] represented a challenge to his authority. It was a working-class revolt against the ideology of multiculturalism, against the ideas of mass immigration, against the ideology of 'Open Britain' which Keir Starmer adheres to with great passion."
For Brendan, examples of the Labour leader's "contempt" for the white working class abound.
He claims that swift justice has been "notably absent" from the Harehills rioters last month.
A police car was flipped, fires started and a bus was destroyed in the suburb of Leeds after largely immigrant communities clashed with social services over the removal of four Roma children from their family.
Police were seen "running away" after 2,000 people turned up to torch the area.
Brendan highlights the case of Julie Sweeney, a 53-year-old carer from Cheshire who is serving almost two years behind bars after suggesting in a Facebook post to "blow the mosque up with the adults in it".
The Spiked Political Editor unequivocally condemns her post as a "vile sentiment" that "no one is going to defend" but points out Gabriel Abdullah, 34, who brandished a knife outside a kosher supermarket in Golders Green and shouted antisemitic abuse at staff, was handed a suspended sentence by a judge.
"He didn't spend so much as a minute inside a prison and this 53-year-old woman, who is a carer for her disabled husband, will be rotting in a jail cell for the next 15 months for something she wrote on social media," Brendan continued, adding: "There is a layer of society that people like Keir Starmer have a natural inbuilt contempt for. They are the left behind white working classes."
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Keir Starmer has an 'inbuilt' contempt for the white working classes
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The political journalist claims that Starmer and his "identity politics crew" tend to have more sympathy for ethnic minority uprisings, adding: "They tend to think, 'there must be underlying causes here'. Maybe we should talk about those.'"
But when it comes to the white working class, who Brendan describes as the "most neglected identity group of all", he claims Starmer and his cronies have no truck with these kinds of discussions: "It's just bring down the hammer and send them all to jail. He is willing to put the full force of the judicial state behind his identity politics."
Sir Keir has dismissed claims that we now have a system of “two-tier policing”. Likewise, Met Police chief Sir Mark Rowley has rejected the accusation as “complete nonsense”, adding that those making the claims were putting officers at risk.
Brendan is not convinced by this rebuttal, citing Starmer's track record. The PM flexed his identitarian muscles back in 2020, he claims, referring to the picture of the Labour leader taking a knee out of solidarity for the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, which sparked race riots across America.
"The Black Lives Matter riots led to 25 deaths and $1billion worth of damage to public property. The idea that we should take lectures on rioting from a man who took a knee to some of the worst riots of the modern era is number one. That's a sick joke."
