A former Chairman of the Conservative Party has said he thinks Sir Keir Starmer is making a mistake to conflate concerns about immigration with racism.
Sir Jake Berry told GB News: “It's right that if this woman lobbed a brick at a police officer, that she's been sent to prison, because an attack on the police is an attack on society. It's an attack on all of us.
“But let's just take a step back about the big mistake I think Keir Starmer is making here.
“The reason the Conservatives lost the election so badly is for election after election, we promised that we were going to get a grip on immigration. We didn't.
“The British people punished us, and I think they will do the same with Keir Starmer.
“He's almost, he’s not quite there, but he’s almost saying to be concerned about immigration, you are racist. You are not. He's not said that, but it feels like the implication of what he is saying.
“And I'm concerned about immigration and I'm not racist.
“I'm actually really worried about the violence we're seeing from these counter-protesters from the hard left who are going along to these 20 people turning up in Bournemouth to protest quite peacefully.
“It looked like an England game, more than any sort of protest. Then you have these hard-left protests where there has been a lot of violent disorder, particularly in London. What is happening to those people? I'm not aware of any arrests.
“And this plays into this narrative of this two-tier policing, which I think is corrosive for the country…
“The protests we saw in Leeds, there was very little policing of those even though a bus was set on fire.
“They're saying, ‘From London to Gaza, we want an Intifada’. To me, that is very, very concerning. And if you look at the other news about prisoners being released early so space can be found for these protesters.
“What you will have is people who have robbed your house, nicked your car, got in a violent assault outside a pub, they're going to be released early so somebody who's retweeted something on the Internet can be sent to prison.”
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