Extreme Right Or Extreme Wrong Tactics?

With Britain’s far right on the march, Labour has a problem

Riots that followed the killing of three children in Southport are the latest far-right show of force confronting Britain’s new government.

August 1, 2024 4:00 am CET
By Andrew McDonald

LONDON — Less than a month into the reign of the U.K.’s new Labour government, unspeakable tragedy struck.

In the seaside town of Southport, situated in north west England just outside Liverpool, three young girls — Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice Dasilva Aguiar, nine — were killed Monday in a knife attack on a Taylor Swift-themed danced class.

A 17-year-old, identified as Cardiff-born Axel Muganwa Rudakubana, has been charged with murder and attempted murder.

In line with usual British police practice, the suspect was not initially named.

But into that information void, far-right conspiracies about an establishment cover-up to protect the perpetrator, were poured — and turned quickly violent. Inaccurate social media posts in the immediate aftermath floated a false name and described the attacker as a newly-arrived asylum seeker.

On Tuesday a large crowd, said by police to be connected to the extreme nationalist English Defense League, hurled projectiles at a mosque, set fire to police vehicles and attacked officers in Southport. Fifty-three officers were treated for injuries, with 27 taken to hospital. Four men have been arrested.

More unrest followed Wednesday night. Protestors let off flares outside No. 10 Downing Street and, 300 miles to the north east, others threw debris at police in the town of Hartlepool.

The protests were swiftly condemned by Britain’s new Prime Minister Keir Starmer as “thuggery,” and as an insult to a grieving community. “They will feel the full force of the law,” he vowed.

Beyond the immediate arrests, however, confronting the far right now presents an early, urgent problem for Starmer’s government.

The disorder was the second gathering linked to far-right activity in the space of less than a week, after tens of thousands of supporters of activist and English Defense League founder Tommy Robinson filled Trafalgar Square in London Saturday. A stabbing attack on a uniformed soldier earlier this month has also offered a rallying point for the far-right.

The Farage factor

Complicating matters as Labour looks for a response is Nigel Farage, the populist Reform UK leader and newly-elected member of parliament.

Neither Labour or the Tories before them have been able to halt the rise of a politician who has repeatedly distanced himself from the far-right — while adopting some of its more popular talking points.

Farage has spent the past 24 hours fending off claims he fanned the flames of Tuesday’s unrest with a video posted on X just hours before the riots took place. In it, he questioned why the incident in Southport was not being treated as “terror-related” and suggested the “truth” about the identity of the suspect was being withheld.

“I’m just asking questions because I’m struck that every time something appalling happens we’re told it’s non-terror or it’s mental health, there was nothing to worry our little heads about,” he said on his GB News show later.

Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner said Farage should not “stir up this fake news online,” while Brendan Cox — widow of murdered Labour MP Jo Cox, who was killed by a man with far-right views — went much further.

He told the BBC that Farage’s remarks make him “nothing better than a Tommy Robinson in a suit,” a reference to the far-right, anti-Islam EDL founder.

Farage told the PA news agency such comparison was “beneath contempt.” The Reform leader has long kept his distance from Robinson, even quitting his old party UKIP in 2018 over its then-leadership’s “fixation” with him. But, his critics argue, his comments on the knife attack confer a kind of parliamentary legitimacy to views that would previously have stayed on the fringes of British politics.

Reform made real gains in July’s election — winning 14 percent of the vote and bagging five MPs — making him harder to dismiss as a fringe figure.

New Labour MP Josh Simons, who ran the Labour Together think tank which commissioned work on countering the populist right, said his party must continue to “call out pathetic hate” and “have the courage to respond to violence with love and support.”

Labour is meanwhile facing calls for a clampdown on the methods used by Britain’s far-right — but here too there are few easy options.

“Misinformation has spread like wildfire online, feeding unverified narratives about the culprit, their background and their motivations,” Hope not Hate’s Director of Research Joe Mulhall said.

The new government could move to try and further counter disinformation on social media platforms such as X, where misinformation about the attack flourished. The U.K.’s Online Safety Act, introduced by the Conservatives, is in the process of being implemented.

But the act doesn’t legislate for the removal of specific pieces of content. Instead, it’s about holding platforms to account more broadly — a point Ofcom officials have repeatedly tried to stress to MPs. Though it has no current plans, Labour could try to legislate further in this area.

Some, including the former Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf, have called on Starmer’s government to go much further and proscribe the English Defense League. Rayner told LBC Wednesday that Home Secretary Yvette Cooper will consider the proposal.

Others say Labour needs to relentlessly deliver to get at the root causes of the far right’s spread.

“Far-right and right-wing populism succeeds when it persuades a decent chunk of the majority that mainstream politics is not delivering for them, not working and we need something more radical,” Harry Quilter-Pinner, executive director of the left-leaning IPPR think tank — which is close to Labour — said. “The big thing that progressives in the U.K. need to be thinking about is how we get back to a point where the vast majority of people feel that mainstream politics serves their interests,” he added.

Laurie Clarke contributed reporting.

https://www.politico.eu/article/britain-uk-far-right-march-labour-problem-mosque-southport/

Ex-police chief likens riots to terrorism

Daniel De Simone
Investigations correspondent

   Published
   6 August 2024, 02:26 BST

The former head of counter-terrorism policing says some violence during the riots has “crossed the line into terrorism”.

Neil Basu, who held the top counter-terror job between 2018 and 2021, said: “I hope my successors are looking at that very closely.”

He told the BBC: “I think we have seen serious acts of violence designed to cause terror to a section of our community."

Mr Basu said “people should look very carefully” at the legal definition of terrorism when considering some of the violence and actions seen since last week.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy9eex9qj4xo

Go figure ....

There is much rumbling at the moment, primarily from the Reform Party, who blame Kier Starmer for the Labour Party's clamp down on the winter fuel allowance paid to British pensioners, irrespective of their financial status.

A tricky subject to broach, no one wants to hear of a pensioners death or illness caused by lack of adequate heating in their home but it does beg the question why a fuel allowance was decided in the first place, without due consideration to individual circumstances. The loud voices at present are not telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, their portrayal of the situation is deceptive by indicating that fuel allowances will be scrapped but of course this is not factual. Payment of the allowance will be means tested which is frankly how it should be.

It can be likened to a millionaire taking advantage of the NHS - wrong on every level, nonetheless not forbidden nor prevented. You only need imagine the millions paid-out annually to those not in need to recognize the injustice of the system. Never forget, it's public money being squandered here.

Indeed many of the benefits available to adults were initially introduced by the Labour Party to help those on lower incomes to keep their head above water, so to speak.

Just imagine how such cut-backs will benefit the nation as a whole, face it - you can't just keep handing money out like it's a bottomless pot. The Reform Party and perhaps the Tory Party are using this proposal for political gain, another tentacle to their desperate attemps to win the next general election. No harm in that, fair enough but keep it above the belt, don't propagate false or deceptive news to sway public opinion. If you succeed remember you have to fulfill your promises - don't wait for nor cause the ruling party to fail so you can blame them!

Be careful what you wish for ....

1. Summary of the proposed changes

The government has announced changes to winter fuel payments to be implemented in the Social Fund Winter Fuel Payment Regulations 2024.[1] The government intends for payments to be means tested. People not in receipt of pension credit or “certain other means-tested benefits” would no longer receive winter fuel payments.[2] Since 1998 the payment has been given to everyone in receipt of the state pension regardless of their other income.[3] The government has said it has had to make some “difficult decisions to fix the foundations of the economy due to the dire state of the public finances”.[4]

The explanatory memorandum to the regulations states that the government expects to make savings of £1.3bn in 2024/25 and around £1.5bn in subsequent years as a result of the policy.[5]

The House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee has said that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) had told it that the policy would mean 9.3 million fewer individuals would be claiming the payment in 2024–25:

   In supplementary material, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) told us that the estimated number of claimants in England and Wales for 2024–25 is expected to be 1.5 million individuals in 1.3 million households. This represents a decrease of 9.3 million individuals and 6.3 million households from the 10.8 million individuals in 7.6 million households who claimed in 2023–24.[6]

The government has launched a drive to try to increase the uptake of pension credit by eligible people not yet in receipt of it so that they can also receive the winter fuel payment.[7] It has also announced funding for an extension to the household support fund, which “will enable local authorities in England to help vulnerable people and families receive discretionary emergency crisis support as we help people through the winter”.[8]

2. Announcement of changes to winter fuel payments

On 29 July 2024, the chancellor of the exchequer, Rachel Reeves, made an oral statement in the House of Commons on public spending.[9] She accused the previous Conservative government of “covering up” the state of the UK’s public finances. She said she was told by officials that the day-to-day spending set out in the spring budget in March 2024 did not reflect what the then government had expected to spend this year. She said this amounted to a £22bn overspend on public finances:

   Once we account for the slippage in budgets that we usually see over a year and the reserve of £9bn designed to respond to genuinely unexpected events, that means that we have inherited a projected overspend of £22bn. That is a £22bn hole in the public finances now—not in the future, but now. It is £22bn of spending this year that was covered up by the Conservative party. If left unaddressed, it would mean a 25% increase in the budget deficit this year, so today I will set out the necessary and urgent work that I have already done to reduce that pressure on the public finances by £5.5bn this year and over £8bn next year.[10]

As part of the government’s response, the chancellor announced that people not in receipt of pension credit or “certain other means-tested benefits” would no longer receive winter fuel payments.[11] People who received pension credit would continue to get winter fuel payments of £200, or £300 for households in receipt of the credit where someone was aged over 80. Ms Reeves said that the scale of the economic situation meant the government had to make “incredibly tough choices”. She said this was not a decision that she wanted to make:

   […] nor is it the one that I expected to make, but these are the necessary and urgent decisions that I must make. It is the responsible thing to do to fix the foundations of our economy and bring back economic stability.[12]

The chancellor said that alongside the change to winter fuel payments she would work with the secretary of state for work and pensions “to maximise the take-up of pension credit by bringing forward the administration of housing benefit and pension credit”. The government would also work with older people’s charities and local authorities to raise awareness of pension credit.

The shadow chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, responded for the opposition. He said that Rachel Reeves would “fool absolutely no one with a shameless attempt to lay the grounds for tax rises that she did not have the courage to tell us about”. He said that the public finances had been recently audited by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR):

   Those public finances were audited by the OBR just 10 weeks before the election was called. We are now expected to believe that, in that short period, a £20bn black hole has magically emerged, but for every single day in that period—in fact, since January, in line with constitutional convention—the right hon. Lady had privileged access to the Treasury permanent secretary. She could have found out absolutely anything she needed.[13]

Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies Paul Johnson argued that “it was always clear and obvious” that the spending plans inherited by the incoming Labour government were “incompatible” with its plans for public services and that more funding would have been needed at some point.[14] However, he said the in-year funding shortfall would add to the problem:

   But the extent of the in-year funding pressures does genuinely appear to be greater than could be discerned from the outside, which only adds to the scale of the problem.[15]

He described some of the specifics as “indeed shocking” and argued that it raised “some difficult questions for the last government”.

https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/changes-to-winter-fuel-payments-the-social-fund-winter-fuel-payment-regulations-2024/

Oh dear oh dear, the reverend one has issued a new video threatening a return to the UK in order to wreak havoc .... beware!

Normally a holiday, or some other break from routine, quietens the temper - rivigourates with new life, calm and collected.  Not so here it would seem, though quite what the anger is all about is hard to decipher - does Zivania play any part in this plan of action?

The Magna Carta

The contents of Magna Carta

Magna Carta is Latin for ‘great charter' and the term was first used in 1217 to distinguish it from the Charter of the Forest, a document that also set out limits on the king's administration, this time of the royal forest, areas of the country set aside for royal hunting and subject to much harsher laws and restrictions. Both charters set out what the king could and could not do. In other words, Magna Carta set out the laws which the king and everyone else had to follow for the first time. Copies of Magna Carta were sent out to be read out in each county of England so that everyone knew of its existence.

The Clauses of Magna Carta

There are 63 clauses in Magna Carta. For the main part, the clauses do not deal with legal principles but instead relate to the regulation of feudal customs and the operation of the justice system. There are clauses on the granting of taxes, towns and trade, the extent and regulation of the royal forest, debt, the Church and the restoration of peace.

Only four of the 63 clauses in Magna Carta are still valid today - 1 (part), 13, 39 and 40. Of enduring importance to people appealing to the charter over the last 800 years are the famous clauses 39 and 40:

“No free man shall be seized, imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, exiled or ruined in any way, nor in any way proceeded against, except by the lawful judgement of his peers and the law of the land.

“To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay right or justice.”

These clauses remain law today, and provided the basis for important principles in English law developed in the fourteenth through to the seventeenth century, and which were exported to America and other English-speaking countries. Their phrasing, ‘to no one' and ‘no free man' gave these provisions a universal quality that is still applicable today in a way that many of the clauses relating specifically to feudal custom are not.

https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/evolutionofparliament/originsofparliament/birthofparliament/overview/magnacarta/magnacartaclauses/

Know your history!