In plain site – not even hiding these days

Summer is drawing to a close and what crazy times we seem to be living in.

I watched Chris Mason of the BBC interview Ed Davey of the Lib-Dems at their party conference. Mason was clearly affronted that the BBC have been called out for giving Farridge and Reform an almost uncritical platform for much of the summer – he accused Davey of ‘obsession’ with Farridge and then proceeded to ask him 3 different questions about him rather than say the Lib-Dems policy platform.

Now I don’t really care much about the Lib-Dems but given the summers events, the explicit rise of nationalism and overt racism in public discourse you’d have thought that Mason would have focused more on Lib-Dems policies than Reforms (their conference was last week after all).

So let’s not ignore the risks of the rise of far right activity, it’s funders or the alignment with either the mainstream body politic or media. They’re not bothering to hide it – they’re saying the nasty bits out loud these days. It started with relentless attacks on the trans community, moved onto an obsession with small boats and all that pesky human rights stuff. Didn’t take long for their true colours to shine through.

Reforms current announcements on migration and the (potential) settled status for many thousands of our neighbours, friends and colleagues – as well as being financially illiterate don’t even pretend to not be racist. If they accept that the proposed restrictions don’t apply to EU nationals, Ukrainian nationals or people from Hong Kong they are only talking about black and brown people. And why would this be a surprise – they’ve spent the summer protecting women and children from the confected dangers they face from illegal / irregular migrants (yep – they mean black and brown people). Concerns about women’s safety of course don’t apply to supporting initiatives and strategies that seek to address domestic abuse, hate speech, on-line misogyny, stalking etc – nor anything about the quite horrifying fact that the most dangerous place for women to be in the UK is at home…..

They are also much more overtly content to let the usual far right figures like Yaxley-Lennon, Britain First etc grab the microphones and take to the streets. A demo attended by many well known far right figures (may convicted of violent offences) – was deemed not to require ‘facial recognition technology’ by the Met Police whereas the celebratory Notting Hill Carnival needed the technology deployed because……

Netanyahu and his spokespeople are emboldened enough to say out loud that they will not accept a two state solution with Palestine…….something that has been self-evident for years. They are prepared for further destruction in Gaza and occupation of the West Bank – and are utterly dismissive of the the risk of international isolation. So while recognition of Palestine statehood is a good thing – it runs the risk of gesture politics of nothing else happens.

So what do I think – and who really cares…. I think that like the far right eruptions of the past (think Mosley, Tyndall, Griffin et al) they’ll be driven off the streets again. In local communities around the country we see collective action to stop them taking a grip. What feels more challenging this time is the distance between community activitism and the mainstream body politic. There is a palpable lack of faith in government, a fracture between for instance our leaders approach to the middle east genocide and the action people want to address the horrors they see very day. A rupture between the hope many people felt after the election in ’24 and the lack of progress / vision or story to tell. There’s dismay at the fawning over Trump.

But most people remain decent, compassionate and determined. Reform and their collection of failed Tory illuminaries might be adept at social media messaging, good at whipping up confected rage – but they don’t speak for most of us. And we can and will stop them.

And let’s face any question to which Farridge, Danny Kruger or Nadine effing Dorries is the answer was a stupid bloody question to begin with.

So I say – stuff them – get organised. It doesn’t look like the answers are going to come from our political classes. But there’s plenty of grass roots activities to get involved in whether it’s organised by Hope Not Hate, Stand Up To Racism etc. Also look to support those orgaisations working in neighbourhoods across the country – building a sense of a community of place as well as of identity. Asset based community development is still alive and kicking – and we can see that resilient and compassionate communities are less vulnerable to the politics of division.

And individually we can all do something – check in with your friends and neighbours who have been made that much less safe recently and smack anyone you know who starts a sentence ‘I’m not being racist…..’ – yes they are. Stuff them too. But also call out the sneering middle class dismissal of those who have been ignored for too long. If history teaches us nothing else it shows us that ‘they’ are used as the foot-soldiers for the establishments desires. Farridge is just the latest embodiment of this.

Anyway Autumn of looming so I am going to (hopefully) dip my toes back into the world of work. Feels like now more than ever ‘we’ need a vibrant, engaged and activated voluntary sector working together, forming alliances and speaking up and out for everyone we are set up to serve.

And in other news – the new Big Thief album is an absolute joy. Beyond excited for their forthcoming tour.

And Spurs are looking pretty good too.