Whitewashing the Racists

In view of today's political developments in the UK, your regular reminder that we don't elect prime ministers.  Parliament, in effect, does that, in that whoever can command a majority there can form a government.  We get to elect the parliament.  That's why it is called a parliamentary democracy.   Hence, there is no requirement to have a general election every time the prime minister changes.  Which also means that if you are one of those people who bangs on about 'unelected prime ministers' every time the ruling party changes leader, then you are politically and constitutionally illiterate and thus too ignorant to be commenting on UK politics.

Back to business.  Still politics, though.  I read an article from the Daily Telegraph recently that noted with shock and horror that Rupert Lowe's Restore party was being financed by white supremacists.  Well, golly gosh, who would have thought it, eh?  An extreme right-wing party that advocates the forced removal of immigrants and allegedly doesn't want non-white people standing for it as candidates, regardless of whether or not they are UK citizens, is being supported by a bunch of Nazis?  I found the Telegraph's apparent naivety somewhat perplexing, bearing in mind that they, along with the rest of the right-wing press have been busy turning out the sort of hateful rhetoric and right-wing propaganda which has helped create the sort of discourse in which these extremist parties can be nurtured.  There is, of course, a catch to all this: the story goes on to claim that Restore are so extreme that even Stephen 'Tommy Robinson' Yaxley-Lennon, convicted mortgage fraudster and violent football thug, thinks that are just too, well, Nazi.  Yes indeed, this is really another media attempt to normalise Robinson and his thugs, with the article going on to tell us how uneasy Restore's attitude to race makes him.  Because Tommy, after all, is now peddling his brand of hate under the 'Unite the Kingdom' banner, claiming that it is a movement unifying all true British citizens, regardless of race, in a patriotic campaign to save British values.  Yeah, and pigs might fly.

Apart from whitewashing Robinson, there's another underlying theme to this and similar articles in the right-wing press - that Restore, by attracting the hardcore Nazi nutter vote, is weakening Reform UK at the polls.  Reform UK and more specifically Nigel Farage, being the current darling of the billionaires who currently own most of the UK's press.  Despite them not living in the UK or paying taxes here, these guys see him as their best hope to lead Britain into becoming a low tax (or no tax for billionaires), low regulation, (especially any of those pesky workers' rights), playground for them.  So, anything that threatens his ascendancy has to be discredited.  The thing is, though, that it isn't just the Restore vote which is eroding Reform's support, as the Makerfield by-election result shows. (See that folks? See how I've brought us back to the first, apparently unrelated, paragraph?  Neat, huh?)  As it turned out, Andy Burnham was able to win the seat easily with a majority far more than the combined votes cast for Reform and Restore.  This despite the right-wing press' constant parroting of Reform propaganda claiming that it was going to be a 'close contest'.  (Just like they were salivating over that referendum in Switzerland about reducing immigration by capping the country's population - that, too was going to be a 'too close to call', but the proposal was actually decisively rejected by the Swiss electorate, 55% to 45%).  The reality highlighted at Makerfield is that there is a strong progressive, decent or whatever you want to call it, vote out there who simply don't want Reform, Restore, Tommy Robinson and their ilk - it is notable that the Greens and Lib Dems offered only token campaigns to avoid splitting this vote too much, giving Burnham a clear run.  So, there you go - if you want to keep theses neo Nazi nutters out, then be prepared to vote tactically in order to ensure the least worst outcome.