Starmer’s hypocrisy on Gaza has fuelled the rise of the far right

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What are we to make of Keir Starmer’s speech about the UK’s merry race rioters? He didn’t directly condemn racism of course but bemoaned ‘far right thuggery’. Starmer dripped with his trademark insincerity, deceit and hypocrisy as he empathised with those frightened by the violence and said those responsible would face the full force of the law.

The Prime Minister is in fact very relaxed indeed about ‘far right thuggery’ and only interested in the full force of the law when it suits him.

Let us not forget that this is the man who has:

• Asserted that Israel had the ‘right’ to cut off food, water and medicine to Gaza.
• Punished MP’s calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
• Has long colluded with the attempt to dress up Israel’s genocide as self-defence.
• Nothing to say about the two massacres carried out by Israel at two UNWRA schools in Gaza on the same day as his speech.
• Nothing to say about Israeli settler violence in the West Bank
• Nothing to say about the recent ICJ judgement which renders Israel’s invasion and occupation of Palestine illegal.
• Dragged his heels and fudged stopping arms sales to Israel.
• Ignored each and every instance of nakedly racist and indeed genocidal language issued by Netanyahu, senior members of the Israeli government and many members of the Knesset.
• Ignored the riots of far-right mobs who stormed Israel’s torture camps because they insisted that the IDF retain the right to torture, rape and murder Palestinian hostages.
• Sent his foreign secretary David Lammy scuttling over to Tel Aviv to shake hands with Netanyahu in the first few hours of his government.
• Traded in racist tropes against asylum seekers and Bangladeshis to get elected.
• Conspired (unsuccessfully) to drive out Dianne Abbot.
• Nothing to say about the neo-Nazi militias integrated into the Ukrainian army, nor the influence of the far right over Zelensky’s government.

Keir Starmer has made it crystal clear that he considers socialism and internationalism to be relics of Labour’s past. His base is an electoral sand castle of people wanting a less incompetent Tory party and a mildly less loopy Reform party, so he dare not take any moral stance against racism. This is why his speech was very focused on disorder and thuggery – many Tory voters like law and order speeches, but secretly agree with sticking it to the Muslims.

Starmer is a slippery snake of vacuous political expediency, this is how he can denounce ‘far right thuggery’ in the UK, bewailing broken windows and bin fires in Rotherham while utterly ignoring Israel’s live streamed fascist genocide in Gaza which has murdered over 200,000 people and destroyed an entire city.

Trapped between multiple levels of his own cowardice Starmer is not merely unconcerned about ‘far right thuggery’ and ‘the full force of the law’ – he is directly complicit in enabling and protecting the worst far right atrocity of the century in direct defiance of every applicable international law and court judgement.

Don’t imagine for a millisecond that those hurling bricks at Mosques haven’t been primed by the explicitly racist double standards of the UK’s political and media class.

We have long said that what happens in Palestine will not be confined there and here we are – mobs of Zionist far right thugs running amok in the West Bank and mobs of fascist thugs running amok in every major UK city.

Nobody can say they weren’t warned. History tells us that those who appease and support fascism abroad will soon be under its boot at home and Starmer is EXACTLY the kind of weak, weaselly, morally vacuous careerist to bring that dystopia home.