KEIR STARMER’S attempt to overturn an independent policing decision to unleash racist football hooligans on Birmingham is cynical, inept — and extremely dangerous.

Cynical because he is a champion of “law and order,” who presses the police to obstruct peaceful demonstrations and oversees mass arrests of non-violent sit-ins. Yet when police take a safety-based decision to bar the notoriously violent fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv — already banned by Amsterdam City Council because of the riots they instigated in the Dutch city last November — he claims anti-semitism, in order to ingratiate himself with the pro-Israel political right.

Inept because this is an elephant trap for Labour, which threatens to collapse its remaining support in England’s second city while emboldening the far right.

Starmer’s intervention has made a non-political policing decision (no different in principle from Aston Villa’s 2023 ban on fans from Polish club Legia Warsaw, also associated with hooliganism) a focal point for political confrontation.

Already “Tommy Robinson” has publicly (decked out in Maccabi Tel Aviv kit) vowed to head to Birmingham on November 6 to support the Israeli team.

If it seems ironic that a self-styled British nationalist would travel to Birmingham to support a foreign football team against an English one, we have not paid enough attention to the international far right’s increasing identification with Israel — which they support on ethno-nationalist and Islamophobic grounds.

Nor to Robinson’s aim, provoking street confrontations in an area with a significant Muslim population. This feeds into the race war ambitions of the world’s richest man Elon Musk, who was recently revealed as paying Robinson’s legal costs in a trial over his refusal to comply with police demands when he was leaving the country last year (departing Britain in a silver Bentley with £13,000 in cash).

And it underlines why Starmer’s idiocy is so dangerous. The situation is designed to explode: in Amsterdam, Maccabi Tel Aviv fans started the riots by attacking houses displaying Palestinian flags, something common enough in Birmingham. Their chants, which included the refrain “Why is school out in Gaza? There are no children left” are intended to provoke reactions.

Overturning the police decision threatens the safety of local residents. The resulting violence will also be painted by the far right as a clash of civilisations: exactly the narrative promoted by Reform UK. Nigel Farage need not even side with Maccabi Tel Aviv to replay his signature theme that immigration has turned British streets into battlegrounds over issues that belong in the Middle East.

Pressure must be brought to bear to uphold the fan ban. Given Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood saw her vote more than halve at the last election in Birmingham Ladywood — beating a “Gaza independent” by just 15,000 votes to 12,000 when in 2019 it was a safe seat where her 33,000 made nearly 80 per cent of the total — it is still possible a sense of self-preservation will lead to a split in government ranks.

All MPs should face pressure to oppose the Prime Minister — and to call out the racist vilification of “Your Party” Birmingham Perry Bar MP Ayoub Khan for supporting the ban. That has extended to slurs on the whole city of Birmingham which — following Tory Robert Jenrick’s racist “no white faces” attack on Handsworth — is becoming a focal point for “enemy within” rhetoric of the sort once directed at Liverpool.

Whether the ban is upheld or not, Robinson will be heading to Birmingham to make trouble on November 6. The left and labour movement should offer all possible support to locally led mobilisation to protect communities and homes from racist thugs.

This is an occasion to expose Robinson’s agenda and for the anti-racist rallying cry “Whose streets? Our streets!” — not always apt — to come into their own.