IN 1978 Margaret Thatcher said non-white migration meant voters are “afraid that this country might be rather swamped by people with a different culture.” 

The fascist National Front was growing. Thatcher was accused of trying to win their votes by using their language. Labour general secretary Ron Hayward said Thatcher used “National Front talk” and was “fighting dirty” on race in the upcoming election.

In the last round of fascist-led riots, this process worked in reverse: instead of mainstream parties opportunistically borrowing far-right language, the racist rioters used slogans written by the mainstream parties.

So racist mobs shouted “stop the boats,” one of Rishi Sunak’s main election slogans.

Racist rioters  also spoke of “two-tier policing:” They claim the cops are soft on left wing protesters, Muslim demonstrators and non-white criminals, while cracking down on “patriots.”

It’s an important idea for the rioters, because it means they can see themselves as standing up for “Law and Order” while having a punch up with the police. They claim “two-tier policing” because it means they can be authoritarian while attacking the “authorities.”

Lots of “Establishment“ voices are now explaining that “two-tier policing” is a myth, a conspiracy theory – the Times, for example, did a good job recently making this argument.

Those of us on the left don’t need persuading there is no “two-tier policing” favouring us or Britain’s minorities. We can see the opposite is true when, for example, the “spycops” ran decades-long, dodgy undercover operations overwhelmingly inside left-wing organisations rather than the hard right, or by simply looking at the different arrests and other treatment of Britain’s minorities.

The really striking thing is the “two-tier policing” myth wasn’t developed by the fascists, it was developed by mainstream conservatives. Then home secretary Suella Braverman made “two-tier policing” a national cause. 

Last year Braverman was trying to force the police to ban, or at least harass, the massive pro-Palestine marches. She was incensed by the protests, claiming they were “hate marches” out to attack Jewish people (despite the large Jewish contingents on the marches, and their focus on Gaza). 

The cops were reluctant to try to ban these very large, peaceful marches, so Braverman started using the “two-tier policing” slogan to put pressure on them.

This actually spurred a fascist threat as Tommy Robinson, legitimised by Braverman, raised up a mob to try to attack a pro-Palestine march last November.

Robinson’s mob was hundreds strong, while the Gaza march was hundreds of thousands strong, so he was unable to threaten the protesters. But he and other fascists have borrowed the “two-tier policing” slogan since.

This should bring special shame to many other mainstream organisations that followed Braverman and used the “two-tier policing” slogan back then.

Before the recent riots the Telegraph’s Westminster correspondent wrote at length claiming “two-tier law enforcement” meant police favoured pro-Palestine and Black Lives Matter marches while cracking down on right-wing groups.

The Mail uncritically reported Laurence Fox and Tommy Robinson’s “two-tier policing” claims.

It is a sign of how the mainstream are enabling the far-right violence. Governments that demonise migrants while standards of living and public services stagnate are fuelling a hard-right racism. With “stop the boats” and “two-tier policing” they have literally been putting words in the mouths of the racist mob.

Walz

MANY “liberal” British pundits are big admirers of the US and its Democrat party. But they don’t seem to really understand what is happening there.

British liberals’ enthusiasm for the US Democrats comes from a general feeling that they are the liberal wing of the elite of the world’s most powerful nation, the nation that underlines “Western” politics and economics.

It’s a kind of “Atlanticism” that sees the US as the powerful engine for all “centrist” politics: the US gave us the “third way,” Clinton inspired Blair, and we must always be grateful.

So they are confused as the Democrats shift slightly left. This shift is often modest or rhetorical, but for UK pundits, it should not be happening at all.

The Democrats are there to show liberals must always “triangulate” rightwards, so this is just confusing.

Kamala Harris’s pick of Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her running mate is a case in point.

Sky News’ US correspondent James Matthews’s whole report on the Walz pick was based on the “surprise” that the more right-wing Josh Shapiro wasn’t picked in favour of the more “progressive” Walz.

Matthews threw up loads of  theories about “personal chemistry” and other possible explanations, without understanding Harris picked Walz precisely because he is seen as “progressive.”

Similarly Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian worries Walz is too left wing. Freedland wrote  Walz has “a history of progressive positions that anyone with a memory knows Republicans can twist into a caricature of left-wing radicalism.”

Freedland asserted: “It’s almost a universal truth of contemporary politics that any party not of the right has to go much further than it would like to reassure voters in the centre. (Just ask Keir Starmer)”.

In this, Freedland and Matthews are closer to the judgement of the Rupert Murdoch-owned hard-right Wall Street Journal than the US Democrat mainstream. 

The Wall Street Journal argued that the Republicans would attack Walz over his “hard-left agenda” as Democrat governor.

They helpfully listed these “hard-left” Minnesota measures including “free breakfast and lunch” for all schoolkids, affordable housing funds, abortion rights and “family and medical leave” for workers.

British centrists think we should be scared free school meals might look “hard left,” but Walz actually made them part of his speech at the Democrat convention.

The truth is that Trump eats into Democrat votes by claiming to be a champion of “Rust Belt” workers while Democrats represent the “elite.” 

Trying to beat Trump by running as centrists allows him to do this — which is why Hillary Clinton lost in 2016.

Biden, by contrast, adopted a little of Bernie Sanders’s left agenda, to beat back Trump’s (fake) claims to represent left-behind workers, and won in 2020.

Harris and Walz are trying to do the same for 2024. UK pundits who think the US Democrats guarantee an “eternal  truth” that liberals must always triangulate rightwards don’t understand that the US is a real country not a symbol, with real voters who can shift leftwards.