Social democracy and the riots
ANDREW MURRAY unpicks the politics that finds Starmer’s Labour playing an enabling role towards the far right and opposing anti-fascist popular mobilisation
THAT the first big event of the Labour government would have been far-right racist rioting across the country was not widely anticipated.
There are, however, two different reasons why it might have been.
First, the right has frequently deployed extra-parliamentary force against Labour governments as a form of political pressure. Elements are always unreconciled to any Labour government ever.
Even Tony Blair was exposed to this, with the anti-fuel tax mobilisations of 2000 bringing the country briefly to a standstill. That drama was organised and promoted by the Daily Mail and justified by the Telegraph on the grounds that parliamentary democracy, which had recently yielded a huge Labour majority, was defunct.
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