It wasn’t always like this. The British right was once respectable. It might have been objectionable or wrong in any number of ways, but it was at least sane. It had standards. Now, God knows what it is. God knows what it is becoming.
We are in a moment of acute danger. We’re facing a sustained assault by Elon Musk: an extremely powerful foreign far-right conspiracy theorist. And instead of opposing it, instead of showing the slightest trace-element of patriotism or moral decency, British conservatives are siding with the aggressor. They are taking his lunatic extremism, tidying it up, scrubbing it down, and making it respectable.
Nearly every aspect of Musk’s commentary in recent days has been false. He claims that the story of grooming gangs has been covered up. This is not true. It has been reported extensively for years. He claims Starmer failed to address it. This is not true. Starmer used his time as director of public prosecutions to pursue offenders. “I want to put the record straight on this,” Andrew Norfolk, the investigative reporter who did so much to originally uncover the story, said recently. “It was Starmer who changed the rules to make more prosecutions possible.”
Musk claims it is about protecting women. This is not true. Jess Phillips, Home Office safeguarding minister, has spent her life fighting for women’s rights. He isn’t fit to even mention her name, let alone libel her as he has done. She is currently unable to go out alone in public because of his demented attacks on her, including the accusation that she is a “rape genocide apologist”.
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Read MoreHe claims that Starmer is blocking an inquiry “because he is hiding terrible things”. This is also false, although in this case so absurd it demeans us to even refute it. What is it even meant to imply? That the Prime Minister covered up grooming gangs? That he organised them? It is just so pitiful and embarrassing and absurd.
The truth is that this is about racism. That is the basic honest fact of it. There have been many white sexual exploitation offenders – a 2020 study by the Home Office found that was the most common instance – but that is not what has whipped up the far right’s attention. It is the Enoch Powell view, shamefully espoused by Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick, that Britain has been “importing hundreds of thousands of people from alien cultures, who possess medieval attitudes towards women”.
Musk’s comments draw on two key narratives in online extremism. The first is the great replacement theory, which claims that liberal politicians have brought over Muslim immigrants to the West to replace their white working class voters. The second is QAnon and its variant instances, like Pizzagate, which involve bizarre allegations about figures like Hilary Clinton organising child abuse rings. These are more like religious conspiracies than political ones, imagining Satanic forces of total evil which will one day be destroyed by the new messiah, in the form of Donald Trump. I know it’s absurd. I know it’s laughable. But millions of people believe this stuff.
Not so long ago, the mainstream British right would have stood against this. Even during the height of the Brexit wars, this type of degenerate nonsense was considered out of bounds. If someone promoted QAnon conspiracies during that time, the most incorrigible Leave-supporting Tory MP would still have distanced themself from it. When Boris Johnson tried to associate Starmer with Jimmy Saville, Munira Mirza quit as the head of his Policy Unit. She was firmly behind his project. She was a vocal advocate for Brexit. But she knew where the line was.
Those now seem almost like ancient days of Arthurian legend. When Starmer stood up for Phillips on Monday, he was attacked in the Mail, the Express, and the Telegraph. A foreign billionaire was using far-right conspiracy theories to put a British minister in danger. And instead of pushing back against it, or even ignoring it, the right-wing press actually supported him. For years these papers shouted loudly about sovereignty. Now they’ll sell out their country for a few cheap hits against a political enemy.
Instead of distancing herself from Musk, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch is desperately scrambling for his approval, humiliating herself with her plaintive pleas for his attention. Today in the Commons, she will add a wrecking amendment to the children’s wellbeing and schools bill demanding an inquiry into grooming gangs.
It makes no sense. It has no connection to the legislation. But this is how she can help Musk construct his deranged narrative about a rape plot with Starmer at the head. He has to vote against the amendment, or he would lose his education bill. But as soon as he does so, they can say – as the Sun does on its front page today – that “Govt blocks inquiry into rape gangs”.
This is worse than merely conspiratorial, or even racist. It is an affront to Britain’s national dignity. Starmer is an elected prime minister. He was recently handed one of the largest majorities in modern electoral history. Musk has suggested that the US “should liberate the people of Britain from their tyrannical government”, demanded that the King should call a new general election and called for Tommy Robinson to be released from prison, presumably to become the new prime minister. Obviously it is insane. But let’s be clear what else it is: a direct attempt to undermine British democracy.
This is the standard of political behaviour which the Conservative Party and elements of the right-wing press have embroiled themselves in. This sewer of racial hatred, paranoia, lies and violent extremism. This sickening pantomime. They are forming a de facto alliance with fascist street thugs. They hold hands with Musk, he holds hands with Tommy Robinson, and all that is good or decent in the Conservative tradition dies gurgling in the sewer.
If they’ve even the slightest sense of decency left in them, they will hang their goddamn heads in shame.
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