Two images of Britain spring to mind this week. The first, Emma Finucane, Team GB cycling gold medallist at the Paris Olympics, great-niece of Brendan ‘Paddy’ Finucane, the World War II fighter pilot and Spitfire ace, the youngest-ever wing commander in the RAF and a national icon for his heroics in the Battle of Britain.
What a legacy, what an achievement, what a proud moment for our country.
The other, an image of hate and bigotry, a preening thug with his features concealed by a Union Jack mask. This country’s standard, used to hide the face of a coward: it doesn’t get more shameful than that.
Emma Finucane, Team GB cycling gold medallist, great niece of Second World War fighter pilot, a proud moment for our country
Two men conceal their features with Union Jack masks, they hide the faces of cowards
In another viral image, a shirtless knucklehead, a Nazi tattoo on his shoulder, spouting racist cliches.
Another still, also masked, on an e-bike, pulling up behind a female Sky News reporter, shouting: ‘Free Palestine, f*** the EDL [English Defence League]’. His mate aims a trigger finger at the camera; later one of the group uses a knife to try to slash the news crew’s tyres.
Finucane and her teammates: the absolute best of us. That other lot: the absolute dregs. An utter embarrassment, toxic masculinity at its very worst, tiny hate-filled brains fuelled by conspiracy nonsense and social media, egged on by equally toxic male ‘influencers’ who delight (and profit) from winding people up.
The preposterous narcissist Andrew Tate and his ridiculous waxed abs; Tommy Robinson, currently sunning his backside on a lounger in the Med while tweeting vitriol; and countless other wannabes, on both sides of the conflict, hoping to ride the wave of violence sweeping Britain to build followers and have their 15 minutes of infamy.
Instead of calling for an end to all violence on all sides, Labour has appeared to blame one faction over another. Not only is this straightforwardly unfair, it doesn’t help the situation
In fairness, it’s not all men —there are a few rather misguided women too. The Home Office minister Jess Phillips, for example, appeared somehow to justify the actions of the aforementioned thugs threatening the Sky News crew by tweeting that they were simply responding to online rumours ‘that racists were coming to attack them’.
Even assuming that were the case, does that justify the knife, the threats, the vandalism — and scaring a young woman witless? Of course not. Any sane person in that situation would stay inside, lock their doors and call the police. The threat of a lynch mob is not an excuse to start one of your own: that way madness lies.
As for people like Nigel Farage and Elon Musk, I wish they would engage their frontal lobes for five seconds, assuming they have them. In the case of Musk, tweeting ‘civil war is inevitable’ when the very platform he owns is in large part responsible for spreading inflammatory and misleading information (starting with the false notion that the perpetrator of the Southport massacre in which three little girls died was an asylum seeker) places him in a troll category all of his own.
Meanwhile Farage, not content with having done Labour’s job for it thanks to his party’s success in splitting the Conservative vote (I must confess that in my more febrile moments I can’t help wondering whether he was actually working for Starmer all along), and presumably bored senseless in his new role as MP for the good people of Clacton, went back to doing what he does best, i.e. winding people up by comparing the unrest to the Black Lives Matter riots.
Nigel Farage, presumably bored senseless in his new role as MP for the good people of Clacton, went back to doing what he does best, i.e. winding people up by comparing the unrest to the Black Lives Matter riots
If only someone — anyone, at this stage — would show a bit of maturity, leadership even. But no. Everyone is too busy pursuing their short-sighted little agendas and meanwhile the country burns.
It’s at times like these that you really need someone with clearsighted vision, a solid moral compass — and above all courage. Someone who can rise above all the accusations and counter-accusations, calm things down – and provide reassurance to the vast majority of people in this country who would never even dream of stealing a packet of sweets from their corner shop, let alone carve a swastika into their love handles and take to the streets in search of a fight.
In the past, that person would have been the late Queen. One word from Elizabeth II — nay, even a gentle side-eye — and even the boniest of boneheads would have slunk away like a naughty schoolboy. She just had that effect on people, a capacity to unite all in total respect for her.
Several times since her passing it has felt as though she were the glue that held this country together and that without her we are slowly dissolving into chaos. The past few days have served only to reinforce that notion.
The French and Russian revolutions, the rise of the Third Reich in German, catastrophes that cost the lives of millions, all sprang from the same seeds of deep-seated populist resentment and a perception of an elite impervious to the struggles of the common man
But sadly, she is no longer with us and King Charles — for all his virtues — just doesn’t command the same level of reverence. Indeed, he has been conspicuously silent on the recent clashes, having presumably been advised not to get involved.
Maybe he should. After all, isn’t that the whole point of the monarchy — to be a symbol of something more permanent, a port in any storm, the one constant in an ever-changing political landscape?
The only other institution that serves a similar purpose is the Church and judging by yesterday’s intervention of the Archbishop of Canterbury, in all his spectacular mediocrity, it is not much by way of panacea.
Which just leaves the Prime Minister, who so far has demonstrated about as much capacity to deal with this crisis as I have of joining Finucane on that podium in Paris. Almost everything he has said so far has only served to enrage one bunch of knuckleheads while seemingly failing to examine the behaviour of another.
Instead of calling for an end to all violence on all sides, Labour has appeared to blame one faction over another. Not only is this straightforwardly unfair, it doesn’t help the situation.
Team GB’s cycling team, from Sophie Capewell, Katy Marchant and Emma Finucane, proudly hold up a flag of celebration
After all, it doesn’t take a genius to see that this will only fan the flames of hatred, since a big part of why these people are rioting in the first place is because there’s a perception that the authorities are biased against them.
Whether these concerns are legitimate or not is an important question and one that needs to be addressed, however unpleasant or uncomfortable that conversation may be. But no one wants to go there.
The last person who was prepared to confront difficult issues like this to any great extent was Margaret Thatcher and that was because she was that rarest of politicians, a woman who understood that being liked was not part of the job description.
In fact, the refusal of successive administrations to have a proper debate about cultural integration and to dismiss all concerns about the effects of immigration as prejudice is the exact reason things have got to this very ugly point. It’s the reason people end up voting for men like Farage: he’s the only one who will engage with them.
When people feel no one is listening, they eventually make themselves heard — and it’s not usually pretty. If history teaches us nothing else, it teaches us that.
The French and Russian revolutions, the rise of the Third Reich in Germany — catastrophes that cost the lives of millions — all sprang from the same seeds of deep-seated populist resentment and a perception of an elite impervious to the struggles of the common man.
As a politician, you may not like what people are telling you, but you still have a duty to listen.
You may not share their worries; indeed you may think they are misguided or ignorant (and often they are); but you can’t just dismiss them out of hand. You can’t just wave them aside as ‘deplorables’, Hillary Clinton-style, because that only alienates people further.
At the end of the day, what kind of country do we want to be? The land of young Finucane and her heroic great-uncle, of tenacious Andy Murray and sweet Tom Daley with his knitting? Or fighting like rats in a sack.
This is not Britain; this is not who we are. I only hope it’s not too late.
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