Government by far-right
A Sunday Times report today has got me thinking about how conspiracy is the new guiding star of right-wing politics - and wow are we f****d
Good morning!
First of all, apologies for the long space of time between my last SubStack and this.
There were two practical reasons for the gap in writing… one of which I’ll explain in the what I’m writing section below; the other is that I have been so intensely busy since I got back from Ukraine that even weekend mornings (SubStack writing time) have been swallowed up by paid work. The emotional reason is that it’s taken me some time to recover/process/reflect/think on the trip to Ukraine, which led to a bit of a writing block.
But here I am, fresh from a breakfast of baked eggs, full of takes about the news of the day. Quite literally, as I want to write about something I read in The Sunday Times regarding Sunak’s forthcoming anti-Starms strategy. The article, by Gabriel Pogrund and Harry Yorke, delineates how the Conservatives plans to attack “his record on rape and child abuse as director of public prosecutions”.
AKA the Savile affair.
For those of us who were engaged in politics before 2015, we know about Starmer’s record on rape and child abuse as DPP. As a feminist activist during this period, I for one actively celebrated Starmer’s record.
Take, for example, his research proving the rarity of false allegations, as he sought to dispel the myth that women routinely lie about sexual violence. This was hugely important, an attempt to shift the debate away from disinformation and into the realm of facts. Sadly, that has gone way off course in recent years. But the data is there.
After the horrors of Rotherham and Rochdale, where vulnerable victims were disbelieved by police because they were chaotic and engaging in petty crime, Starmer ordered a comprehensive restructuring of the CPS’s response to grooming. This was part an effort to ensure that victims who were not seen as ‘credible’ witnesses because of a combination of classism and misogyny instead got the support they needed.
Then there was his work on improving the guidances for when victims of domestic abuse withdrew an allegation. Women who withdrew allegations due to pressure or fear or lack of trust in the system were being criminalised; Starmer consulted women’s groups to write new guidance designed to give victims more confidence in reporting.
So all in all, at the time, the feminist movement was broadly clear on Starmer’s record on men’s violence against women and girls. We are also broadly clear on how far things have degraded in the past decade, with rape effectively decriminalised and the impact of austerity on women’s safety and equality.
But when the Tories say they are going to attack Starmer on his record on rape and sexual abuse, they aren’t dealing in facts. They are dealing in far-right conspiracy - chiefly that Starmer failed to prosecute Jimmy Savile when he was alive, and that Starmer tried to block the prosecution of grooming gangs. Both allegations are false, as explained here and here by FullFact.
The idea that Starmer failed to act on allegations of serious child abuse are conspiracy theories that were circulated on racist Facebook posts and in far-right channels. An Observer investigation last year by Mark Townsend found the Savile allegations being seized upon by “notorious far-right groups including the Pie and Mash Squad, a network of football hooligans linked to the anti-Muslim English Defence League and violent Casuals United, as well as a white nationalist organisation called the Traditional Britain Group”, not to mention Mark Collett of Patriotic Alternative and BNP’s Nick Griffin.
Indeed, a quick scan by me this morning found examples of Collett falsely claiming that Starmer failed to prosecute Savile and grooming gangs (as well as antisemitic comments about Starmer’s family); I found similar disinformation on the Tommy Robinson News Telegram channel.
The Conservative leadership knows this. They know that these smears about Starmer are untrue, they know that they are conspiracy theories fermented by the far-right, they know that if they push this narrative they are pushing disinformation created by hateful organisations that seek to weaponise the suffering and pain of victims.
And the reason we know they know this, is because when Boris Johnson did it last year, it caused such a huge scandal that his most trusted adviser resigned while far-right activists celebrated, and Starmer was attacked in the street by fascists.
This tells us two interesting and alarming things.
The first is that the state of political debate is now so deeply toxic, that what was considered beyond the pale last year has become the norm this year. There was shock and disgust when Johnson parroted far-right conspiracy in Parliament in February 2022. Mirza’s resignation letter described it as “not the normal cut-and-thrust of politics; it was an inappropriate and partisan reference to a horrendous case of child sex abuse”. That the comments led to a mob accosting LOTO should have led to a moment of reflection - a decision to abandon hateful rhetoric in favour of honesty and integrity. But now, 18 months on, what was considered unacceptable is now on the grid as electoral strategy.
The second is that the modern Conservative Party is now the party of the far-right. It pains me to say so, because I believe there are decent Conservative MPs who have been vocally against this descent into conspiracist hate and who have good political ideas about how to tackle things like violence against women and girls and improve reproductive rights, however much we may disagree on other issues.
What can’t be ignored however, is that the Government is increasingly willing to make policy based on far-right ideology, and is happy to take far-right conspiracy as part of their electoral strategy. As Paul Mason and I wrote back in December 2021, having trawled through far-right Telegram channels and matching it up with latest policy announcements, “extremist views are influencing and putting political pressure on mainstream Government policy”.
More and more, we are seeing policy created not on the basis of reality and evidence, but on the demands of conspiracists and hate-mongers. From anti-LGBTIQ legislation that responds to bizarre conspiracy theories and flat-out hate, to an anti-sex education drive that is again responding to disinformation rather than need and reality, the far-right is increasingly dictating the policy agenda.
No where is this more obvious than on migration policy. Both migrant rights groups and the far-right are campaigning against asylum seeking people being held in hotels, for example. But rather than responding to the migrant rights sector’s views on hotel accommodation for asylum seeking people (get people out of hotels because it’s unsafe and unhealthy, and into housing and work) they have responded to the far-right view on hotel accommodation (get people out of ‘luxurious’ hotels and into worse accommodation or better yet deport them all).
It’s a frightening time.
If the Conservative Party decide it is ok to attack Starmer on the basis of a disproven, far-right conspiracy theory – weaponising the pain and violence done to victims of child sex abuse in order to score political points – just over a year after such actions were considered vile and a resignation issue, then we are in a dangerous place. And sadly, I can’t see things improving any time soon.
Obligatory book plug
Last week I did an event with Marisa Bate, author of Wild Hope and Elizabeth Morris and it was so so nice. A really great conversation with two awesome women, and while we were looking into the darkness of abortion bans and the rollback of women’s rights, we also found space for hope.
What I’m writing
So one of the reasons that I have been holding off writing my SubStack is because I needed to get all my reporting from Ukraine into one newsletter that I can then show to the grant funders.
And this, dear reader, is that newsletter.
Here are the my three reports from Ukraine:
For i paper:
For The Lead UK:
NO STONE UNTURNED: THE WOMEN INVESTIGATING RUSSIA'S WAR CRIMES
For The Ferret:
Trafficking survivors: meet the Polish activists supporting Ukrainian women fleeing war horrors
This was co-published in the National on Sunday.
The travel for theses articles was funded by the Justice for Journalists Foundation’s Investigative Grants Programme
What else have I been writing? Well, quite a lot actually.
For the Observer:
‘We’ve come so far from saying women can’t play football’: girls gather to cheer on the Lionesses
Bristol’s low-traffic scheme stalls as row over Ulez spreads from London
For openDemocracy, in collaboration with Sascha Lavin
Staff at Home Office-funded hotel accused of ‘treating migrant like slave’
For The Lead UK:
MIGRANT HOTELS ARE ANYTHING BUT ‘LUXURIOUS’ - AND BARGES ARE NOT THE ANSWER
What I’m loving
Jack Shenker is one of the best journalists around and also one of the nicest, and his long-read into the Amazon strikers in Coventry is an absolute must.
I also wanted to include this unbearably moving article by Charlotte Higgins about a writer murdered by the Russians, whose diary was buried in his garden, where it was discovered by another writer who would later be murdered by the Russians.
What I’m reading
Oh god I have read so many books since I last did my newsletter. Too many to give even snap reviews.
Here they all are:
Rattlebone by Maxine Clair
Sebastopol by Emilio Fraia, Zoë Perry (Translator)
Damascus Station, by David McCloskey
A small stubborn town, by Andrew Harding
The List by Yomi Adegoke
What you did; Let me in; The Push; I know you; This Could be Us; all by Claire McGowan
I think that’s all of them… it feels like there should be more? Hmm, I am sure I am missing some… Anyway I just started The Friend by Sigrid Nunez, and am still reading the Russo-Ukraine War by Serhii Plokhy
What I’m watching
I went to see Barbie and I had conflicting emotions about it. Stuff to like, stuff to really dislike. I did not think it was feminist. Or maybe it’s more we need to ask the question, what is a feminist film? Is it one with the odd feminist speech? One with women characters? Arguably not one where the most interesting character, with the major character arc, is a man.
I am now on series 3 of Succession and it is soooooo good.
Last Sunday, Pillow Talk was on BBC2 and it’s been a while since I saw it, still so much fluffy fun!
That’s it! Hopefully I will be back into a regular SubStack writing groove and won’t leave it so long. In the meantime, I am off to the Hilma af Klimt exhibition. Ciao ciao!