What do people make of the statement by Prime Minister Farage (oh, sorry, he is just cosplaying as one with his desk and union flags while addressing the Nation) that seems to condemn the violence but then goes on to rant about BLM and policing methods.
Farage:
I have been totally appalled by the levels of violence seen in the last couple of days. The levels of intimidation and threat to life have no place in a functioning democracy. That so many police officers have been injured trying to keep the peace is shocking, and we should not discount the use of the army if the situation were to deteriorate further.
In the short term, we will quell the riots, but deeper long-term problems remain.
Ever since the soft policing of the Black Lives Matter protests, the impression of two-tier policing has become widespread. The Prime Minister's faltering attempts to address the current crisis have only added to that sense of injustice.
The majority of our population can see the fracturing of our communities as a result of mass, uncontrolled immigration, whether legal or illegal. Yet to attempt to debate this in the public arena leads to immediate howls of condemnation. A population explosion without integration was always going to end badly. I have said this for many years.
We must have a more honest debate about these vital issues and give people the confidence that there are political solutions that are relevant to them. A recall of Parliament would be an appropriate start to this.
He's blaming others. It's all the fault of the "soft policing" of the BLM protests (which were, erm, mostly protests against racism. OK, let's just let racism continue then).
He's blaming immigration. Yawn. Of course we know that he has in the relatively recent past harboured blatantly xenophobic attitudes towards Romanians, at the very least, so is not exactly someone likely to have a mainstream view on the matter.
He's blaming anyone but the rioters themselves and the social-media fanatics who encouraged the riots.
I suspect if people like him and others hadn't been sounding off about immigration for the past ten years, these riots would not have happened. Led on by social-media figures but also by right-wing loudmouth politicians such as Farage, Le Pen and Trump, fanatical anti-immigrationism has been allowed to build up in the UK, and the West in general, and has become normalised amongst significant sections of the population, and now we're paying the price.
We narrowly averted electoral disaster in France and we're seeing these riots in the UK at least partly because some people have become utterly obsessed with immigration - almost like a cult. Of course, only a minority of such people would riot, but fanatical anti-immigrationism combined with an inherent thuggish personality and a willingness to believe any old rubbish on social media is a recipe for disaster.
Farage, and Reform UK, will come out very badly from this, I suspect. The overall impression from the above seems to "condemnation of the violence, but not so much of the people, with a generous helping of half-baked caveats", a sharp contrast to the position of Labour and indeed the Tories.
. A quick look today was the first time I've looked at there website in a while. It seemed remarkably balanced(in terms of headlines anyway). But true to form, I see they have managed to disgrace themselves recently .
www.bbc.co.uk
