From Grief To Grievance

Last summer’s violence across the UK’s towns and cities saw an eruption of racism in some of the country’s most deprived areas. With the Labour Government’s central policy of economic growth on uncertain ground – and a social media-fuelled right in politics and the media ready to take advantage of the underlying conditions that have not been addressed – can Keir Starmer afford to ignore the simmer of discontent? James Bloodworth reports

Historically, not everyone in Britain has readily accepted the legitimacy of elected Labour governments.

The novelist Evelyn Waugh once described Clement Attlee’s post-war administration as an “occupying army”. Under Harold Wilson in the 1970s, there was voluble chatter about a military coup. Even Tony Blair, the triangulator extraordinaire who did his utmost to mollify the right-wing press, had to deal with hauliers blockading filling stations in 2000 as anti-tax protestors sought to bring the economy to a halt (then Cabinet minister Margaret Beckett described them as “the industrial wing of the Countryside Alliance”).

Keir Starmer had to confront a reactionary backlash sooner than most.

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