I get the sense that the political and media class badly miss Katie Hopkins. Back when the reality TV star was still a regular on our screens and in our newspapers, she could be relied upon to be the focus of attention whenever the people in charge didn’t want the public’s attention to be focused where it ought to be.
So when a British soldier was decapitated on the streets of London, or a suicide bomber went off at a pop concert packed with teenage girls, Ms Hopkins could be found saying something that a lot of people were thinking – only in a more colourful or unwise way. A pattern emerged whereby, within 24 hours of any atrocity on the streets of Britain, the political and media class would be talking about how inappropriate Hopkins’s comments were and how forcefully we must all condemn them. Her comments were generally said to be ‘divisive’, ‘hateful’ and ‘have no place in public life’. It was a comfortable place to be, because everyone could then avoid talking about the atrocity itself.
Generations of politicians and pundits have given us a problem that they don’t know how to solve
To some extent, Nigel Farage appears to have filled the deep need for such a figure. After Vickrum Digwa’s conviction for the murder of Henry Nowak – and the release of police bodycam footage showing officers handcuffing the victim as he lay dying – the leader of Reform said we should feel ‘pure, cold rage’. Keir Starmer described Farage’s words as ‘unforgivable’ and declared that this is ‘a time for serious work, not rage’, while the BBC and other media focused their discussion on the question of whether Farage should have spoken at all – and promptly also misrepresented his words.
Perhaps the Prime Minister and others might at some point produce a chart – or Power-Point presentation – explaining the feelings that the public are allowed to hold in response to various atrocities? For instance, under what situation are we allowed to feel ‘mildly irked’? What sort of attack might we be allowed to actually be ‘angry’ about? Is the ‘serious work’ Starmer now calls for something we are allowed to participate in? Or can this Defcon 1 response only be engaged in by the professionals?
Unfortunately the past week has provided another round of such questions. On Monday a Sudanese migrant living in Belfast was caught on camera trying to behead a local man on the city’s streets. It turned out that the perpetrator had crossed into Northern Ireland from the Republic of Ireland and been given refugee status.
Starmer described the attempted beheading as ‘sickening’, while the Chief Constable of the PSNI warned about the challenge of toxic online commentary. ‘All of our communities in Northern Ireland contribute positively to this place,’ Jon Boutcher said, warning people not to be ‘fooled or duped into a trap by people online’.
In the Commons the government had a swift response to a question from the Northern Ireland Unionist MP Jim Allister, who asked what might be done ‘to stop the importation of an alien culture that thinks it’s appropriate to try and behead someone’. The responding minister – Hilary Benn – spied his opening. ‘I’m sorry the honourable gentleman used the term “alien culture”,’ he said. ‘What exactly is he referring to?’ It shouldn’t be that hard to understand.
Historically speaking, Northern Ireland is not a place filled with pacifists. Indeed, it was almost touching that the First Minister Michelle O’Neill responded to the attack by saying that its citizens should not let ‘other people, who don’t care about here, incite hatred or fear’. She went on to say the public should not allow ‘people who are faceless to orchestrate campaigns on the street’. Because in the normal order of things it has been the job of Sinn Fein/the IRA to do just those things.
Still, the appallingness of the crime should not baffle the political class. Why not – finally – use it as a learning moment?
For years there has been a stock response whenever anybody raised the issue of the mainly Pakistani rape gangs. ‘So you’re saying that everybody from that background is a rapist?’ was deflection question no. 1. To which the answer was: ‘Obviously no.’ But then there was a clever little question no. 2: ‘So you think white British men don’t abuse children?’ To which the answer was obviously once again ‘no’. The questions were insincere because the real answer – as with the Belfast attack – is so obvious. We have our own rapists, but why exactly do we need to import more? It is a version of the question Germany might have done well to address in the past couple of decades: ‘Given our historical problem with anti-Semitism, ought we to import a large and fresh batch of anti-Semites?’
The term ‘alien cultures’ is a completely appropriate one. It would include the sort of cultures in which it is not uncommon for people to go around trying to behead others. This certainly doesn’t mean that everybody from any particular community should be accused of crimes they have not committed. But it also doesn’t mean we should all have to pretend to be completely ignorant of what an MP like Jim Allister is referring to.
Different cultures have different traditions, customs, habits and proclivities. They include different attitudes towards women, violence, gaming the system (including the asylum and welfare systems) and much else. The problem with this pretend ignorance is precisely that: it is a pretence. Everybody knows what people are getting at when they worry about the negative sides of their own culture, so why do we have to pretend to be completely befuddled when someone raises the negative sides of other cultures?
We all know the answer. Which is that generations of politicians and pundits have given us a problem that they do not know how to solve. But people have noticed the problem. And no amount of pretended bewilderment or deflection will cover that fact over for ever.
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