Were Labour’s Bangladesh attacks planned to win votes?

Right, so the fallout from Labour attacks on Bangladesh and Bengali people, having come in the most appalling manner from both Keir Starmer himself and his shadow Paymaster General Jonathan Ashworth has only continued to increase, with damage limitation attempted, though as always with Keir Starmer, he cannot bring himself to apologise for what he said, he never says sorry, he never accepts fault. When Bangladesh is not even amongst the top 10 of nations where we see migrants and asylum seekers come from however, where did Starmer’s claims about Bangladesh come from, why were they repeated by another shadow minister, because surely that is not coincidence and as it happens there might be at least a couple of reasons why Starmer’s Labour are singling Bengali’s and Bengali communities out and none of them are good.
Right, so that was Keir Starmer clarifying his position in a couple of clips there over his awful comments singling out Bengali people here in the UK, questioning as to why they might be here, singling them out specifically, an awful racist attack that was followed up upon by his shadow paymaster general Jonathan Ashworth, implying this was not clumsiness, you don’t get two people being clumsy over the same racist mantra and besides, clarifying your position once again is not apologising, is not saying sorry for the hurt and fear your comments will have caused to people, just repeating ad nauseum in several interviews now that he didn’t mean to cause any offence, but not saying sorry for actually having done so. Keir Starmer never says sorry. But actually there may well be more to this and there are at least two very valid reasons that I’ve come across to indicate that this may well have been an intentional targeting of Bengali communities in this country, which I’ll come onto in a moment and let you see what you think.
He brought up that Bangladesh is a safe country and the UK has a returns agreement with Bangladesh. That was an agreement put into place, literally just last month by the Minister for countering illegal migration, because of course the Tories created such a post, back in 2019, and the current Tory holding the post, Michael Tomlinson signed this returns agreement with Bangladesh literally just 6 weeks ago and let’s face it, coming from a party, a government that considers Rwanda to be safe, when it has proven on multiple occasions to be otherwise, not least of which by the UK Supreme Court last November, Keir Starmer citing that returns agreement as proof that Bangladesh is safe, is akin to having come down in the last rain shower. Here’s what Amnesty International have said about Bangladesh being safe in a statement from last year, before the Tories brought this returns agreement into existence:
‘The government intensified its crackdown on the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly ahead of general elections scheduled for January 2024. Authorities used the powers in the Digital Security Act and other legislation to target journalists and human rights defenders, subjecting them to arbitrary detention and torture. There was a concerning increase in enforced disappearances and lack of accountability for deaths in custody. Occupational safety remained a distant dream for many workers. Refugees endured homelessness due to a fire in a camp and a cyclone as well as food insecurity. Rations for refugees were restricted due to the UN’s acute funding shortfall. Bangladesh remained extremely vulnerable to impacts of climate change.’
So it isn’t safe then, no matter what the Tories say, but frankly how many of us take the Tories word for what is a safe country? Well apparently Keir Starmer does.
He was also directly compared to Nigel Farage for what he said by a member of the public, a Bengali on Radio 5 Live with Nicky Campbell and was asked specifically why would Bangladeshi migrants be removed? He was specifically asked by Campbell have you apologised? And not only did he of course not answer the question, but also went on to not apologise to the caller, reiterating instead that he didn’t intend to cause offence. Well just say sorry then, because otherwise it looks like you meant it and you’re just trying to wriggle out of a tight media spot!
Labour’s hierarchy of racism as written about in the Forde Report, which, frankly if you haven’t looked into for yourself, I would urge you to do so now in light of everything coming out of Starmer’s Labour because the racist endeavour that the Labour Party very much now is, has already been written about and 165 recommendations to fix matters were pointed out to Labour and despite claims to have addressed most of those, Labour ignored Martin Forde the author, still ignore him, and even threatened him with legal action when he spoke to the media, what media would speak to him, because the mainstream media ignored him as well, he spoke to Al Jazeera, and got threatened for bringing Labour into disrepute himself for explaining his findings!
That is not a party that is any more apologetic for it’s conduct than Starmer and Ashworth have been.
I want to talk about the fallout, but first let’s come to why Starmer’s Labour have gone down this road, why they thought this was a good idea, because it has nothing to do with that returns agreement at all and in fact a former Labour whistleblower now standing as the Workers Party of Britain candidate in the General Election, for Stratford & Bow, Halima Khan, has said at a recent hustings that from her experience working in the Governance and Legal Unit of the Labour Party, this was likely a calculated move by them, in order to attract the Reform UK vote, the Tories thinking of voting for Nigel Farage’s outfit, by essentially scapegoating an ethnic minority demographic, because according to Khan, Starmer painted a target on the Bengali community in the UK, a nation that should be noted isn’t even in the top ten of migrants who come to the UK, because although as a demographic they by default vote Labour, they are also a demographic amongst whom the more elderly members apparently struggle with English and so according to Khan, the calculation here is that this is a demographic that Labour could afford to attack to appeal to racist voters, without losing the vote of those they are attacking. That is, if true, and Khan worked within the party, I see no reason not to believe her, she’s literally on the outside of the party now, I daresay not unhappily, but in part because she blew the whistle on what was happening inside the party. This is what she has heard, these are the allegations put to her and she has public repeated that and frankly, it’s believable isn’t it?
There’s another possibility though and again, this comes back to the Israel Lobby who basically own Keir Starmer’s backside and have a hugely pervasive influence within the Labour Party and again might be another reason why the Bengali community has been scapegoated.
Bangladesh is a strong and consistent advocate for Palestine, an independent and free Palestinian state and are utterly opposed to Israeli occupation, to the extent, they have a complete ban, both directly and indirectly on trade with Israel and do not have any diplomatic relations with Israel, so have they had a say in matters? Again, it is completely believable, that this is a deciding factor in why specifically this group was targeted.
So what has the fallout been then? Massive publicly and Labour knows it. Labour knows they’ve screwed up here. They’ve screwed up so badly, that Starmer actually submitted to being interviewed in the middle of a UK General Election campaign, with ATN Bangla UK, a UK media outlet that broadcasts in Bengali for a Bengali audience here in the UK, so the language barrier thing clearly hasn’t been an issue for British Bengalis to inform themselves before going to the polls.
On top of that, Starmer has today put out a tweet, with video footage, saying:
‘My Labour Party will always be committed to building a Britain where all faith communities are safe and respected.’
Honestly, who’s stupid enough to believe that? The piece a footage? Starmer, after insulting Muslims with the ongoing support for Israel in Gaza, supporting war crimes, insulting Bengali’s, scapegoating them, denigrating then, as a nation are the third most populous Muslim state on the planet, where 91.1% of the population are Muslim and so Starmer, makes that tweet and attaches footage of himself, at a Hindu temple, getting a bindi and partaking in the service. Can I assume no local Mosque would touch you with a bargepole then? For the record, 8% of Bengalis are Hindu, but it stuck out for me like a sore thumb, that you appeared either unable or unwilling to appear with Muslims still.
Further fallout has come in the form of a poll from YouGov as well amongst Pakistani and Bangladeshi Brits specifically, where Labour is down 30 points, almost all of it going to the Greens. More importantly, that data was collated between the 11th and 20th of this month, so before Starmer and Ashworth’s appalling attack on Bengali’s specifically, so how much more damage has been done there? One British Bengali in the media certainly had an opinion on that, ITV’s Shehab Khan who tweeted out:
‘As a British Bangladeshi I can tell you that many won't forget Starmer’s Bangladesh comments and his lack of apology While the party appears to be on track to head to Downing St these issues and the backlash that follows become much bigger when in office.’
I think he is absolutely right and I offer my solidarity to him and all others affected by Labour’s positioning and rhetoric. It was just a plain nasty thing to do, for cynical gain and they deserve to lose swathes of support both now and once in power.
For Starmer himself, close to 7% of his constituency vote, is Bengali. He might genuinely fear for himself now, that perhaps that is prompting what seems to be desperate damage limitation over the last few days. Without that apology though, without the words ‘I’m sorry’ crossing his lips, without him for once, taking responsibility himself none of this means a thing. He doesn’t mean it in my view, when you screw up, you say sorry, it is that simple, that easy. He seems completely unable to do so, so treat Labour as the racist endeavour it clearly now is and for God’s sake take your vote elsewhere.
For more on this story check out this video recommendation here, and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.