How Tories drove UK into Islamophobia?

The UK witnessed violent riots for two weeks in the aftermath of the fatal stabbing of three young girls at a dance class in the seaside English town of Southport after social media posts spread disinformation that the killer was a Muslim migrant. The anti-immigrants violence saw shops looted, hotels housing asylum seekers targeted, mosques and ethnic minority communities, especially Muslims and their businesses, were attacked and petrol bombs thrown at law enforcers.

While the newly-elected PM, Keir Starmer, did manage to quell the violence, the Conservatives' role in fueling the anti-Muslim sentiments couldn't be ignored. In 2018, Boris Johnson's derogatory characterisation of Muslim women wearing burka as "letter box" and "bank robbers" intensified hate crimes against Muslims, stoking Islamophobia in Britain.

Same year, the UK's first female cabinet minister Syeda Warsi complained that Islamophobia had become "very widespread" in the country after several Conservatives were found to have made or shared offensive remarks about Muslims. In 2019, she again warned the Tories were becoming "institutionally Islamophobic".

This time, the party suspended 14 members for anti-Islam posts but didn't take measures to tackle the dangerous phenomenon, allowing extremism and radicalisation to grow. Even Dame Sara Khan, former adviser to three PMs, recently singled out her own Conservative governments for triggering this unprecedented violence because they didn't allocate enough resources to the areas struggling with extremism.

Academics too have long been warning the Conservatives about growing far-right activism in society and their ambivalence to control such far-right racist groups.

British media's role has also been controversial in the recent violence against people of colour. Assertions like the rioters were "justified in their anger" by British far-right activist Tommy Robinson or putting forward a political justification for anti-immigration riots by the conservative Lord Davies, though he later on apologised, speaks of a strong buildup of Islamophobia in the UK.

Such instances align these media outlets and campaigners with those who once abysmally described Islamophobia as "an entirely rational response to an illiberal, vindictive and frankly fascistic creed". The downplaying of the threat by representing the violence as "deep-rooted anger" and "festering resentment" do not augur well for the UK and the British society, as these attempts would till the ground for racial hatred and pit communities against each other, intensifying the country's challenges.

Now that the situation has subsided, the Labour government must also assess the circumstances such as "unmet primary needs" that have driven youth into conducting extreme racist activities, challenging social cohesion and forcing black and brown people to live in fear.

After the global financial crisis, the Conservative governments made austerity the part and parcel of their fiscal policy. Its successive prime ministers chose to sync themselves with the guiding principle set by their ancestors and constrained their financial resources through tax cuts, which led to curtailed public funding and real wage stagnation.

By the end of the Tory rule, stalled productivity, the biggest fall in spending power over the last 70 years, a sharp rise in poverty of 22%, deafening cost of living crisis and high inflation had added insult to the injury, exacerbating the UK economic challenges and providing a ripe ground for civil strife.

For more than a decade, the Conservatives ruled Britain yet rather than promoting interfaith harmony and addressing Britons' economic concerns, they exploited the societal rifts to cling to power. As a result, Starmer has to contest a two-pronged challenge: rein in Islamophobia and racial prejudice to help the Muslim and other communities guard themselves against the grinding hatred and to bring back the UK from the cusp of extremism as well as hike taxes, which may be a politically risky decision but is crucial to reinstate the economy and curb the growing sense of despair in British citizens.