By Cllr Rachel Burgess
What kind of politician sees the immense pain currently being experienced by Jewish and Muslim communities over the conflict in Gaza and thinks to themselves, I can exploit this for my own ends?
Last week, Suella Braverman incited extreme and violent far-right protesters to descend on the Cenotaph to ‘protect’ it from a threat which existed only in their drink-fuelled heads.
Braverman’s written attacks on the police should have prompted her immediate dismissal by Rishi Sunak. Instead we had to wait for actual physical attacks on the police, resulting in more than 100 arrests and nine police officers injured, before Sunak took action.
In a Trumpian move, Braverman showed blatant disregard for democratic principles, namely that the criminal justice system has to be independent of government. And all because she has her eyes on the Tory leadership.
Accusing the police of bias and ‘wokery’ may seem frivolous politicking, but Braverman’s suggestion that the police are failing to do their job was irresponsible in the extreme. Inflammatory language of this sort gave an opening last week for violent extremists to take to streets. Indeed, with their unconscionable language, the Conservatives played their own crucial role in threatening the remembrance ceremony at the Cenotaph.
Braverman’s language regarding the pro-Palestinian protesters was horrendous, with the sole aim of stirring up political division. Whatever your view on the conflict, turning those with compassion for the thousands of Palestinians currently being killed in the conflict, many of whom are children, into ‘pro-Palestinian mobs’ and Hamas-supporting ‘hate marchers’ is contemptible. Outrageously, her false narrative attempted to turn those who were calling for an armistice, on armistice day, well away from the Cenotaph, into ‘mobs’ intent on marching to Whitehall to sabotage remembrance commemorations.
The Conservatives’ behaviour shows an enormous lack of respect for the police. I am the Chair of my local Neighbourhood Action Group (NAG) and know first-hand what a great job the police do in our area, with scarce resources. We all know how austerity has massively cut back police resources – our own Wokingham Police station closed some years ago.
The police representatives that come to our NAG meetings do a superb job, but there are just a handful of officers to police a huge area. I have an enormous amount of respect for the work of the police, and for their professional judgment.
I know that residents respect the police and want more police on the streets in Wokingham Borough, to tackle anti- social behaviour and local crime. By contrast to the Conservatives, the Labour Party has committed to put 13,000 more neighbourhood police and PCSOs on the streets.
This irresponsible inflammatory rhetoric about the police came hot on the heels of the Home Secretary’s comments that homelessness is a “lifestyle choice”. She went even further, suggesting that our local charities in Wokingham Borough would be criminalised if they provided homeless people with tents.
This is as outrageously uncompassionate as it is nonsensical. Anyone who has any experience of working on the frontline of homelessness knows that you need to tackle the root causes of homelessness (rising rents, lack of affordable homes, no-fault evictions, the reduction in local support services, the cost of living crisis to name but a few) and not the outward signs of it (tents). Braverman blames the homeless – when it is the Conservative party that is really at fault.
There have been some recent examples of individuals forced to live in tents in my local area. Along with residents I have been so impressed with the response of the local authority and local charities, ensuring swiftly that welfare checks are carried out and that the individuals were housed safely. In these examples there was no ‘us’ and ‘them’ – just concerned residents and professional council officers and charity workers, all doing the right thing, the compassionate thing, to help everyone in our community.
The latest Tory rebrand has Braverman out, but unelected and disgraced former Prime Minister David Cameron back in, at the very centre of Whitehall – making a mockery of Sunak’s ‘change candidate’ pitch but also raising serious questions about the ministerial accountability of an unelected Foreign Secretary who has been parachuted into the House of Lords.
This weak, chaotic, irresponsible and uncompassionate government cannot go on. We need a General Election now. We are so much better than this.
Cllr Rachel Burgess is Labour ward member for Norreys on Wokingham Borough Council
