Before telling scare stories about migrants, the UK far right should look in the mirror

Rupert Lowe was elected last year to be a Member of Parliament for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party representing Great Yarmouth. He has been suspended from Reform after a row but remains an independent MP.

Mr Lowe recently posted on X a picture of a small boat with the claim: “Dinghies coming into Great Yarmouth, RIGHT NOW.” It suggested that illegal migrants – one of Mr Lowe’s hot-button issues – were landing on the Norfolk coast. Very unlikely. Norfolk is a long way from France. Small boats of migrants almost always end up in Kent, which is more than 150 kilometres away.

The “dinghies” turned out to be one boat containing four British rowers raising money for charity. Mr Lowe apologised for his error. Beyond an excitable MP imagining illegal migrants the way children imagine ghosts, scare stories about migrants are part of British politics right now.

Accommodation for migrants awaiting official processing is dotted around England. Anti-migrant protesters, some from far-right and neo-fascist groups and stirred up by social media posts, often turn up at migrant hotels. They can be intimidating, pretending to “protect” British values while aggressively undermining the core British value of a peaceful and tolerant society. Unfortunately, these far-right delusional folk waste police time and smother a legitimate migration debate under their threats of violence.

The real issue is clear. Undocumented migrants pay criminal gangs based in France to take them to Kent beaches on small boats. It’s a dangerous trade that must be stopped as a political priority. A country not in control of its borders cannot be a happy place.

Riots last summer were a reminder that the far right in the UK has a long history but one endless narrative – that British people are somehow “victims” of foreign migrants. In the 1930s, it was Oswald Mosley’s violently anti-Semitic Blackshirts. In the 1960s, the Conservative MP Enoch Powell prophesied “rivers of blood” caused by migration, especially from the Caribbean and South Asia.

In the 2020s, far-right activists are often Islamophobic and insist that they “want their country back”. Presumably it’s code for an imaginary past without migrants, but when was that? It must be before the Romans, Saxons, Normans, Huguenots and all the others who over centuries arrived and made Britain … well, Britain.

Our immigration debate now is important and necessary. In seeking clues about the type of people who use migration as an excuse for stirring up violence, one part of the UK – Northern Ireland – offers a clue.

Anti-immigrant race riots took place in Belfast in August last year. The Belfast Telegraph newspaper reported that researchers found “almost half of those arrested for race hate disorder in Belfast last August had previously been reported to the PSNI [short for Police Service Northern Ireland] for domestic abuse”.

Anti-migrant demonstrations are often stirred up by claims that immigrant men are molesting British women. Yet the Northern Ireland research suggests that almost half the anti-migrant demonstrators arrested in Belfast were themselves men reported to police for abuse in their own homes, presumably towards their wives or partners.

Of course, we cannot directly extrapolate from that research to the rest of the UK. Those who turn up at English migrant hotels to cause trouble could be church-going choirboys, although I doubt it.

Britain has a celebrity anti-migrant demonstrator. He is a convicted criminal called Stephen Yaxley-Lennon and he hides behind the false name of Tommy Robinson. Yaxley-Lennon has been convicted of assault, using a fake passport, mortgage fraud and contempt of court. Currently he is on police bail after being arrested over an alleged assault at a London railway station. Filmed footage appears to show a man lying on the ground with Yaxley-Lennon shouting in the background, although the circumstances are unclear.

It is clear that a legitimate migration debate needs reason and wisdom. In Britain, that debate is clouded by threats of disorder and by some politicians and others jumping on public fears.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his government have three areas on which to act: first, stop the small boats. The latest agreement with France means anyone arriving in the UK on an illegal sea crossing will be deported. The UK in return will accept the same number of legal migrants from France, a policy called “One In, One Out”.

Second, police have to respond forcibly to far-right thugs. The thugs and their leaders light the powder keg of violence and then step back to watch the explosion.

Third, MPs should do that most difficult of political jobs – think clearly. Mr Lowe presumably will be more thoughtful in future about his social media posts, but people on the right of British politics who boast endlessly about their supposed patriotism might prove more patriotic if they ended their constant slurs that Britain is a failed country. Britain is flawed but not failed.

Moreover, some far-right supposed “patriots” are merely echoes of the 1930s and 1960s. They see immigration not as a problem to be solved but as a political opportunity to be exploited to gain power through fear. Their aim is the most unpatriotic of all – to divide and dis-unite the United Kingdom. They failed before. They need to fail again.