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A few years ago, it would have been unthinkable for a Labour frontbencher to use a statement about the kind of unrest seen in Dover and Portsmouth over the weekend to talk about the ‘valid concerns’ that people have about immigration. That the Policing Minister Sarah Jones did that today shows how far the debate has moved: Labour knows that it cannot lump everyone who is angry about the scale of illegal immigration into the same ‘racist’ bucket. She made clear in the first few minutes of her statement to MPs this afternoon that ‘there can be no excuse for threatening behaviour or serious disruption’, and that ‘this government condemns the intimidating and thuggish behaviour shown by some of the protesters this weekend’. But she then moved to say:
None of that is in any way to minimise the very valid concerns of law-abiding people when they see vile criminal gangs exploiting our nation’s generosity, and people making illegal and unnecessary journeys to reach this country.
She added: ‘The frustration we see in our communities today is a product of chaos and crisis in the years that preceded the general election of 2024’. Only when describing one of the groups that organised one of the protests did she use the word ‘racist’, saying that ‘one was clearly organised by a group called the South East Patriots, which I think is part of Patriot Platform, which is a kind of far-right, racist platform’. She then told Portsmouth MP Amanda Martin that she was ‘absolutely right that there were people who were concerned about what they are seeing, but they are very different from the kind of racist, far-right thugs that we also saw over the weekend.’
