John Crace
Clacton MP
jumped on social media to offer unasked-for commentary in a move straight from
the Trump playbook
Wed 31 Jul
2024 18.46 BST
There’s a
time when politicians should know to keep silent. We all want answers to the
horrific attack on the dance club in Southport that left three children dead
and five others critically injured. We want to make sense of the senseless.
It’s a normal coping mechanism. We need to feel as if we are in control. Even
when it’s obvious that we aren’t.
Because
sometimes the answers are slow to reveal themselves. Sometimes there are no
answers. Not ones we want, certainly. The trick is to be able to wait. To live
with the feelings, however unbearable. To endure the tragedy. Not to try to
will it away. Grief can be a waiting game.
It was right
that Keir Starmer and Yvette Cooper should have visited the scene of the murder
on Monday to lay flowers. To try to give words to the unimaginable. None of us
can know what the victims’ families are going through. We are the lucky ones in
this. Spared the immediate sense of loss.
Formality
demands that something is said by the prime minister and the home secretary,
but no one pays that much attention. The sentences are bog standard. Cut and
pasted from previous prime ministerial appearances at such tragedies. The
shock. The call for calm. The promise that justice will be done. The insistence
that such a crime must never happen again. Though somehow it always does.
Horror has a way of endlessly reinventing itself. Not all of us play by the
same rules.
It was also
right that the local MP, Patrick Hurley, should have made a brief statement
after the rioting on Tuesday night. The people of Southport are his
constituents and he has been elected to be their public voice. But everyone
else should take a step back. Did we really need to know what the Green party’s
response to the rioting was? Of course not. Though that didn’t stop them
issuing a public statement.
Did we
really need to know James Cleverly thought that the government should crack
down hard on the rioters and online disinformation? As if Starmer and Cooper
were kicking back their heels and thinking: “You know what? Those rioters have
had a tough few days. Maybe we should go easy on them this once.” And, in any
case, it’s all a bit much from a Conservative party that has done so much
damage in the past few years by stoking culture wars.
But all this
is fairly low-grade performative politics compared with Nigel Farage’s latest
offering. Late on Tuesday afternoon, the home secretary gave a statement to the
Commons on the Southport murders. Here was Nige’s chance to put any questions
he might have had about the tragedy directly to Cooper. Except he was nowhere
to be seen. For someone who has been so desperate, for so long, to become an MP
– he was successful at his eighth attempt – he spends little time in
Westminster. It’s not nearly a big enough stage for him.
So where was
Farage? In his Clacton constituency? Don’t be silly. He had taken to his own
Facebook page and X to deliver his message to the country, bypassing
parliament. As if he thought he was the one who should be running the UK. As if
he were a man of some importance. Not some bottom-feeding grifter.
Nige began
with some platitudes. He was shocked by what had happened. His heart went out
to the families. Only you would be pushed to have found much compassion there.
Like many narcissists, he’s incapable of genuine emotion for anyone other than
himself.
Then we got
to the nitty-gritty. There were rumours swirling around about the person who
committed this terrible act. That would be the rumours on far-right conspiracy
websites. We weren’t being told the whole truth, he declared. Some say the
suspect was being monitored by the security services. Others say he wasn’t. We
were left with little doubt which version of the truth Nige preferred.
“The police
have said this is a non-terror incident,” said Farage, his face a picture of
scepticism. For Nige, any police denial is an admission of guilt. Everything
merely fuels Farage’s certainty. Why are we being told by police only that the
suspect is a 17-year-old boy who was born in Cardiff? The fact that it’s the
law not to reveal the identity of anyone under the age of 18 accused of a crime
is cast aside. In Farage’s world, it’s all part of the same conspiracy.
There has
been no comment from Farage since a mob of far-right extremists converged on
Southport to attack the mosque. Quick to incite hatred on Tuesday, he has been
slow to condemn it the day after. An apology would be too much to expect. Sorry
isn’t in his vocabulary. He has learned well from Donald Trump.
Southport,
meanwhile, tries to heal itself as best it can. Some local people have been out
rebuilding the wall outside the mosque that was knocked down in the rioting.
They will have to live there long after the politicians have left the scene.
They know that the bottom line is that there can be no guarantees. The human
condition is messy. Bad things happen to good people. They always have and
always will.
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