Britons Against Sunak’s Anti-immigrants Racist Rhetoric

The broad populist slogans such as stopping immigration and preventing the arrival of immigrants were a pure cover for many restrictive measures and laws, including restrictions on individuals, restrictions on civil liberties, planting cameras, broadening the definition of danger or terrorism, and repetitive play on the words "us" and "them" to fuel division in the country.

This was specifically done by the candidate for prime minister in Britain, Rishi Sunak, a few days ago to please the most hard-line wing of the Conservative Party, as he vowed to double the government's deterrence strategy to combat extremism and to expand the definition of extremism to include "those who distort our country." Many voices, including those from the right and conservatives, rose up against Sunak.

A poll of Conservative Party members conducted by Opinium polls showed on August 13 that British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has a 22 percentage point lead over her rival, Rishi Sunak, in the race for Britain's prime minister.

The foundation stated that the poll in which 450 party members participated, who decided on their preferred candidate in the current elections to choose a new leader, showed that Teras received 61% of the vote, while the former Finance Minister Sunak received 39%.

Other polls have shown that Truss is the most likely candidate by a large margin.

Truss had the support of prominent members of the party, including Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, former adviser Sajid Javid, and others.

 

Irrational Fear

In conjunction with Brexit and Trump's victory, the anti-immigrant rhetoric took control of the parliaments of several Western countries, including Germany, Austria, and Italy, with right-wing ideas tending to racism, and these people deluded the segments of society that immigrants pose the greatest threat.

Britain's hostile attitudes toward immigrants and "outsiders" in general have shifted in the years since the Brexit vote, with many discovering that accusing immigrants of being responsible for the country's worsening problems are lies.

Hostility to immigrants was not exclusive to British society, especially in the pre-referendum to leave the European Union Brexit in 2016, as hostility to strangers has become a global trend encouraged by right-wing populist regimes.

In the same year, Brexit, Americans elected Donald Trump out of "irrational fear" of the other, the immigrants, people of color, or the minority, and according to American opinion polls, Trump's promise to build a wall on the Mexican border was the most important motive. For those who voted for him.

 

Biggest Problems

A poll conducted by YouGov, days before the referendum on Brexit, showed that 56 percent of Britons see immigration and asylum as the "biggest problem facing the country," and the media played a major role in perpetuating these fears through the front page headlines From "migrants stealing jobs from the British," "migrant workers flooding Britain," down to "foreigner fear."

An academic study showed that the Daily Express, for example, published 179 anti-immigration articles between 2010 and 2016, and the Daily Mail published 122 similar articles in the same period.

Other studies have shown that the escalation of fear of immigrants was an inevitable result of governments' lies about their numbers, as some politicians repeat the suggestion that they are crowds, so it becomes entrenched among right-wing and middle-educated that the proportion of immigrants is greater than the proportion of the population, which leads to the majority fear of the other immigrant because it happens, according to this The perception of government aid greater than that obtained by the country's residents, in addition to crowding out the people of the country over job opportunities and rights.

A study by the London School of Economics and Political Science on anti-immigrant sentiment notes that "European Union immigrants, for example, pay far more taxes than they receive from social welfare and public services."

According to an American study dating back to 2017, the majority of public opinion believes that the proportion of immigrants is 37% in the United States, while the real percentage does not exceed 13%, and a study showed that the French believe that one out of every three people in their country is a Muslim, while the numbers The truth is that one out of every 13 people in France is a Muslim.

 

Declining Support

In Britain, citizens expected 22 percent of the population to be Muslim by 2020, but the actual figure was only 6 percent.

In an interview with Al-Estiklal, the researcher at Bahcesehir University in Istanbul, Ghita Ghiati said: "If we turn to psychology for an explanation, we will find that fear of strangers is one of the oldest psychological tendencies of humans and that many governments have exploited 'xenophobia' to involve their voters in extreme right-wing populist ideas. For instance, successive British governments have, according to studies, reinforced the imagined threat that is represented by the refugee and immigrant community."

Surprisingly, in the British case, recent studies have shown that anti-immigrant attitudes declined after the Brexit referendum. Voter talk about immigration fell from 48 percent in June 2016 to 13 percent in November 2019.

Studies and opinion polls confirm that fears of immigration have receded, in contrast to the escalation of anguish over the deviation of the ruling party's position to the right. All this amid an unprecedented economic crisis that weighs on millions of Britons. While the issue of immigration was decisive in the Brexit referendum, living concerns became the most important, along with the deterioration of the health system and the economic effects caused by Brexit, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the global crisis resulting from the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Many believe that the allegations of the British government, as well as the candidates for leadership of the ruling party, about the fact that stagnation, inflation, food shortages, high prices, and the deterioration of public services, including health, have nothing to do with Britain's exit from the European Union, have become flimsy and implausible.

 

Large Gap

Brexit polls show that voters who support Brexit, even if they have not publicly backtracked, are expressing their demands for higher standards of food, goods, and labor rights and for more people to enter the EU. European Union to fill the gap that exists in many sectors.

Beth Mann, a researcher at YouGov, a pollster in Britain, told The New Arab that the economy had been a top priority all the time, then health and the environment, while immigration currently occupies the third or fourth place. The company has been doing this routine survey since 2011, and while the economy and immigration were the two most important issues previously, the immigration file declined gradually after 2016 (i.e., after Brexit).

Concerning the prime ministerial race in the UK, Beth said that the vision of the two conservative right-wing candidates is very different from that of the voters, they appeal to the votes of a small group that does not reflect the wider segment of the electorate, and the corporate tax cut proposed by Liz Truss, for example, has greater support among members of the government.

It remains that the government's concerns about the immigration file have not receded. Rather, the race for leadership of the ruling party revolves primarily around these concerns, which reflects, in addition to other issues, the large gap between the government and the street, as climate change that preoccupies the world is absent from the two electoral campaigns, as the deterioration of the health sector, the deterioration of public services, and the stifling living crisis are receding.