The UK Is Now a Dangerous Place

The United Kingdom, Britain, was once considered a lovely place to visit. Completely safe for the tens of millions of tourists who would frequent each year. But now, according to the Australian Government, the UK is no longer safe, well, not as safe!

On the Australian Government’s Smartraveller website, Japan is colour-coded green, meaning it is relatively safe for Australian travellers despite the risk of earthquakes and tsunamis. On the other end of the scale, Afghanistan, colour-coded red, “Do not travel”, due to its high threat of terrorism and kidnapping. And somewhere in the middle now lies the United Kingdom, “Exercise a high degree of caution”. They warn of protests and riots, international terrorists, Islamic extremism, and extreme right-wing ideology. Always be alert to terrorism, they say. My goodness, it sounds like some kind of dystopian nightmare. I thought I was just there to see the King’s Guard, but apparently, I should be keeping my eye out for terrorists and far-right agitators.

The relatively new Prime Minister Keir Starmer has promised to make the streets safe again by arresting as many far-right people as possible. He seems to have ignored, or perhaps, just not mentioned the other threats that the Australian Government clearly stated in their travel warning.

For example, here is the Cleveland Police website, who are responsible for policing parts of North East England. On their website, you can find out things such as, “How to tell us about possible terrorist activity”. In addition to terrorism, they also talk about “Equality, Diversity and Inclusion”. Of course they do. They also regularly send out tweets to let the community know important information such as, “A big thank you to Ahmed Mustafa and Shirko Said who dropped off a large amount of bottles of water”. As we all know, water in North East England is extremely rare. It’s like the Sahara Desert up there.

But the Cleveland Police also tweet other important information such as which white people, sorry, I mean which “right” people, as in “far-right” people have been jailed recently. “Ryan Sheers is the second person to be jailed at Teesside Crown Court today. The 28-year-old was bitten on the bottom by a police dog when shouting and refusing to move away when trying to push through the police cordon. Judge Laird jailed him for 26 months.” How dare he be bitten on the bottom, and how dare he shout at a police officer! But he’s small-fry compared to this guy. “Steven Mailen is the first person to be sentenced in Teesside. Judge Laird jailed him for 26 months.” And what was his crime? “The 53-year-old was constantly in the face of officers gesticulating and shouting at them.” Boy, I’m glad he’s off the street! I don’t know what I would do if somebody was gesticulating at me.

It’s clear that Prime Minister Starmer has focused his efforts on arresting people who participated in the riots, the so-called far-right, and online misinformation, but he has seemingly avoided talking about the underlying issues (that is, uncontrolled immigration). But the BBC, surprisingly, are actually beginning to question this: “Starmer will be judged on how he tackles root causes of riots”. They state, “The prime minister and his aides have pointedly avoided answering questions about the underlying causes of the riots. I’m told the reason for this message discipline is a concern that discussing causes might be misinterpreted as suggesting some of the unrest was justified. Proscribing extreme right wing organisations has been discussed, but groups like the English Defence League (EDL) haven’t formally existed for almost a decade. For now the government has avoided discussing immigration, again for fear of suggesting any of the unrest was justified. But in time they are likely to remind voters that the prime minister believes many people do have legitimate concerns about legal and illegal migration. Some in the Labour Party want their leader to call out racism as a major factor. Others diagnose poverty and a lack of opportunity as a root cause. Men in their fifties and sixties have appeared before judges, as well as 13- and 14-year-old boys. Most of the towns and cities affected in recent days have high levels of deprivation and above average levels of asylum seeker housing. Swift criminal justice may have quelled the immediate threat of violence. But Sir Keir knows that he’ll be judged on tackling the root causes.”

So do you agree with the Australian Government’s assessment that the UK has become a dangerous place? Should Australians exercise a high degree of caution? But is it the UK people we should be scared of, or the division being caused by the UK Government?

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Allégro by Emmit Fenn