A Guardian Columnist’s Adventures In The Wild…

.... and it’s pretty much as you’d expect.

At the weekend, I took the well-worn journey from London to Knowsley in Merseyside. I’ve made this trip so many times that I can execute it with military precision, arriving just in time before the train doors close, even with a toddler in tow this time around. My uncle picked us up from the station and as we turned on to the motorway, I saw St George’s flags hanging over us from the sides of bridges. Union jacks circled the roundabout just before we turned off to go to my auntie’s house. Knowsley is Labour’s fourth-safest seat in the UK, but it felt like a newly minted Reform constituency.

Get used to it love, everywhere's going to look like this... 

Someone nearby scrolled through TikTok and stated that the far-right protest in London had 3 million attenders. (Police estimates have put the figure between 110,000 and 150,000.)

For the rest of the weekend, out and about, I asked questions. What did people make of the news? What did they think about what the protesters had to say? Would they vote Reform UK? I wasn’t doing thorough research, and my results wouldn’t stand up in any peer-reviewed study, but I was trying to get a snapshot of a place before it changed beyond my recognition.

And what did you find? Rampent Right Wing attitudes, perhaps? 

I heard two arguments again and again. People were opposed to the boats on a principle of “fairness” that was limited to national boundaries. Some said that they had worked and paid taxes all their lives, and it was therefore unfair that someone who had never worked or paid taxes in Britain should have accommodation and financial support and be able to access the NHS. They felt the UK should get its own house in order before helping others. The second argument was new: the people coming in small boats are young men who pose a threat to British women.

Oh. Well, no, then, just normal people with perfectly normal concerns. That must have been a shock for you. 

Knowsley has never been immune to the everyday racism experienced across the UK – or even its violent outbursts, as with the murder of Anthony Walker in 2005 – but never before have racist talking points been repeated so persistently. The trope about women was straight out of the far-right playbook, post-Rochdale, and has been circulating in Knowsley for the past two years.

They aren't 'racist talking points', though, are they? There’s nothing racist about being concerned at the pace and volume of immigration, nor at the cultures that we are forced to accommodate.

People in Knowsley are right to want more support. The borough is the second most income-deprived area in England. Over a quarter of working-age adults are economically inactive. It has the lowest GCSE pass rate in the country. Men and women have a healthy life expectancy of around 54 years old. Town centres remain more or less empty following the building of “megamarkets”. As with the rest of the country, people check their bank balances with a sense of dread as prices continue to rise.

And there's no sign of it letting up, with Rachel From Complaints in the driving seat..... 

I asked people what they thought of Keir Starmer. “What has he done? He’s gone after pensioners.” And Farage? “Well, he’s a bit different.” In the absence of any meaningful change or any narrative to grasp on to, the right and Reform UK have shaped the story. One all too easy to believe.

I notice she didn’t ask them about the Green Messiah…. 

I also visited family in the better off – and more diverse – seat of Liverpool Wavertree. Waiting in line for a coffee, I had a chat, and heard that migrants are not to blame for austerity, privatisation and the extraction of money from our local communities into far-off bank balances. Violence against women and girls is a male, not a migrant problem.

Then how can importing thousands of single males from cultures that don’t respect women possibly help?