The UK’s Labour government has looked the other way on the “wave of antisemitism that has swept across Britain” because it made a “cynical electoral calculation” to appease Muslim voters, Nigel Farage said.
Brexit pioneer and Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has argued that on the anniversary of the October 7th terrorist attacks, the United Kingdom should heed the “wake-up call” of the suspected terrorist attack against a synagogue in England last week by a Syrian migrant.
Writing for The Jewish Chronicle on Tuesday, Mr Farage said the Jewish community “has contributed immensely to our Judeo-Christian culture, but now finds itself living in fear” from “a wave of antisemitism” in Britain that has become “normalised”. The British government rewarded Hamas for the October 7 terror attacks in 2023 by pre-emptively recognising a Palestinian state last month, he further warned.
While antisemitism was long ago rendered a fringe belief, all but defeated in Britain, but for pockets at the very extremes of politics, it is now returning, the Brexit leader lamented, while explicitly linking the change to mass migration from Muslim countries. He wrote:
We have got to face the facts head-on: Islamic extremism is a clear and present danger right here in the UK, and this shocking attack in Manchester last week is just the latest grim reminder that our so-called leaders are asleep at the wheel.
For years, I’ve been warning about the failures of uncontrolled immigration and the toxic cocktail of multiculturalism with a lack of integration, where radical ideologies are allowed to fester unchecked in our communities, all in the name of political correctness.
In perhaps the most damning accusations of all, Mr Farage said the Labour government of Sir Keir Starmer has “chosen to look the other way” on these issues because it has “made a cynical electoral calculation”, a clear reference to the overwhelming propensity of Muslims in the United Kingdom to vote for the Labour party in elections this century.
In recent elections, as much as 80 per cent of the Islamic vote has gone to the Labour Party. This fell at the 2024 election, however, in a shift that leading Labour figures have read as indicating “the party’s ambiguous stance on the conflict in Gaza angered voters in some of its most diverse constituencies, especially those with large Muslim populations”.
Last week, Heaton Park synagogue, on Middleton Road in Manchester, was the scene of a terror attack launched by Syrian migrant Jihad al-Shamie. According to police, he drove a car into worshippers outside the building before approaching the building on foot with a knife, attacking more people. The door of the building was barricaded against him, and he was later shot dead by police as he tried to stab his way through the windows.
While authorities initially claimed Jihad al-Shamie was not known to police or on any extremist watchlists, it was later revealed that he had been reported for being allegedly radicalised in recent years. Additionally, rather than being unknown to police, he was in fact out on bail at the time of the attack for an alleged rape for which he had been arrested.
Although the most extreme attack on a synagogue in Britain in recent years, the Manchester attack is far from a one-off. Indeed, as reported last month, synagogues and Jewish community buildings in London have been subjected to a string of “religiously motivated criminal damage”. These “revolting and appalling acts” had included an incident in which a man was arrested for allegedly smearing excrement on the buildings.
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