Black Lives Matter UK has criticised Sir Keir Starmer for his public reversal of supporting the far-leftist movement, with the Labour leader claiming he never backed the group’s core tenet of defunding the police.
Just three weeks ago, the Remainer centrist, along with dozens of other Labour MPs, had made headlines by taking a knee in solidarity with the far-left movement that was even at that time perfectly clear in its endeavours to ‘defund the police’, i.e., dismantle law and order.
By the time of posting the image of the Labour leader prostrating to Black Lives Matter, protesters had already wreaked havoc in major cities like London, vandalising memorials to historical figures and assaulting police officers.
By June 10th, the day after the below image was posted, BLMUK had raised $1 million in fundraising which it said was going to spend on “the abolition of police”.
However on Monday, Sir Keir, the former Director of Prosecutions and former Head of the Crown Prosecution Service, told the BBC that endeavours to defund the police were “nonsense” and that “nobody should be saying anything about defunding the police”.
“I would have no truck with that. I was director of public prosecutions for five years, I worked with police forces across England and Wales, bringing thousands of people to court. So my support for the police is very, very strong,” Sir Keir claimed.
He then tried to distinguish the ‘movement’ of Black Lives Matter, which he hashtagged in his social media post on June 9th, with the ‘moment’ of remembering the killing of black American George Floyd in an attempt to distance himself from his very recent allegiances to the anarcho-leftist BLMUK.
“There’s a broader issue here, the Black Lives Matter movement, or moment, if you like, internationally is about reflecting something completely different. It’s about reflecting on what happened, dreadfully, in America just a few weeks ago and showing, or acknowledging that moment across the world.” (emphasis added)
He then attempted the mental gymnastics to separate the ‘movement’ from the ‘moment’ claiming that it was a “shame” that the message is “getting tangled up with these organisational issues, with the organisation Black Lives Matter”.
“But I wouldn’t have any truck with what the organisation is saying about defunding the police or anything else, that’s just nonsense.”
Black Lives Matter UK responded to the remarks with their own ‘reverse ferret’, claiming that when they said they wanted to “defund the police”, what they really meant was to reinvest in the community.
“When we say ‘Defund the police’ we mean ‘Invest in programmes that actually keep us safe like youth services, mental health and social care, education, jobs and housing. Key services to support the most vulnerable before they come into contact with the criminal justice system,'” BLMUK claimed via their official Twitter account.
The far-leftist group then criticised the former state prosecutor as “a cop in an expensive suit”, adding: “We can no longer allow governments from any party to police or imprison away social problems. Neither can we allow former Prosecutors to tell us what our demands should be.”
The reverse ferret — a British media term for a rapid reversal in policy or position — also comes after the far-leftists unleashed an anti-Israel “FREE PALESTINE” diatribe, in which they had repeated the antisemitic dog whistle that British politics is being “gagged of the right to critique Zionism and Israel’s settler-colonial pursuits”.
“We loudly and clearly stand beside our Palestinian comrades,” the far-leftists added.