A left-wing lawmaker accused of trying to “justify Asian gang racism against white people” amid demonstrations and riots across England is facing calls to resign from Lee Anderson, MP of Reform UK.
Labour MP Jess Phillips is facing calls to resign her junior government post after she made repeated comments on social media that seemed to imply an apparently fictitious “far-right” march was announced for neighbourhoods near her constituency in a cynical plot to encourage local Muslim residents to mobilise against nothing.
Lee Anderson MP, once a party colleague of Phillips in Labour, who now finds himself in Nigel Farage’s Reform UK as the Westminster Overton Window drifts leftwards, told Phillips: “You need to apologise for this and then resign. You’re part of the problem not the solution. A disgusting tweet.” Further, he implied his belief that she was pandering to the particular demographics of local voters with her remarks, stating: “What are you scared of? Losing votes?”.
Phillips’ seat is one of a handful in the United Kingdom where the sitting left-wing MPs faced a serious challenge from insurgent Islamist candidates. Phillips came close to losing her seat to a Palestine activist candidate last month, with her margin of victory from the previous election slashed from a respectable 10,659 votes to just 693.
Yesterday, a large crowd gathered outside a McDonald’s restaurant on Belcher’s Lane, Birmingham, on Monday, and a television news crew reporting from the scene were shouted at and later attacked. Footage broadcast by Sky News showed several masked men shouting “Free Palestine” and making what have been described by some as gun trigger-pulling hand gestures.
Later, another man pursued the broadcaster’s convoy of vehicles and used a knife to stab at the tyres of one broadcast truck. An LBC reporter, also covering events in Birmingham on Monday, said this of his experience using the typical British media euphemism of ‘Asian’ when describing people of a particular nation or faith would not be politically correct: “As a reporter, I’ve just been chased out of an area of east Birmingham by groups of Asian men who had come out to ‘protect their community’ against a planned far-right demonstration.
“The security guard with me decided immediately it wasn’t safe for us… Cars followed us, we had abuse shouted at us and at one point a group of around 6 men ran after us down a road with what looked like a weapon. We were forced to run.”
In comments detractors have said were seeking to explain away the presence of the mob, Phillips was quick to state on social media: “To be clear all day rumours have been spread that a far right group were coming and it was done entirely to get Muslim people out on the street to drive this content. It is misinformation being spread to create trouble.”
She further said, in a comment directed to Reform UK Member of Parliament Richard Tice, who had written to condemn violence, that: “These people came to this location because it has been spread that racists were coming to attack them. This misinformation was spread entirely to create this content.”
Facing a storm of condemnations for the comments, Phillips said while “anyone committing criminality should face the law”, nevertheless she believes “it’s important that the facts of why people are congregating [should be known]”. The claim may set her up for a clash with her party colleague Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, who has hammered home the point in the past week that violence on the streets is always criminality and never legitimate.
Lee’s Reform UK colleague in Parliament Richard Tice MP also passed comment on Phillips’ statements, asserting it was disgraceful for her to try and “justify Asian gang racism against white people in Birmingham… Jess Phillips, a Govt minister, defended it in the name of protecting their territory. That is the job of police not vigilante mobs”.
Speaking on GB News this morning, Mr Tice further elaborated: “We’ve condemned all of the violence form all sides comprehensively… what’s strange is that no Labour politicians are condemning the horrific scenes we saw in Birmingham last night. Jess Phillips… thought that was justifiable. No violence is justifiable, we’re the only party, it seems, that’s actually put that out there.”
The businessman and newly-elected Parliamentarian also touched on the perceived issue of “two-tier policing,” the complaint that there is a differential in police treatment of street unrest depending on which community it comes from. The issue has evidently touched a nerve in Westminster, with the government utterly denying there is any such thing. Meanwhile, The Times provided covering fire last week by stating as fact that two-tier policing is a “myth” used to “whip up” the far right.
The present bout of protests and rioting started a week ago after a mass knife attack on a class of young children in Southport, Merseyside in England’s North East. Three young girls died and several others were critically injured, as were two adults who put themselves between the knifeman and his victims.
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