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[…] As a British Bangladeshi, I saw my phone light up the moment Starmer publicly singled out the country as a source of illegal migrants, saying in an event hosted by The Sun that they were not being “removed” from the UK in sufficient numbers.
[…]
Starmer’s choice to single out Bangladesh was odd for a number of reasons. Bangladesh is not among the top five countries for asylum claims to the UK. Nor does it feature in data from Oxford University’s Migration Observatory on the top 10 nationalities of those who cross the channel in small boats.

The comments caused such a backlash that British Bangladeshi Labour candidates reached out to me to express dismay that their party leader had done this. One sitting member of Labour’s National Executive Committee described it as “dog whistle stuff”; the deputy leader of Tower Hamlets council, home to Britain’s largest Bangladeshi community, quit the party in protest.
[…]
We covered the story at ITV News, and asked Starmer if he was aware of the hurt that had resulted from his words. His answer, on camera, was fairly clear. He did not mean to cause any worry, concern or offence. He praised the contribution of the British Bangladeshi community. He mentioned that he had visited the country as an MP, and that he was simply highlighting that the UK has a new returns agreement with Bangladesh that it had signed earlier this year.

This explanation may satisfy some — but it is notable that Starmer did not say he was sorry. One senior community leader in the British Bangladeshi community was far from impressed with it. “It is always one excuse or another,” they told me, “just like the time he never meant any offence when he called the Black Lives Matter movement ‘a moment’ and never apologised.”

The problem for Labour is that this feeds into a narrative that it has a worsening relationship with the British Muslim community. Since the escalation of the conflict in Gaza, the situation has been fraught; as I have travelled around Britain both before and during the election campaign, I have heard from countless British Muslims who feel ignored and let down by the party’s failure to call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire. Data analysis carried out for ITV News found that Labour had lost 33 percentage points of vote share in areas that are majority Muslim, suggesting that the rift has had an impact at the ballot box.
[…]
Ultimately, the Labour party is a long way ahead in the opinion polls, and the upset over Starmer’s remarks on Monday night is unlikely to have any impact on a national level. What it does, however, is exacerbate a problem that has been building for quite some time.

Starmer and his team are aware that governing is very different from being in opposition. Theoretical ideas become life-changing policies. All governments seek to unite the country and all parties believe their policies can do that, but leaving one community potentially feeling alienated and ignored can undermine this, which in turn can ultimately erode trust among the wider population.

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The Forde report, an independent inquiry into Labour’s culture that was published in July 2022, found that the party was an “unwelcoming place for people of colour” and had a “toxic” culture of factional disputes between the party’s right and left.

In March 2023, Mr Forde gave an interview to Al Jazeera in which he said that no one from Labour had been willing to discuss the recommendations further and highlighted concerns raised by ethnic minority politicians within Labour about racism in the party.

In response, it has now emerged that the Labour Party sent Mr Forde a robust legal letter, seen by The Independent, accusing him of acting against the party’s interests and advising him that it was “considering all of its options”.

Lawyers accused Mr Forde of having made “extensive negative and highly prejudicial comments” and questioned his professional conduct.

Speaking to The Independent this week, the respected barrister said: “I don’t know if it was an attempt to silence me. I mean, they’ve couched it carefully along the lines of ‘We’re reminding you of your professional duties,’ which I found mildly irritating because I am a regulatory lawyer, and I don’t like my professionalism or ethics being questioned ... but I felt it was more.

He continued: “I’m a private individual; they can’t silence me. I fundamentally object to people saying to me, ‘You don’t know how to behave as a professional.’ I’m afraid that Black professionals get it all the time.”

This week, in yet another setback to Rishi Sunak‘s efforts to showcase how the Conservatives have created – over a decade and a half – a robust economy, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported that monthly growth in April in the UK had flatlined.

The British economy was said to be struggling with a faltering retail sector, a decline in manufacturing, and a reduction in construction output, after a 0.4% rise in March. The City’s pundits appeared to blame the weather and not the cost-of-living crisis for the lack of growth. The consequences of Brexit, as it seems to be so increasingly, was absent from the finger-pointing.

But this news of the parlous state of the British economy comes amidst more of the same. The UK’s labour productivity had increased by just 0.4% annually over the 12 years following the financial crisis – half the average growth rate seen in the 25 wealthiest OECD countries – and has resulted in a cumulative loss of £10,700 in wage growth for the average worker’s annual salary.

Middle-income individuals in the UK are now 20% poorer than their counterparts in Germany and 9% worse off than those in France.

[…] [T]he UK’s parlous goods exports would be far worse if you did not include the UK’s ‘empty calorie’ trading of global gold. If you took out such high frequency precious metals trading, it would mean that the UK’s goods exports are down some £44 billion since 2018. And that the UK’s goods exports are down, the UK’s service exports are up.

[…] The one silver lining in this dire economic news is that service exports are buoying up the UK economy. Indeed, last year the UK ranked second in the world for such exports – including ICT (Information and communication technology), education, culture, and finance.

The leading nation the UK exports such services to is the United States, where the $129.7 billion of services provided equates to over a quarter of the UK’s entire service export economy (27.6%).
[…]
The Lawyer has noted a 41% year on year increase in revenue by the top 50 US law firms in Britain since 2018: a jump from $5.7bn to $8.1bn. Even factoring in inflation, the rise is 13%. According to The Lawyer in 2021, the top American law firm in the UK was Kirkland & Ellis, and whilst their UK company house listings might not capture all of their UK earnings, it shows a 70% declared rise in profits last year.
[…]
Last month, it was reported that another American law firm, Quinn Emanuel, was offering its newly qualified lawyers in London an eye-watering £180,000 a year, an 18% hike from the year before. Those five years out of qualification will see salaries of £290,000. […] To put this all into context, the London Mayor, Sadiq Khan, earns £160,976. And the London Living Wage is currently set at £13.15 or, roughly, £27,352 a year.
[…]
The income per person in the UK’s richest local authority – Kensington and Chelsea (£52,500) – now stands at 4.5 times that of the poorest – Nottingham (£11,700).
[…]
Last year, hundreds of homeless families were permanently displaced from London by local councils, with little notice, or choice. The escalating rents in the capital, which have surpassed the local housing allowance (LHA) – the amount private tenants on housing benefits are entitled to for rent, varying by local authority – have driven these forced relocations.

The campaign group Housing Action Southwark and Lambeth (HASL) reported in 2023 that 319 households accepted private tenancies outside London. These families were frequently given 24-hour ultimatums by council officials to accept homes outside the capital or risk being classified as “intentionally homeless” for refusing the offer.