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On Wednesday, Shadow Defence Secretary James Cartlidge rose in the Commons to question Justice Secretary David Lammy, who was taking the place of Keir Starmer at Prime Minister’s Questions. Six times, Mr Cartlidge asked Mr Lammy whether any other “asylum-seeker prisoners” had been released in error following the brief inadvertent release two weeks ago of Hadush Kebatu, an Ethiopian man convicted of sexual assault in Epping earlier this year. Mr Cartlidge knew, of course, that on Wednesday morning there had been news of another such release, of a 24-year-old Algerian described in the media as a sex offender. And what Mr Lammy knew, and why he did not mention the case in his responses to Mr Cartlidge, is a topic that will doubtless preoccupy large elements of the UK media for some days to come, as they seek another high-profile ministerial scalp. It was just another day, in other words, in the world of fake news and trumped-up moral panic that we are all now apparently forced to inhabit. The entire exchange between Mr Lammy and Mr Cartlidge, for example, was nonsensical in at least two ways. READ MORE: 'Abhorrent': Scottish council slammed after moving adult English classes from school campus In the first place, as most news reports have signally failed to point out, inadvertent releases are sadly not unusual in Britain’s severely under-funded and sometimes chaotic prison system. Between 2010 and 2024, for example, about five prisoners were released in error each month, across England – until recently, without much public comment. Mr Cartlidge’s high-dudgeon pretence that these releases somehow represent a new and sinister Labour outrage is therefore disingenuous, particularly since he himself served as a justice minister from 2021-22. And secondly, Mr Cartlidge was clearly not concerned about which of the many prisoners released in error present the greatest threat to the public, but only about which of them were “asylum-seeker prisoners” – ie, those who can most easily be associated with the current hate-campaign against migrants rampaging through sections of our media. If you glance across the current UK news agenda, examples of that now completely legitimised negative stereotype are everywhere – and now widely tinged with that element of sexual hysteria and paranoia often associated, historically, with racially oppressive societies. READ MORE: Former first minister Humza Yousaf warns of ‘frightening’ rise in Islamophobia in UK and US This week, social media disgraced itself once again by promoting savagely anti-Islamic and anti-migrant false assumptions about the Huntingdon train attack even before the victims has been safely evacuated from the train. Elon Musk, one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the world, later came online to tell us that quiet villages in England were now at risk of “thousands” of foreigners arriving and starting to rape their children. And of course, this constant equating of migrants and asylum seekers with crime, and with sexual crime in particular, has real-world consequences. This week in Paisley, Renfrewshire Council felt compelled to pause adult English language classes at the St James education campus, because many parents were terrified at the idea of migrants and asylum seekers being taught English in a learning centre contiguous with, although separate from, their children’s primary school – terrified not, it seems, because of any specific threat, but because years of successful propaganda by the far-right has now led many in Britain to see the words “asylum seeker” and “migrant” as synonyms for “criminal” and “sexual predator.” READ MORE: Douglas Alexander 'perplexed' at SNP minister claiming to hear about asylum seeker plan on radio And about this cruel and potentially tragic state of affairs, there are at least two things worth saying. The first is that those who oppose this essentially racist agenda need to become much sharper and smarter, both ideologically and practically, about how to resist and oppose it. Policy should not be shaped by hate-mongering myths that have no basis in fact, no matter how vocal or agitated the groups promoting them. And the second is that we need to open up a debate about what we have gained and lost, in a decade where some free speech advocates have increasingly insisted on the right to “say the quiet part out loud” when it comes to xenophobic and racist views. In just ten years – since the Conservative leadership decided to throw its weight behind an economically nonsensical and often xenophobic Brexit project – we in Britain have seen the UK economy severely damaged by our departure from the European Union, and our public discourse increasingly dominated by debates and accusations which are incapable of leading to any real improvement in the lives of British people, because they are based on premises about migrants and immigration that are false in the first. READ MORE: Chicken nuggets deportation myth shows dangers of fake news about European Convention on Human Rights The result is a public realm where instead of focussing on debate and analysis of the real problems facing British people and their governments, many of our media outlets increasingly waste hours of time and effort on a political agenda which is both ugly and dangerous in itself, and represents a rabbit hole down which no solution to any real-world problem can possibly be found. As a journalist and a citizen, I am in favour of freedom of speech, always and everywhere. When that freedom is being abused by some of the most powerful people on the planet, though, to sow hatred between races and cultures, and to incite violent responses in an attempt to distract from the real patterns of exploitation in our increasingly unequal world, we should at least recognise the hard-won wisdom of the post-war generation that, for six decades after 1945, ruled this kind of discourse out of order. And we should all now consider how we can act – as politicians or journalists, as citizens, or as media consumers – to bring an end to the UK’s current anti-immigration panic, which is becoming more ugly, embarrassing, destructive and wasteful by the hour, and which now needs a concerted effort by people of goodwill to reject its language and assumptions, and to remove it from the centre of our politics.
