Who’s really dividing London, Sadiq?

‘We must unite against those who seek to divide us.’ So it was with this banal, hackneyed post on X that Sir Sadiq Khan released his official statement about Saturday’s Unite the Kingdom march in London, led by Tommy Robinson.

It’s like the Jeremy Corbyn classic, ‘People who hold anti-Semitic views have no place in the Labour Party’, isn’t it? These are such meaningless and obvious truisms that the only people mouthing them are the ones sowing a lot of ‘division’ themselves.

To Khan’s statement itself: ‘I know many people, particularly from London’s diverse communities, are feeling extremely worried following the events this weekend’, the little mayor crooned from his X account, which informs us that his pronouns are ‘He/Him’. ‘As Londoners, and as proud Brits, we must unite to reject the far right – just as we have many times before.’

Now, I’m not sure when Khan last ‘rejected the far right’. Does giving protesters permission to troll Donald Trump with baby blimp back in 2018 count? Still, let’s not be uncharitable.

To be fair, there were speeches from the stage at the Unite the Kingdom march that made me feel uncomfortable, too. I didn’t watch the whole thing, but I didn’t hear any mention of Islam or Muslims that wasn’t disparaging. I couldn’t help but wonder how I would have felt if I had been a law-abiding and patriotic Briton of that faith. Pretty disturbed, I think.

Moreover, the version of Christianity projected by the speakers I saw seemed inspired by charismatic American woo-woo, blended with a kind of Crusader fixation, rather than any sense of compassion for the poor and the weak, in the mould of the Good Samaritan.

Having said that, the vast majority of those attending the rally seemed to have committed no greater sin than being working class, which in my view is more often a mark of virtue in these days of elite condescension. They just want to be allowed to fly their national flag and not have their country changed around them by unmanageable levels of immigration. These are rights that almost every other country on Earth takes for granted. Why not Britain?

The media placed much focus on the number of arrests that were made on Saturday. But these were dwarfed by those made regularly at the pro-Palestine rallies, about which we are continually told the majority are ‘peaceful’ and ‘decent’.

Which brings me to the point. Where were Sir Sadiq’s concerns about ‘those who seek to divide us’ when Jewish communities were targeted by the Gaza mob week in, week out?

He may feel that ‘many people, particularly from London’s diverse communities, are feeling extremely worried following the events this weekend’, but what about the many people from the Jewish minority, and indeed from the great silent majority of decent Britons, who have felt ‘extremely worried’ about the keffiyeh-clad subversives taking over our capital city as if they were in Islamabad?

As always, it’s one rule for some minorities, and another rule for others.

Jake Wallis Simons is the author of Never Again? How the West Betrayed the Jews and Itself, published on 2 October.