Politics: herd instinct

By Richard North - May 17, 2026

Doubtless, much to the disappointment of Starmer, the Tommy Robinson “Unite the Kingdom” march passed off peacefully, with only 31 arrests made across both his and the rival Pro-Pal march. That contrasts, incidentally, with the 528 arrests made by the Metropolitan Police during the last Notting Hill carnival.

These events are not strictly comparable – the carnival lasted longer and more people attended – an estimated 2 million compared with a rough estimate of 120,000 as the combined total who took part in yesterday’s marches.

Using those attendance figures (both of which are disputed and can only be estimates), by a perverse irony, the arrest rates are actually comparable, yesterday producing one arrest per 3,870 people who attended, as against Notting Hill which claimed one arrest for every 3,788 people.

However, to the Notting Hill arrest figure must be added the 135 arrests made in the “approaches” to the carnival, and the 30 or so made by the British Transport Police at nearby Underground and rail stations servicing the event.

On balance, therefore, it can fairly be said that the carnival represented a far more prominent challenge to law and order, requiring the total deployment of 14,000 individual police officer shifts, with around 7,000 officers on duty each day, compared with 4,000 deployed yesterday.

If total attendances yesterday were higher than the estimate I’ve used, then obviously the arrest rate falls, presenting an even more favourable comparison with the carnival.

Yet, prior to that event, Starmer refrained from making any comment about the crime rate, even though the Metropolitan Police Federation – representing 30,000 rank and file officers – published a dossier on the carnival, complaining of its “Utter lawlessness”, stating that, “We are practically powerless to police this event… It’s a war zone we are sent into year after year”.

There was no statement from Starmer on the two murders at the 2024 carnival and the five stabbings and, only when pressed did he offer a generic condemnation of “any violence from anyone in the same terms as I have done for many, many years”.

Through the years of increasing lawlessness at the carnival, Starmer has been conspicuously silent, his last public statement (on what was then Twitter) coming in August 2020 when he remarked that the carnival had started as “a defiant response to the racist violence Black people were subjected to in the 1950s”, then stating that: “Today it is an important celebration of Black Caribbean culture and our country’s diversity”.

In a second, linked tweet, he went on to state that, “And as we stand with those protesting across the world demanding justice and an end to structural racism please join carnival online this weekend”.

Thus, the annual stabfest that had the Metropolitan Police describing it as a “war zone” was to Starmer “an important celebration of Black Caribbean culture and our country’s diversity”.

Yet when a crowd of thousands of largely English people chose to march in celebration of the kingdom, this became “a fight for the soul of this country”.

With thousands of police deployed, equipped with live facial recognition technology, helicopters, drones, dog units, police horses, and with armoured vehicles on stand-by, the prime minister claimed he was taking action “to protect British communities from vile hate”.

Given that the Tommy Robinson’s rally passed off peacefully, with only 24 arrests (in the main arising when splinter groups clashed with police, resulting in 26 officers being injured), and there had been heavy emphasis this year on making the march a peaceful, family occasion, Starmer’s pre-march comments are all the more extraordinary.

It is very hard to accept any other explanation for his behaviour, other than to surmise that this man has, at the very least, an active dislike of displays of British patriotism even, as it turned out, that the bulk of the marchers were not extremists, bearing no relation to Starmer’s description of them.

Bearing in mind his recent praise of Muslims as “the face of modern Britain” declaring that they are “at the forefront of Britain’s story”, and the speed with which he rushed to visit the Peacehaven mosque last October after a suspected arson attack, along with other indications of preferring immigrant “communities”, it is not hard to draw the conclusion that the man has an inherent bias against his own indigenous people.

Unsurprisingly, the sentiment is mutual, with the crowd at yesterday’s rally reported as chanting “Starmer out” and other less elegant chants, anchored to a particular aspect of the prime minister’s private behaviour.

On Friday, The Times published a piece by columnist Janice Turner under the heading “Why is there such hatred for Keir Starmer”, noting in the sub-head that “He’s not a scoundrel, he hasn’t crashed the economy and he kept us out of a war, yet the PM is mocked and loathed”.

For all that, Turner doesn’t get it. The rot started when Starmer visited Southport on 30 July, immediately after the mass stabbing, spending less than two minutes laying flowers at the cordon on Hart Street before rushing away.

He was then to return on 2 August after the riot there, meeting Muslim community leaders and officials, followed by meetings with national Muslim leaders in Downing Street. All the while, the emphasis was on attacks on mosques and Muslim communities, with Starmer saying: “The full force of the law will be visited on all those who are identified as having taken part in these activities”.

When his action inspired a reign of terror against bloggers and social media users, with thousands arrested and some sent down for longer periods than Muslim rapists, combined with a tone deaf lack of empathy for the outrage at the murders in Southport, it became very clear that we had a prime minister who had little affinity for his own people.

So many examples have confirmed this view, not least his tardy response to setting up a national rape gang inquiry, where the predominant offenders are Pakistani (Kashmiri) Muslims.

Even “the war” which Turner commends Starmer for not joining is one against the Islamic Republic of Iran, a regime which has committed or facilitated multiple violent acts against the UK, in the context where, unlike most developed nations, the British government still has not proscribed the IRGC.

To an extent, therefore – and very much evident at yesterday’s march – there is a herd instinct at play. Even those who do not follow the minutia of politics will know instinctively that they have in Starmer a man who doesn’t like them very much and clearly does not have their interests at heart.

That instinct is more powerful than any logic, reflecting what is sometimes known as the “wisdom of the crowd”. It is a sentiment which seems to be beyond the ken of journalists such as Janice Turner but is real despite their lack of comprehension.

Turner believes that a more skilful, articulate Labour leader than Starmer might bring the country with them, tell a more compelling story. But she surmises generic wellsprings of rage, arising from a country getting poorer, uncontrolled borders, a towering welfare bill and alienated youth.

She misses the point though. This is far more intense and focused than the dislike of a failed government. The hatred is personal.