Bebe King. Elsie Dot Stancombe. Alice Dasilva Aguiar. Three names that our country should be holding in grief and solemnity, but have since been pushed aside, calculatedly and unfeelingly, by the people who have started and sustained the riots.
There is a grim familiarity to who has been violently targeted – after all, established power pointed the way. People who are in ‘temporary' hotel accommodation whilst their asylum claims are processed – the same people who the previous government recoded as ‘small boats'. Muslim people and communities, and people who look like they might be Muslim – the same people who are regularly accused of wanting to ‘take over' the country they call home by broadcasters on channels that are regulated by Ofcom. It might have been intended as mood music for a prolonged, divisive election campaign, but it has had consequences.