This is the speech I was meant to give at the Trump Not Welcome rally later today. I can no longer make it sadly, so I thought it a good idea to share my words here.
Please attend it if you are able to.
Trump coming to the UK is not just about one cynical politician welcoming another cynical politician.
Trump coming to the UK is about redefining which lives are worthy and which are not.
It is about telling all those who are already victims of that regime, trans people, people of color, immigrants, asylum seekers, neighbors, teachers, moms and dads, workers of all walks of life that they are worthless. It's about telling billionaires, big tech fascists and so-called right-wing populists that this country's resources and people are theirs for the taking.
How else would we explain the decisions made by this Labour government time and time again? A clear majority of this country demands more action to stop the genocide in Gaza and to stop the UK’s complicity in it. So what does Starmer do? He meets with Israel’s president while his government arrests hundreds of our elders who risk jail time for opposing this genocide. Violent fascists are given free reign on our streets while the police arrest nans and retired priests, including a wheelchair-bound blind elder, for holding up signs.
Who is Labour for?
We’re still barely scratching the surface of the full extent of Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes, so why did Keir Starmer appoint Epstein’s friend Peter Mandelson as UK ambassador to the US?
Why did this government hand over our NHS data and paid £330m of our money to Palantir as the British Medical Association warned that this would “undermine public trust in NHS data systems”? Palantir UK’s vice-president, by the way, is none other than Louis Mosley, grandson of Oswald Mosley, founder of the British Union of Fascists. Mosley is of course friends with Peter Thiel, the deranged billionaire who is obsessed with the figure of the anti-Christ who he genuinely believes to be Greta Thunberg. Greta is of course once again risking her own life with hundreds like her to break the siege of Gaza while this government’s friends in Israel starve children to death.
Again - who is Labour for?
Trump has made it clear that he will fight for the big tech CEOs that have paid a million dollars each to attend his inauguration as God Emperor. Meanwhile, Labour has made it equally clear who its enemies are. And its enemies are, not these criminal elites. Its enemies are not the far right or fascism or the fossil fuel lobby which funds the so-called Reform party. Its enemies are its own base. Its enemies are the people who voted for them. Its enemies are some of the most marginalised people in this country.
Once more - who is Labour for?
This is what the arrival of the fascist god king represents. It is a way for Starmer, the human rights lawyer who abandoned human rights, to bend the knee to Trump - in our name.
They want us, they need us to lose hope because only then would we accept this as the new normal.
Even if we don't succeed in stopping the Trump visit, we need to make it as costly as possible for this fascist, serial rapist, white supremacist to set foot in this country. And we need to make it very clear to this government that if they continue down this path, it can and will be the end of the Labour party.
Finally, I want to leave a message to the fascists who took over our streets last week, those who paused their English nationalism to have a curry or a kebab on their way home. To those who dare attack Muslims in the name of a Christianity that I condemn as hollow and blasphemous: I speak today as I am a Lebanese-Palestinian Christian immigrant.
That cross you fly is that of a brown Greek-Palestinian man named St Giorgios, who we call Mar Gerges. St George is our patron saint and our history with him is older than a country called England. The Messiah you claim is yours is a brown Jewish refugee from Palestine called Yeshua or Yasoo3. These co-called Christians would have terrorised Mary and Joseph themselves as they sought shelter in that manger. They would have let a baby Moses drown instead of rescuing him and sheltering him.
It is with that history behind me that I feel confident in telling the fascists of this country: you will lose. You will lose because you may be in denial of your own history, but we hold it on our shoulders. It is in the colour of our skin, in our languages, in the food that you eat and music that you listen to.
We are here and we’re not fucking going anywhere. Thank you.