Clive Lewis MP: ‘I Never Thought I’d Hear Myself Say I Think My Party is Making this Country Weaker in Preparation for an Authoritarian-Right Government’

Peter Jukes and Hardeep Matharu speak to the backbench Labour MP to understand why the Government is focusing on how to ‘stop the boats' rather than fixing people's everyday lives

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PJ: Your party has been in power for a year now. What’s your personal reading of the temperature of where the country is at?

There are so many factors involved. But, generally speaking, as a student of history, I’m aware that so many of us walk through life assuming that the kind of the world we see around us, the mundanity of it, is the way it will always be. That democracy is an inevitability, that it will always be there, rather than understanding that it has to be fought for. It’s something we’ve become complacent about.

You only have to look at the United States to see what’s happening. I think that’s been a bit of a wake-up call to people but, at the same time, I don’t think it’s received the coverage that it really deserves. When you look, in detail, at what Donald Trump is doing – the fact that judges are now openly discussing setting up their own security service to protect themselves – it is really dark stuff. So the temperature at the moment, for me – and I think for some of my constituents – is one of deep discomfort and concern.

For some, it goes further. A couple I know who are very affluent and middle-class – the man is half-Ghanaian, half English; the woman is a Pakistani-born Brit – invited me round for dinner recently and started showing me photos of their apartment abroad. When I asked what it was for, they said ‘it’s our getaway – having watched the riots last summer, we don’t have faith in this country not to turn on people like us’. They said it had happened in history and don’t want to be trapped here. ‘Clive, last year’s summer riots happened when things were relatively benign – think about what could happen if there is a proper economic downturn,’ they said. ‘Think about the media and the narratives that are out there. Do you really want to be trapped here? We don’t. So we’ve got portable currency, and we’ve got a place to get to where we can stay.’

It crystallised to me this sense that, if you are a Muslim person, if you are a black person, a person of colour, then you do see this rhetoric in a slightly different way. There is a sense of dread; a nervousness and apprehension about where things could go. We have a kind of trouble radar. I remember being out on the town with my mates growing up in Northampton when you needed to have that. Have I walked into the right pub? Where is this estate that I’m going to?

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