You reap what you sow.

The riots across British towns are no coincidence. They are the symptom of a fundamental issue that has time and again been failed to have been addressed.

And that fundamental issue is that for far too long, social media execs and far right politicians have benefitted from sowing division and spreading misinformation for their own gain.

It is a race to the bottom, a lowest common denominator drive that feeds on base instincts; fear, anger and most unfortunately, racism.

And when you really think about it, what has Nigel Farage ever offered anyone? What positive contribution has he made? He’s a snake oil salesman, who spends majority of his time pointing the finger at immigrants and demonising them.

Then the Tories join in on the rhetoric and take it to even more lower levels of stupid with a botched gimmick and infuriatingly expensive Rwanda policy and yet another stupid slogan in ‘Stop the boats’.

The channel crossing situation is a highly complex and nuanced situation, one to which I have no expertise on but the incompetence to which it was dealt with and the manner to which politicians exploited the situation to rally support is utterly inexcusable.

So when a horrible tragedy occurs, a spark lights the flame.

And the sad thing is, the origin of the perpetrator wasn’t a channel crossing migrant or Islamic for that matter, he was a 17 year old boy from Cardiff. So it’s cognitive dissonance galore.

And as someone who has friends who are Muslim, who has worked with Muslims and taught them and shared in their community, hospitality and warmth, this all saddens me greatly. An entire community through misinformation is targeted by impressionable and indoctrinated washed white men.

I don’t get any satisfaction from judging those who are dumb enough to have gone out and behaved callously, attacking police officers and chanting deplorable things. Every single one of them deserves to face justice. But mostly, I pity them. What a miserable way to live if you feel threatened by those of a different race or religion.

And if they really cared about those children, they wouldn’t be engaging in any criminal activity. Heck, where were they all when the news of Lucy Letby came out last year? It’s as if these people think it’s only non-white people who murder. Watch their logic be ripped apart when you look at data from NSPCC for child abuse or NCDV on domestic violence in the U.K. Then again, listen to any of them speak and they can barely string a sentence together.

But what they do is recite common slogans, ‘Take our country back’ being a common thing that’s said.

So we come full circle to where the blame lies, and that’s on all those who have aloud this division to spread. And whilst Labour have had to shoulder the blame from those dumb enough to think that this is their fault, I whole heartedly encourage them to be bold, have some courage and truly shine a light on where the responsibility lies. Kim Johnson and Dame Sara Khan have thankfully said it but the more that do, the better.

We’ve had enough of the culture wars.

When you create an ‘us’ and ‘them’ you create conflict and enable extremists to act with impunity. When you create a ‘we’ that’s when we can start making progress again

…and we’ve got to live together.