Living in fear ‘isn’t the way to be living’, says Zarah Sultana MP on UK riots

We spoke to the Independent MP for Coventry South, Zarah Sultana.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: This is not far from where you live. How are you feeling tonight about how safe this country is?

Zarah Sultana: Incredibly scared. While I represent Coventry South, I was born and raised in Birmingham. So seeing the images that are coming out of this city and the family WhatsApp groups telling each other to stay in, my sisters wondering if they should go into work, my friends saying that actually they’re going to work from home. This isn’t a way to be living, where you’re fearful of walking outside in your community and perhaps not going into work because you’re fearful for your life.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: But we have to talk about where this comes from, don’t we. This is not spontaneous, hasn’t just erupted out of nowhere.

Zarah Sultana: No, this is the culmination of decades of front pages that have demonised and scapegoated Muslims, refugees and migrants. This is the product of rhetoric that we see coming from the highest offices in the country. Our former home secretary, Suella Braverman, said that we had an ‘invasion of migrants’. She also recently said that the ‘Islamists, and extremists and anti-Semites were in charge’.

We’ve got politicians, the former MP in Leicester, John Ashworth, who said ‘migrants are able to stay in hotels and stay in them for life’. We’ve had Lee Anderson who said, ‘the animals’, referring to the people in Harehills in Leeds. And that language, that dehumanisation, has been happening for decades. In particular, you’ve got Nigel Farage, who was recently elected, the language that he’s been using about Muslims, saying that they don’t share the values of British people. This is where it leads to.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: And for you, Labour isn’t going far enough either.

Zarah Sultana: I think the Labour Party needs to be stronger in what it is calling for. I’m glad that there’s been progress in calling it Islamophobic. It took us a long time to get to that point where Muslim communities, all the communities that are being targeted, as well as black and brown people, asylum seekers, where arsonists are trying to burn them alive in their hotels. We have to see how the debate around immigration, which has dehumanised people, has led us to this point where hotels are being burnt.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: But the issue right now is law and order, and that is what Labour is trying to deliver. Keir Starmer and Yvette Cooper have been very, very clear on that. Is now the time to be sort of, stirring up internal debate when actually what you need…

Zarah Sultana: This is not an internal debate. I have always highlighted Islamophobia in the Conservative Party. I’ve highlighted it in my own party, highlighting the Forde Report, which has said that there is a hierarchy of racism at play when it comes to Islamophobia and anti-Black racism. In terms of what we need to do now, law and order is an important part of the answer, but it is not the silver bullet unless we address the fact that we have a deeply unequal country where living standards have fallen the lowest since records began, that people are dependent on food banks, that wages have been flatlining.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: So you need to offer different answers to these people who are taking to the streets?

Zarah Sultana: An economic solution, where our communities feel invested, that they feel supported, that they don’t feel left behind. We have an NHS on its knees. We have our public services crumbling. And what has happened is politicians, rather than address their own failings at this, have pointed to migrants who have pointed to Muslims. And this is what we’re seeing. So we need to address the structural economic issues which politicians just don’t want to do and instead distract, blame, scapegoat others to get people’s attention, elsewhere. And it’s unacceptable, and this is a product of that.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: But the context is different now because people are also in parliament with very controversial views you don’t like.

Zarah Sultana: Parliament is a democratic institution. We’ve all been elected, and we all have the same rights and responsibilities. What I struggle with, is how people do not take those responsibilities seriously, where they use the platform of parliament and those green benches to perpetuate hate, to perpetuate division. And that needs to be condemned by everyone.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: Okay Zarah Sultana. Thank you very much indeed for joining us. I suppose I wrongly called you a Labour MP. You were elected as a Labour MP, but you’re not a Labour MP right now because the whip was withdrawn.

Zarah Sultana: The whip was withdrawn because I believe kids shouldn’t be in poverty and avoidable poverty. And that’s why the whip was withdrawn from me.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: Because you voted for the SNP amendment…

Zarah Sultana: …to scrap the two child benefit cap.