REPORTS reached me at the weekend that some Asian shopkeepers were engaging in profiteering, with fresh green chillis, for example, marked up to £17.99 per kg and karela (bitter gourd) priced at £9.99 per kg.
Other reports spoke of hoarding. One house was apparently packed to the rafters with bags of atta (flour), rice and other essentials, which were most likely to be sold on eBay for a huge profit.
Lord Rami Ranger, a respected figure in the Indian community, warned that both profiteering and hoarding “are criminal offences”.
Those who engaged in such practices “are ripping people off,” he raged. “Toilet rolls are being sold for £18 a pack. You can report them to trading inspectors. If shopkeepers cannot show invoices to back up claims of higher cost of purchase, they can be prosecuted.”
He said that shopkeepers also had a duty to ensure that people did not buy “three of everything”.
Earlier, Lord Ranger had posted a picture of an Asian shopper with his trolley piled high with bags and bags of rice and captioned it, “Disgusting.”
Last Sunday (22), there were chaotic scenes caused by panic buying in Southall. I wanted to ask Virendra Sharma, the Labour MP for Ealing Southall, whether there was something he could do to discourage panic buying, profiteering and hoarding. He wasn’t immediately available, but perhaps he will comment in due course.
George Eustice, secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs, has said: “Buying more than you need means that others may be left without. We all have a role to play in ensuring we all come through this together.”
Standing next to him at the Downing Street press conference last Saturday (22), NHS England’s national medical director Stephen Powis said that panic buyers should be “ashamed” for causing needless shortages.
Eustice referred to how the whole country had been moved by a heart-rending message posted by a nurse.
Dawn Bilbrough said in her tearful video message that after finishing hospital duty she had had been unable to buy any food at a supermarket: “There is no food and veg – I had a little cry in there.
“I am not sure how I am supposed to stay healthy. I am a critical care nurse and I have just finished 40 hours of work. Now you have people stripping the shelves of basic foods.
“You just need to stop it, because it is people like me that’s going to be looking after you when you are at your lowest. So just stop it. Please.”
In the ultimate analysis, it should be possible for supermarkets to go through their sales records and identify the culprits who have bought vastly more than they need – and ask them to return the goods.
Meanwhile, Asians should be good citizens – which most are – and not put at risk the lives of the weaker and more vulnerable members of society.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that voters are dissatisfied with the political choices on offer - so must they be in want of new parties too? A proliferation of start-ups showed how tricky political match-making can be. Zarah Sultana took Jeremy Corbyn by surprise by announcing they will co-lead a new left party. Two of Nigel Farage’s exes announced separate political initiatives to challenge Reform from its right, with the leader of London’s Conservatives lending her voice to Rupert Lowe’s revival of the politics of repatriation.
Corbyn and Sultana are from different generations. He had been an MP for a decade by the time she was born. For Sultana’s allies, this intergenerational element is a core case for the joint leadership. But the communications clash suggests friction ahead. After his allies could not persuade Sultana to retract her announcement, Corbyn welcomed her decision to leave Labour, saying ‘negotiations continue’ over the structure and leadership of a new party. It will seek to link MPs elected as pro-Gaza independents with other strands of the left outside Labour.
Nigel Farage
Would the new party cooperate or compete with the Green Party? Zack Polanski’s leadership campaign promotes a “left populism” with much overlap with the Corbynista agenda. He is challenging MPs Adrian Ramsey and Ellie Chowns, who offer continuity with the quieter strategy which saw Green gains in their Herefordshire and Norfolk seats while winning in Bristol and Brighton.
On the right, Ben Habib, sacked as a Reform deputy leader by Farage, launched a new ‘Advance Party’ - but could not get Great Yarmouth MP Lowe to join it. Lowe launched a Restore Britain campaigning movement instead.
Habib has yet to make his new party official, claiming it must recruit 30,000 members to be eligible for registration. The Electoral Commission has no such threshold: there are over 300 registered parties. This false claim may just be a recruitment tactic or a device to delay revealing its donors.
A congratulatory tweet from US billionaire businessman Elon Musk reinforced Habib’s hope that the world’s richest man may help to fund his new party. But Musk’s own focus is on launching a new “America Party” as his feud with US president Donald Trump escalates. Musk self-identifies as a centrist, oblivious to his own self-radicalisation after curating an entire social media platform in his own image. Reform had hoped for a multi-million pound donation from Musk too, before he attacked Farage’s refusal to embrace former EDL leader Tommy Robinson. Yet this simply reinforced Musk’s toxic reputation with the British public.
How much political space is there further right of Farage? About a quarter of the Reform vote - about three per cent of the electorate - find Farage too moderate on race and immigration. But these are mostly the same group who supported last summer’s violent riots. Farage believes a boundary rejecting the BNP (British National Party) and Robinson is imperative to be a mainstream party. Farage faces start-up challenges too. Farage wants to bring 300 first-time MPs to parliament - and would have to give top Cabinet jobs to many unknown quantities. Thurrock MP James McMurdock resigned the Reform whip over the weekend after credible allegations of business fraud during the pandemic.
Rupert LoweGetty Images
Habib can appeal only to those within the segment to Farage’s right who find ethnic minority leadership acceptable. He may be offering too niche a product to find a viable market. Lowe’s agenda is to go much further than Farage on immigration and race. Since Farage’s slogan is to cut net migration to zero, Restore Britain is campaigning for “negative net migration” - pledging to remove ‘millions’ of legal migrants so that “outflows considerably outstrip inflows’. The Migration Advisory Committee projects that the UK population would begin to shrink if net migration was below 110,000. Lowe argues that rising ethnic diversity can be reversed, not just be slowed down. His slogan, ‘stop importing, start deporting’, consciously revives the ‘send them back’ politics of Enoch Powell and the 1970s National Front. Lowe is celebrated by overtly racist bloggers for these efforts to popularise the idea of ‘remigration’. Several London Conservatives are dismayed that Susan Hall has joined this Restore Britain campaign, since the former Tory mayoral candidate leads the party’s Greater London Assembly group. But that criticism remains muted in public. Lowe himself has not ruled out joining the Conservatives before the next election.
The rise of new parties is an expression of democratic politics, but can reflect a misunderstanding of its challenges, too. New parties can voice arguments that citizens feel are missing. But a consumerist search for the perfect party can seek to side-step the inevitable frustrations of compromise. Politics is about how societies make collective decisions when we disagree. Whether we have four-, five- or six-party politics, the challenge for parties - old and new - is how any can secure broad enough support to govern in such fragmented and polarised times.
Sunder Katwala is the director of thinktank British Future and the author of the book How to Be a Patriot: The must-read book on British national identity and immigration.
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ONE reason I watched the BBC documentary Amol Rajan Goes to the Ganges with particular interest was because I have been wondering what to do with the ashes of my uncle, who died in August last year. His funeral, like that of his wife, was half Christian and half Hindu, as he had wished. But he left no instructions about his ashes.
Sooner or later, this is a question that every Hindu family in the UK will have to face, since it has been more than half a century since the first generation of Indian immigrants began arriving in this country. Amol admits he found it difficult to cope with the loss of his father, who died aged 76 three years ago. His ashes were scattered in the Thames.
Amol, who is 41, was born in Calcutta and was brought to Britain when he was three.
“My dad was my hero, totally and utterly,” he declares.
He recalls: “Very suddenly, three years ago, he got pneumonia, went into hospital, spent five dreadful weeks in intensive care, and died. This was really shocking to me because it was the first time I’d ever lost someone I loved.” Watching the grand final of University Challenge, in which Christ’s College, Cambridge, beat Warwick 175–170 in an exciting finish, we saw Amol’s intellectual and secular side as a BBC TV presenter.
He says he is an atheist, but nevertheless undertook a pilgrimage to the Ganges to see if he could emancipate his father from the eternal cycle of birth, death and rebirth and help him gain moksha. He couldn’t get to the confluence of the Ganges and the Yamuna at the Kumbh Mela because of a stampede in which 30 people were trampled to death and hundreds injured. But he participated in pind daan and took a dip in the Ganges.
Rajan offers the pind daan in honour of his father and ancestors
He says: “I think that one of the things that I wanted to go to the Kumbh Mela to do, was to confront my grief, reconnect with my dad, but also to try and work out what the next 38 or 40 years of my life would have to do with the first half.”
Expressing grief on camera, as Amol does, is a little odd, but he explains: “I think there are three things I want people to take away from this documentary. One is about grief, the other is about faith, and the final one is about family. Every grief is different, and everyone grieves for somebody they’ve lost in a very unique way, but I do think there are certain rules about grief. I do think it does get easier over time, and I do think that sharing grief by talking about it, by connecting with other people that are aggrieved, is a really valuable thing. This documentary is a way of trying to grieve in public, not for vain reasons, but because I think there’s something that people could learn from that.”
Do not expect any parties in Downing Street to celebrate the government’s first birthday on Friday (4). After a rocky year, prime minister Sir Keir Starmer had more than a few regrets when giving interviews about his first year in office.
He explained that he chose the wrong chief of staff. That his opening economic narrative was too gloomy. That choosing the winter fuel allowance as a symbol of fiscal responsibility backfired. Starmer ‘deeply regretted’ the speech he gave to launch his immigration white paper, from which only the phrase ‘island of strangers’ cut through. Can any previous political leader have been quite so self-critical of their own record in real time?
This unconventional approach could be a reminder of Starmer’s best quality: that he is the antithesis of US president Donald Trump. Trump has a narcissistic need to be the main character, a hyperactive addiction to conflict, the attention span of a toddler and no interest in policy substance beyond the television and social media optics. So Trump is the disruptor in chief of global trade, security and the US constitutional order. Given a binary choice, it is infinitely better to have the serious sobriety of Starmer, trying to cooperate with allies to limit Trump’s chaotic contributions to increased insecurity.
Yet, it is a contrast that could be taken too far. Trump realises that politics is about what you say as well as what you do. What Starmer is palpably still missing is a clear public story of what his government is for. This was partly a matter of choice. A gritty public mood has little appetite for new visions, unless shown tangible progress first. It reflects the taciturn character of the leader too. Yet the issue is not simply one of communication. The challenge of finding a narrative reflects uncertainty about the strategic direction of the government.
Judged by its actions, this is a centre-left government. It has made many decisions that the previous Conservative government would not have taken. It changed the fiscal rules, borrowing much more for investment. Despite the constraints of its manifesto pledges on most taxes, it did raise taxes so as to have more to spend on the NHS, and on housebuilding. The government is committed to higher defence spending, and also to net zero, to closer UK-EU relations, within the ‘red lines’ which Labour set out, as it takes care to check if it can take the public with it. It will work with multilateral institutions, rather than quitting treaties and conventions. If this is a centre-left government in its deeds, it may prefer to self-identify as something else, without quite managing to articulate what that is.
So this has been a very tactical government, which has changed its mind about most of its tactical choices. The Comprehensive Spending Review was intended as a reset moment, in giving the government clearer priorities, though it has been challenging to make the numbers add up. But the parliamentary rebellion over its welfare bill could prove a more significant turning point. A government which won a landslide had lost its majority once 125 of its MPs - a majority of the backbench - declared they were unable to pass a government bill without a significant change. This was about the substantive impact of heavy income losses for disabled people - and the lack of a rationale beyond saving money. This rebellion is also about the political strategy of the government. Much of the parliamentary group seem diminishing returns in actively picking fights with progressives who Labour will need to keep the populism of Reform leader Nigel Farage out.
Can Starmer fix his government? The prime minister is 62 years old. He cannot change his personality or working style, not metamorphosis into a visionary speech-maker. There is little point in advisers inventing hypothetical strategies - such as choosing to present Starmer as a radical insurgent, rather than the sober incumbent, which cannot fit with the prime minister they have got, and his gradualist agenda for long-term change. Yet Starmer could use his evident capacity for self-reflection to identify feasible changes. He needs to repair how his Downing Street operation makes decisions - and now knows that backbench support is not unconditional.
Facing a fragmented opposition, Labour’s chances of re-election in four years time may be underestimated. Yet most of Labour’s tactical mistakes have come from trying to run a permanent election campaign in government, four years early. The government needs to govern to generate the substantive record and future agenda it would defend from the populist right in 2029. Australia's Anthony Albanese, who faced many similar criticisms to Starmer, bounced back to get re-elected, though the Canadian Liberals changed leaders to defeat the right. How many years Starmer has left in Downing Street is anybody’s guess. This time next year, he would need a stronger story to tell.
Sunder Katwala is the director of thinktank British Future and the author of the book How to Be a Patriot: The must-read book on British national identity and immigration.
Anniversaries can catalyse action. The government appointed the first Windrush Commissioner last week, shortly before Windrush Day, this year marking the 77th anniversary of the ship’s arrival in Britain.
The Windrush generation came to Britain believing what the law said – that they were British subjects, with equal rights in the mother country. But they were to discover a different reality – not just in the 1950s, but in this century too. It is five years since Wendy Williams proposed this external oversight in her review of the lessons of the Windrush scandal. The delay has damaged confidence in the compensation scheme. Williams’ proposal had been for a broader Migrants Commissioner role, since the change needed in Home Office culture went beyond the treatment of the Windrush generation itself.
The Windrush commissioner, the Reverend Clive Foster, a pastor in Nottingham, found himself on home turf in opening a Windrush event at Nottingham Forest’s City ground. Forest legend, Viv Anderson spoke of the racism that his pioneering generation of players faced, being pelted with apples, pears and bananas as a 19 year old, when sent by Brian Clough to warm up on the touchline at Carlisle in his first away game. The event captured the power of story-telling across the generations about past progress and today’s challenges. The 50th anniversary of Anderson becoming England’s first black full international cap, which coincides with co-hosting Euro 2028, offers a landmark moment for football to tell the story of its journey towards inclusion.
Whether Britain should become a multi-ethnic society was fiercely debated in the era of Enoch Powell, two decades after the Windrush docked. This had become a settled social and political fact by the turn of the century. Indeed, Powell himself saw mass repatriation as a time-limited agenda, impossible once half of the Commonwealth-descended population were British-born by the 1980s. The Conservatives moved on to Margaret Thatcher and Norman Tebbit’s case for integration via assimilation. David Cameron later sped up the visible ethnic diversity at the top of the party. After the Windrush scandal, it was the incumbent Conservative governments which officially recognised National Windrush Day and commissioned the National Windrush Memorial in Waterloo station. Yet, the 2020s online right is dividing over how far to re-racialise arguments about who is truly British.
LONDON, ENGLAND - JUNE 22: Baroness Floella Benjamin speaks during the unveiling of the National Windrush Monument at Waterloo Station on June 22, 2022 in London, England. The photograph in the background is by Howard Grey. (Photo by John Sibley - WPA Pool/Getty Images)
Former Tory and Ukip MP Douglas Carswell was once the most vocal critic of anti-migration nativism among Brexit campaigners, repudiating Powell to avoid Nigel Farage putting ethnic minorities off. So how odd it is to see Carswell flip to tweeting, “Out. I don’t care how long you’ve lived here” in calling for the ‘mass deportation’ of Pakistanis from Britain. Carswell told me he now believes the ‘old demonisation’ of such arguments as racist will fail. Moving to the pro-Trump heartlands of Mississippi for his new think-tank gig has badly skewed his perceptions of how the British public think. Former Reform MP Rupert Lowe and Conservative peer David Frost are recommending accounts that promote prejudice.
Think-tanker David Goodhart last week proposed moving the capital from London to York – telling Evening Standard readers that 2030s London may have too few white people to stay as the capital city. Goodhart began arguing that Britain had become too diverse back in 2004, when the visible minority percentage was in single digits. It goes beyond an argument about the pace of change of immigration when the white British score is made the central indicator of how British a place is. That casts millions of British-born minorities as, by definition, diluting Britishness rather than having a shared stake within it.
Can this government tell a shared story of how we got here and where we are going? Or will it tend to communicate to segments of majority and minority audiences in parallel on separate occasions? Downing Street is now working at pace to deepen the government’s policy agenda. The existence of a new social cohesion taskforce may reflect how anniversaries catalyse attention. The anniversary of August’s riots will be a natural focal point for scrutiny of how far the government has been able to combine getting tough on the riots in real-time with a long-term plan to address the causes of cohesion. The third anniversary of the Leicester disorder of 2022 will also attract further scrutiny into when the delayed independent inquiry report into the local and national lessons may finally materialise.
The prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, regrets the ‘island of strangers’ controversy over his immigration white paper – so he hopes to place as much emphasis on the case for integration as his fear of the risks of its absence. One test of the government this summer is whether it can navigate the contested language of identity more confidently. What will matter most is whether action can be sustained to address the vacuum in national policy once the anniversaries that spur flurries of action go past.
Sunder Katwala is the director of thinktank British Future and the author of the book How to Be a Patriot: The must-read book on British national identity and immigration.
Ed Sheeran and Arijit Singh’s ‘Sapphire’ collaboration misses the mark
The song everyone is talking about this month is Sapphire – Ed Sheeran’s collaboration with Arijit Singh. But instead of a true duet, Arijit takes more of a backing role to the British pop superstar, which is a shame, considering he is the most followed artist on Spotify. The Indian superstar deserved a stronger presence on the otherwise catchy track. On the positive side, Sapphire may inspire more international artists to incorporate Indian elements into their music. But going forward, any major Indian names involved in global collaborations should insist on equal billing, rather than letting western stars ride on their popularity.
Ed Sheeran and Arijit Singh
Aziz Ansari’s Hollywood comedy ‘Good Fortune’ could be a sleeper hit
Last year, I predicted that the Hollywood film Good Fortune would be one of this year’s big sleeper hits. The positive early response to its recently released trailer confirms that writer, director, producer and lead star Aziz Ansari is onto a winner. The body-swap comedy features Keanu Reeves as a bumbling guardian angel who lands in trouble after interfering in the lives of a ruthless venture capitalist (Seth Rogen) and an overworked, underpaid employee (Ansari). Due for release on 17 October, the film is expected to be a major hit – and could well establish stand-up star Ansari as a serious Hollywood power player.
Aziz Ansari’s Hollywood comedy ‘Good Fortune’
Punjabi cinema’s power-packed star cast returns in ‘Sarbala Ji’
Gippy Grewal, Ammy Virk, Sargun Mehta and Nimrat Khaira starring together in a film is reason enough to get excited about Sarbala Ji. These four hugely popular stars – all of whom have delivered some of the finest Punjabi films in recent years – have teamed up for a comedy packed with drama, emotion and entertainment. The trailer for the film, which is set for release on 18 July, has received an expectedly positive response and is likely to ensure a strong box office opening. The success of Saunkan Saunkanay 2, which featured Mehta, Virk and Khaira in leading roles, has only added more momentum to Sarbala Ji.
Punjabi cinema’s power-packed star cast returns in ‘Sarbala Ji’
Pakistani stars deserve better than ‘tacky’ London events
One thing that rarely gets discussed is how Pakistani stars visiting London often end up at the tackiest venues for events and film promotions. Earlier this year, Hania Aamir – like many of her contemporaries – headlined an event at a banqueting hall that looked more like a disorganised wedding than a celebrity showcase. More recently, Mahira Khan and Humayun Saeed, in the capital to promote their film Love Guru, somehow found themselves in a horse-drawn carriage en route to a restaurant. Several Pakistani celebrities have also been on the receiving end of dubious awards from unverified individuals and organisations. Taken together, this suggests they may not fully realise their worth – and are being guided by all the wrong people.
Mahira Khan
‘Housefull 5’ proves Bollywood is trolling its own audience
The recently released Housefull 5 is a prime example of how some Bollywood producers appear to be trolling their own audiences. Instead of raising the bar after years of subpar Hindi cinema, this brainless comedy leans on a cast of has-been stars and is so shoddily made that it feels like the filmmakers no longer care about delivering quality. Far from making audiences laugh, the self-indulgent nonsense came across as mockery – as if the film were laughing at anyone foolish enough to spend money on a ticket.
‘Housefull 5’ proves Bollywood is trolling its own audience
Brilliant indie film ‘Chidiya’ suffers in Bollywood’s broken system
The mafia mentality in Bollywood has meant that great low-budget films rarely receive wide distribution, meaningful marketing or proper backing. While audiences are regularly subjected to poorly written blockbusters fronted by big-name stars, genuinely entertaining, story-driven films are often sidelined. That is why the new film Chidiya took nearly a decade to secure even a limited release. The modestly budgeted drama, about two young brothers who transform a junkyard into a makeshift badminton court, earned widespread acclaim on the international festival circuit and received strong reviews upon release. Yet it failed to reach the audience it deserved – a casualty of the broken state of Indian cinema. If Chidiya eventually finds its way onto a streaming platform, it will be well worth watching.
Brilliant indie film ‘Chidiya’
John Abraham keeps landing roles – but can he still deliver?
Headlining flop films as a solo hero has not stopped John Abraham from landing more Bollywood projects. The actor recently announced that he will star in a film based on the comic book Munkeeman, as well as a biopic inspired by the life of police officer Rakesh Maria. While Abraham can hardly be blamed for cashing in, the producers backing these ventures are certainly taking a risk – the star is clearly past his prime and no longer drawing significant audience attention.
John Abraham
Hina Khan’s wedding is a quiet symbol of unity in divisive times
The recent wedding of popular actress Hina Khan and her long-term partner Rocky Jaiswal carried a deeper meaning that many may have overlooked. At a time of rising communal division in India, this interfaith marriage between two high-profile individuals stood as a quiet but powerful symbol of unity. Hina also found her happily ever after following a difficult battle with cancer. The couple wore Manish Malhotra-designed outfits for their intimate ceremony and received warm wishes from well-wishers across the globe.
Hina Khan and her long-term partner Rocky Jaiswal
Shanaya Kapoor’s troubled debut raises red flags
It really does seem like newcomer Shanaya Kapoor is jinxed. After her initial film launch was shelved, she signed on for Aankhon Ki Gustaakhiyan opposite Vikrant Massey. Unfortunately for her, the teaser trailer for the romantic musical drama has generated very little buzz. She spends most of it wearing a blindfold in various scenes. As the daughter of flop actor Sanjay Kapoor, Shanaya may be heading towards a similarly underwhelming debut when the film releases on 11 July.
Shanaya Kapoor's troubled debut
Pakistani female influencers face dangerous realities
Social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok have opened up new pathways for many individuals in South Asia to earn substantial incomes. While content creators in India have largely thrived, female influencers in Pakistan continue to face threats from right-wing extremists and stalkers. This was tragically illustrated by the recent murder of 17-year-old social media influencer Sana Yousuf, who was shot dead by a man after she rejected him. The incident is a chilling reminder of the dangers faced by female creators in the country, and highlights the urgent need for stronger protection and support. Many continue to pursue their work but must remain extremely cautious.