We have an opposition that is scared of its electorate, incapable of holding her to account properly for fear of alienating the very voters they're chasing. So whilst no, it doesn't create racism itself, Labour's lurch to the right gives Braverman and her ilk a credibility that they would never have had before.
The thing with her is that there isn't in fact a large market for what she's selling - the Tories were not this right wing when people voted for them in 2019 - no matter how hard to try and kid everyone that three failed PMs in a term is perfectly normal governmental practice.
Standard theories of voting would suggest that Starmer's strategy, in tacking right, is to hand the Tories as crushing a defeat as possible. The usual response to such a defeat is for a political party to purge the extremists from positions of responsibility and change course, because they conclude that present leadership and leadership strategy is/was the problem.
I would argue that the process by which Braverman and her ilk have gained credibility is through control of the bully pulpit, and the media's insistence more broadly on taking the incumbent government seriously and propagating its message. I don't think Starmer's strategy has much to do with it. There's no sense in fire-eating for the sake of fire-eating. Hardly anyone pays attention to what political leaders actually say anyway. Find me an American that reads the Congressional Record. I guarantee you said American is an academic doing research on political positions. No one else does this.
I don't think you have a Trump problem on your hands. Boris is gone in disgrace, and the Tories are polling at 25%. We have some severe structural problems that opened the door for both Trump and the extreme right. I'm aware that some gerrymandering has gone on over there, but you have much better institutional protections than we do. Things would have to change in big ways for the Tories not to get thrashed in a year's time, and their opinion polling trend is down, down, down. Running up the score as hard as you can is wise. It will demonstrate the degree to which the country rejected the present course.
I understand why you're upset. You see an opportunity to push real change through, due to the Tories' historic unpopularity. Here's the problem. You lose in five years' time after the Tories regroup, and they roll it all right back. Slow walking change works better. Take the low-hanging fruit, get people to see that those changes work, propose further changes. That's how Ted Kennedy operated, and how you kill the Tories for a good long while.
