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Historical racial prejudice is returning to UK politics, and it creates very scared, the Prime Minister emphasized, cautioning that divisive hard-right politics was “splitting the UK”.

Addressing Racist Language and Harmful Strategies

In conversation to GP and TV personality Amir Khan, the prime minister pointed to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK of overseeing the revival to discriminatory and divisive politics “that frankly I thought we had dealt with decades ago”.

In the interview, broadcast on a popular morning program this week, the PM also gave a clear indication that the two-child benefit cap might be scrapped in the budget in the coming weeks.

Promise to Combat Poverty Among Children

When questioned whether he planned to eliminate the limit, as noted by advocacy groups is a major cause of poverty for children in the UK, Starmer responded: “Let me be perfectly clear I will strive to lower poverty rates for kids.”

He listed steps the government has already launched such as free school meals, morning meal programs, and childcare but added: “Further action is necessary, and I can look you in the eye that I am personally committed on reducing child poverty.”

When pressed on whether his comments indicated he intended to remove the two-child limit, he stated “It would be misleading to claim we are going to drive down poverty among children if I wasn’t clear that we will be taking a number of measures for that purpose”.

Clear Signals from Rachel Reeves

Rachel Reeves, provided a similarly clear signal on Monday stating to BBC Radio 5 Live that ultimately, no child should suffer due to their family’s financial situation”.

Ministers are understood to be preparing to remove the cap completely, having originally looked at gradual removal for bigger households or wealthier families. An economic thinktank projects this would cost roughly £3.5 billion in the coming years.

Ideological Split and National Renewal

In the interview, Starmer explained the ideological split currently in Britain existed between the government’s vision for renewal versus “the toxic division of Reform” and others on the right that are “tearing our country apart”.

“Certain language we’re hearing – racist rhetoric, polarizing language – which I believed we had dealt with long ago is coming back into politics leaving people very scared,” he said.

“We have to stand up such discrimination, that divisiveness, and we have to proudly say that to be British involves caring for others, is to be reasonable, entails tolerance and compassionate, and this is our pride.”

Reflecting Concerns from the Health Secretary

Starmer echoed language used by Wes Streeting, who warned earlier this month how a disturbing form of discrimination reminiscent of past decades was now alarmingly frequent once more with healthcare workers were primary targets of it.

Streeting said incidents of both verbal and physical attacks based on people’s skin colour now happened so often making it “socially acceptable to be racist”.

“We’ve got to call time to discrimination in this country and we need to place that ugly racist sentiment that’s found expression in our country where it belongs and reestablish an environment across Britain where racism is unacceptable to hold racist views,” the Health Secretary said.

Defining Choice for the Public

The Prime Minister spoke during a major political gathering in September to draw clear divisions between himself and Farage, saying that the public confronted a “defining choice”.

The prime minister said he was engaged in a “fight for the soul of our country”, noting although the public had “reasonable” concerns about illegal migration, there was an ethical boundary which some politicians had crossed.

The PM pledged to “fight” anyone who argued that people who were not white could not be English or British and that families residing in the UK for generations must be removed, saying people promoting such views constituted “an enemy of national renewal”.

“If you incite racial attacks and hostility, that is not expressing concern: it is illegal. This party – this great party – is proud of our flags, yet if they are painted alongside graffiti, targeting a business owner to leave the country, that is not patriotism; that is pure discrimination,” he informed supporters.