From ‘Far Right’ to ‘Racist’: How Brand Management Killed Britain’s Discourse

From Keir Starmer’s “far right” swipe during a Southport tragedy speech, to the media’s silence over Palestine Action’s record arrests, Britain’s most loaded political labels have been turned into hollow branding tools. Overused, weaponised, and applied with blatant double standards, they’ve lost the power to warn — and left the public deaf to the dangers they were meant to expose.

It’s funny, in a bleak sort of way, how the most important words in UK politics are the ones we’ve bludgeoned into meaninglessness. Labels that once defined real danger now get tossed around like confetti — overused, misused, and stripped of weight.

Take “far right.” It’s been slapped on so many people for so many reasons it’s basically political polystyrene — light, disposable, impossible to recycle. Last year, Prime Minister Keir Starmer managed to drop it into a speech about the brutal murder of three young girls in Southport. A moment that should have been about grief, justice, and reassurance became a drive-by branding exercise. - I think this was the moment my contempt for the Prime Minister was cemented — but that’s another article.

It might be excusable if the label was only aimed at genuine extremists. Instead, it’s been turned on anyone who dares suggest immigration and border control might warrant a serious conversation. You can be at a residents’ meeting about overcrowded GP surgeries and leave wearing the political equivalent of a hazmat sticker.

Here’s the bind: it’s not working anymore. Stand outside migrant hotels in Canary Wharf or Epping and you’ll see why. This isn’t the angry skinhead stereotype — it’s pensioners, parents, young professionals. Yes, like any protest movement, bad actors will try to attach themselves. The difference? These protests have learned the power of PR. They police themselves, they police their message, and they keep them peaceful. The lack of violence means they can’t be easily ignored or dismissed.

Violence doesn’t make your case — it hands authorities the excuse they’re to clamp down harder.

Contrast that with how violence is covered elsewhere. When trouble flares at a Right-leaning protest, the violent scenes become the whole story.

When it happens at Left-leaning protests — say, during Black Lives Matter — it’s “just a minority,” and the cameras pan away. Look at the Pro-Palestine marches in London: antisemitic chants, a Metropolitan Police officer admitting he couldn’t guarantee the safety of a man wearing a kippa, officers standing idle while public property was vandalised and fireworks fired at them. All swept under the carpet or “contextualised” into irrelevance.

Meanwhile, a man was considered suspicious by the Met simply for carrying a copy of The Spectator.

This isn’t just hypocrisy — it’s a two-tier justice system. And it’s spreading, because the actual thugs, the people who really are dangerous to the public, are being ignored if they’re politically inconvenient to prosecute.

Labelling has always been a political tool, but the left has perfected it into an art form. Remember when everyone you disagreed with was literally Hitler? Godwin’s Law went from a punchline to a political strategy. Same with “racist” — once a word that could end a career, now so overused it might as well be printed on tea towels.

Everything was racist, so nothing was. The public became immune, and the people who genuinely deserve the label found cover in the noise.

The result? The public became immune, and the people who genuinely deserve the label found cover in the noise. Worse, they started wearing it as a badge of honour.

The catastrophising isn’t one-sided either. Climate change campaigners have been telling us the world is ending “in twelve years” for about three decades. Net Zero has been framed in such apocalyptic terms that most people now either panic-buy solar panels or tune out entirely.

Meanwhile, in the online right’s echo chambers, “revolution” talk is being ratcheted up like they’re auditioning for Les Misérables. But no one’s debating ideas — they’re just boxing people off with lazy labels. It’s politics by brand management.

The false binary is the worst of it: you must love or hate a person entirely, based on their politics, as if human beings can’t possibly hold contradictory views. We’ve stopped challenging ideas and started attacking the people holding them. Cancel culture hasn’t defeated anyone — it’s created martyrs. And the Trump-era habit of handing out playground nicknames to opponents? Congratulations, the online right has reinvented Year 7.

Labels matter. They give us identity, a sense of belonging. But people are complicated — or at least they used to be allowed to be. Sweeping generalisations have replaced the hard work of listening. Yes, there are bad actors in politics. They should be called out, challenged, and shoved into the light so the public can see them for what they are.

We’ve used language like a toddler with a permanent marker — reckless, messy, and impossible to undo.

Nothing good ever grows in the dark.

And if you want an example of naming power — look at Palestine Action. The largest single-day arrest count in modern UK protest history, all in support of a proscribed terrorist organisation. Not a single mainstream outlet called them “thugs.” Compare that to the Sarah Everard protests, when the same people screaming about the Conservatives “destroying the right to protest” are now wielding a sledgehammer against it.

Language matters. We’ve made words meaningless, turned politics into a branding war, and taught the public to stop listening. And when words lose their meaning, the people lose their power.

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Peter C. Barnes is a Westminster insider turned broadcaster and writer. Having seen politics from the inside, he now makes a career out of dismantling it in public — with an exasperated honesty that leaves a mark. A regular contributor and presenter across major outlets, he also runs his own YouTube series and a noted Substack. He doesn’t comment — he confronts, in a way that leaves you asking the right questions.