In a BBC interview, the Labour Party Leader, Sir Keir Starmer, sought to distance himself from @UKBLM, saying he took the knee to support the wider anti-racism movement, rather than this organisation. He stressed: ‘Nobody should be saying anything about defunding the police.’ Black Lives Matter UK responded via Twitter, saying that when he was Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Keir was ‘a cop in an expensive suit’. As the vehemence of that statement perhaps suggests, many of the organisation’s key players hail from the now marginalised Corbynite wing of Labour – and have often dabbled in party politics. On the eve of the last election, for example, @UKBLM publicised a ‘f*** Boris’ party at a nightclub in east London.
It has also called for a ‘ban’ on austerity, calling it a ‘neoliberal, racist, classist, sexist government measure which plunges our society into further deprivation’. In a mission statement published on Facebook, which at times reads like a parody, it claims to exist to advance a shopping list of sometimes obscure causes, saying it campaigns against: ‘Homophobia, lesbophobia, biphobia, queerphobia, transphobia, sexism, misogyny, misogynoir, enbyphobia, ableism, racism, anti-Blackness, islamophobia, whorephobia, ageism, fatphobia, eugenics, discrimination, stereotypes, respectability politics, stigmatisation of HIV, stigmatisation of addiction.’