The Left’s opponents do not deserve to be labelled as ‘far-Right’ extremists

If Susan Hall is “far-Right”, how are the Left now describing neo-Nazis? The Tory candidate for London mayor was repeatedly smeared during the election campaign.

It started with her rival Sadiq Khan likening the hair salon owner, 69, to Donald Trump, before going on to suggest that “some of the things [Susan Hall] has said and done are racist”.
He backed up the accusation by citing examples including her “liking Enoch Powell”, and “amplifying a rainbow swastika”, as well as suggesting that the “black community has a problem with crime” and advocating more stop and search.

The reality was rather different. Hall liked a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, which stupidly suggested Powell should be included in a set of playing cards featuring great British prime ministers. And she responded to a rainbow swastika image, idiotically posted by the Left’s other bête noire, Laurence Fox, with a facepalm emoji.

The mother of two has also questioned whether the Notting Hill carnival should be relocated in the interests of public safety, and liked a post on X describing Khan as “the nipple-high mayor of Londonistan”.

While some may question the wisdom of all this online activity, shadow health secretary Wes Streeting’s suggestion that “a win for Susan Hall and the Conservatives is a win for racists, white supremacists and Islamophobes the world over,” was an insult to the electorate.

The casualisation of terms like “far-Right” and “alt-Right” is of course designed to move the centre ground further to the Left by making mainstream views, ones often held by the majority of the population, appear extremist.

During a public meeting in Ealing last year, Khan even suggested that some of those who opposed his deeply unpopular Ulez (Ultra Low Emission Zone) were a “part of the far-Right”, adding: “Some are Covid deniers, some are vaccine deniers and some are Tories.”

Perish the thought that they might be opposed to the London Mayor and his self-indulgent policies because they find him to be the intolerant one, engaging in precisely the “dangerous and divisive gutter politics” Streeting accused Hall of promoting. Those who voted against Khan because they think he’s completely useless are certainly “right” – just not in Labour’s sense of the word.