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Decades-old racial prejudice has come back within UK politics, which creates very scared, Keir Starmer has stated, alerting that divisive hard-right political tactics was “tearing our country apart”.

Confronting Discriminatory Language and Harmful Politics

Speaking to doctor and media figure Amir Khan, the prime minister accused the Reform UK party for enabling the revival of racist and divisive politics “that frankly I thought we had dealt with long ago”.

In the interview, which aired on a popular morning program this week, the PM also gave a clear indication suggesting the two-child benefit cap would be lifted during the upcoming fiscal announcement in the coming weeks.

Commitment to Combat Child Poverty

Asked whether he would scrap the limit, which charities have said is a major cause of poverty for children across Britain, the Prime Minister said: “I want to state unequivocally I will strive to drive child poverty down.”

He listed steps ministers have already introduced such as no-cost school lunches, breakfast clubs, and childcare and emphasized: “We must go beyond these efforts, and I can look you in the eye that I am personally committed to driving down child poverty.”

Pressed about if his remarks indicated he intended to remove the two-child cap, Starmer stated “It would be misleading to claim we plan to reduce poverty among children unless I was certain that we will be taking a number of measures for that purpose”.

Strong Indications from the Chancellor

The Chancellor, provided an equally strong hint earlier this week stating to BBC Radio 5 Live that “in the end, a child should not be penalised due to their family’s financial situation”.

Ministers are getting ready to lift the limit entirely, having originally looked at ways to taper it either for very large families or richer ones. An economic thinktank projects the expense would be about £3.5bn by 2029-30.

Ideological Split and Country’s Revival

In the interview, Starmer said the ideological split in the UK now existed between the government’s vision for renewal versus “the toxic division of Reform” and other right-wing groups who were “tearing our country apart”.

“Some of the rhetoric being used – racist rhetoric, divisive rhetoric – which I believed had been addressed decades ago has reemerged in political debate and citizens are very scared,” he said.

“We have to stand up such discrimination, that divisiveness, and declare confidently that British identity involves caring for others, is to be reasonable, is to be tolerant and kindness, and we’re proud of that.”

Echoing Concerns from the Health Secretary

Starmer mirrored language used by the Health Secretary, who cautioned earlier this month that a disturbing form of discrimination similar to past decades was now worryingly commonplace once more with NHS staff were facing the worst of this trend.

The health secretary noted incidents of verbal and physical abuse targeting individuals due to race had become so frequent that it had become “acceptable to express racism”.

“We’ve got to call time on racism across the UK and we need to place that ugly racist sentiment that’s found expression nationally where it belongs and once again create a climate in this country that rejects racism to hold racist views,” the Health Secretary stated.

Critical Decision for Voters

The Prime Minister used his speech at the Labour party conference this autumn to outline clear divisions between himself and Farage, saying that voters confronted a “defining choice”.

The prime minister explained he was involved in a “fight for the soul of our country”, and argued that while voters had “reasonable” concerns regarding unauthorized immigration, there was an ethical boundary which some politicians had overstepped.

The PM vowed to challenge anyone who argued that people who were not white were not truly British and that families residing in Britain for years must be removed, saying people promoting such views constituted “an enemy of national renewal”.

“If you incite racial attacks and hostility, that goes beyond concern: it’s criminal. Our political movement values national symbols, but if they are displayed alongside graffiti, telling a Chinese takeaway owner to ‘go home’, that is not patriotism; that is pure discrimination,” he informed supporters.