Strangers & Neighbours

Despite Keir Starmer’s “island of strangers” and Reform UK candidates telling voters it “takes more than a piece of paper to make somebody British”, Britain remains a remarkably diverse but cohesive society. So why are government ministers making statements on immigration that would have been considered far-right a decade ago?

Why is the asylum system still used as a political theatre of cruelty while communities bear the cost of a decade of austerity, closed services, and real wages below 2008 levels in nearly two-thirds of UK local authorities?

Despite the institutionalisation of Islamophobia as policy, the racialisation of crime, the far right’s offer of belonging to people that mainstream politics abandoned, Byline Times covers the on the ground successes of actual communities.