Donald Trump emboldened UK racists, says Labour minister

Donald Trump’s “vitriol” helped make racism in the U.K. more acceptable, according to a British government minister.

Speaking at the Labour party’s annual conference in Liverpool on Monday night, Home Office Minister Angela Eagle listed the former U.S. president among those who had made “anti-immigrant rhetoric” mainstream in the West.

In comments first reported by the Guardian, Eagle said it was difficult for new immigrants to “rise above the constant drumbeat of toxic anti-immigration, anti-immigrant rhetoric that has become emboldened, not only in Britain but across the western countries.”

“I mean, Trump does the same,” she said. “If you look at some of the memes that he’s using with the wall stuff at the moment, it’s astonishing, quite the level of vitriol that it has created.”

The remarks about Trump come as the British government tries to smooth relations with the Republican presidential nominee. Foreign Secretary David Lammy has in the past strongly criticized Trump, but has been markedly more conciliatory as the U.S. election looms.

Before becoming Prime Minister, Keir Starmer said a Labour government would “work with whoever” the American people chose in November.

Eagle also took direct aim at the U.K. Conservatives, accusing the party of using “toxic” language to fend off the threat of Nigel Farage’s right-wing Reform UK.

“We had a discourse as the right of the Conservative party got more and more obsessed with what Reform was doing that was very toxic indeed, othering asylum seekers, othering human beings in general, and creating a space, I think, for overt racism on our streets,” she said.