WITH organised lying and hypocrisy existing on an industrial scale in politics how can the black community, or anyone else, trust politicians to tackle the current surge of racism?

The simple answer is that we can’t. The solution is in our own hands.

Too many politicians feel the urge to drape themselves in a flag of phoney patriotism. They portray this as a sign that they can be trusted and believed even when the evidence is crystal clear that they are lying through their teeth.

Unfortunately these people who are economical with the truth are not alone in falsely conflating racism with immigration when in fact they know all too well that they are simply not the same thing.

This is something that the left also needs to guard against as we are also prone to it on occasion but it is certainly a trait among the pound-shop patriots who use immigration as a code for race baiting.

Are we really supposed to believe the Keir Starmer who came to the head of his party promising a whole set of policies that are dropped within a nanosecond of coming to power?

The same person who moved heaven and earth to remove and vilify the architect of those policies — someone he once called friend?

Starmer who fails to deal with anti-black racism within his own party but who can’t wait for the photo opportunity to kneel to try to convince us that black lives really do matter to him?

A person who when given the opportunity to call out the racist thugs over recent days for what they are utterly fails to do so and seems unable to utter the word Islamophobia in a way that he never hesitates to with anti-semitism.

I am certain that it is not just me that sees Nigel Farage draping himself in the Union Jack having set up a party as a business so he can make money, spouting off racist tropes through the platforms continually provided him by the corporate media so he can send signals which leaves racists feeling they have permission to attack immigrants.

Farage should be disciplined by the powers that be in Parliament and suspended from the House without pay.

But other politicians and the corporate media should also stop treating him as if he were something more important than the bigot that he is.

Much like President Emmanuel Macron in France who, it is alleged, was counting on a far-right victory in the recent National Assembly elections so the country would grow in its distaste for them. This all to give his neoliberal project a third term in the presidency.

If the normally reliable sources that put this proposition forward are correct then it shows that Macron has no difficulty in exposing the black and the immigrant communities in France to the worst racist excesses of a National Rally government.

He should no longer be labelled as some kind of centrist but as the racist enabler that he clearly has no problem in being.

Then of course there is the orange-coloured candidate for the US presidency Donald Trump who sits in front of a room full of black journalists and tells them that he was the best president for black people since Abraham Lincoln.

The same person who, as he has done before, questions just how black his opponent actually is — more than a lie, it is the embodiment of racism.

There are so many examples of his dissembling that space doesn’t allow me to capture here but he is another who will gladly play the race card if he believes it will enhance his electoral prospects.

I paint this picture because it is part of a pattern of political behaviour that cares not a jot for the black community or immigrants. The only care from these politicians is for power.

These politicians, caring only for that, are prepared to lie shamelessly to staggering degrees that they even deny when presented on screen with the evidence to the contrary.

So we simply cannot trust any of these right-wing (mis)leaders to do anything to tackle the heightened racial hatred that we are now experiencing, because all of them feel — at one level — that they benefit from it or — on another level — that it won’t hurt them.

I think we can only really trust each other as working-class people to try to shift those taken in by these charlatans so that they realise there is another way and that class unity benefits everyone.

The current rise in racist attacks has its roots in British imperialism and the notion that far too many white people have that they are superior to black people simply because of the colour of their skin.

I’ve lived with this for more than three score years of being told I’m inferior and having the onus placed on me to prove otherwise. Sadly it’s proved virtually impossible to do what my parents once told me, which is to be twice as good as anyone else just to be regarded as the same.

This far too often leads to you being seen as “uppity” and going well beyond your station.

I know for sure that my experience is no different to most other black people I know and this, sadly, also has echoes within the labour and trade union movement.

But much more than the level of the individual it goes to the permission this alleged superiority gives to bomb and kill anyone from the “darker nations” at will that the “First World” desires because they are considered to be, at best, “only” animals with next to no feelings or meaning.

That is why we have to look at the actions of the racist thugs across the country in recent times as something wider than it is often portrayed.

To fail to understand the deep roots of racism means we are less well equipped to tackle the issues on anything more than in the short term and on a superficial basis.

This is not an excuse for left activists to put their heads in the clouds and not deal with the everyday challenges that face black and immigrant communities.

The left must be prepared to mobilise and to stand by any communities that come under attack whether in communities or at work.

But understanding the roots of racism gives us an opportunity to bring about meaningful change.

This means that we must expose the liars and anyone else that creates the conditions for disunity among the working class.

Only working-class unity in the end will bring about real change.

But the liars and the hypocrites must be unfailingly exposed as they continue to jump on the moving train of imperialism, militarism and austerity — all of which divide the working class into a zero sum game that suggests one group is benefiting at the expense of another.

We must expose those who cling on to notions of superiority and British exceptionalism as they claim the need for continued austerity.

As the late great Howard Zinn once said: “You can’t be neutral on a moving train.”

This means that we must be prepared to sweep aside those politicians who continue to participate in the lies that give fuel to the racist attacks.

We must never for a moment trust these people to do the right thing. They will not.

So we should be brave and bold enough to understand that the solution to the current racist thuggery is not in their hands but rests solely with the working class.