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Historical racism has come back within British politics, and it creates very scared, the Prime Minister warned, cautioning how divisive hard-right politics are “tearing our country apart”.

Tackling Discriminatory Language and Divisive Politics

Speaking to doctor and media figure Amir Khan, the prime minister accused Nigel Farage’s Reform UK of overseeing the revival to discriminatory and divisive political discourse which many believed was resolved long ago”.

During the discussion, which aired on a popular morning program this week, the PM provided his strongest signal suggesting the two-child benefit cap might be scrapped in the budget later this month.

Promise to Combat Poverty Among Children

Asked whether he planned to eliminate this restriction, as noted by advocacy groups is a major cause of poverty for children across Britain, Starmer said: “I want to state unequivocally I am committed to lower poverty rates for kids.”

He outlined measures ministers have already introduced including no-cost school lunches, morning meal programs, and child care support and emphasized: “We need to do more than that, and I can look you in the eye that I will personally focus to driving down childhood poverty.”

Pressed on whether his comments indicated he would lift the two-child limit, Starmer stated “I would not say we are going to drive down poverty among children unless I was certain that we will be taking several steps in order to do so”.

Clear Signals from the Chancellor

The Chancellor, provided an equally strong hint on Monday stating to a national radio station that ultimately, no child should suffer because their parents don’t have very much money”.

Government officials are understood to be preparing to remove the cap completely, having originally looked at phasing it out either for very large families or richer ones. An economic thinktank projects this would cost roughly £3.5 billion by 2029-30.

Ideological Split and National Renewal

During the discussion, the Prime Minister said the political divide currently in Britain was between the government’s vision for renewal and “the toxic division of Reform” and other right-wing groups who were “splitting the UK”.

“Some of the rhetoric being used – discriminatory talk, polarizing language – that frankly I thought had been addressed decades ago is coming back into politics leaving people very scared,” he said.

“We must confront such discrimination, that division, and we have to proudly say that to be British is to have concern for others, requires rationality, entails tolerance and kindness, which we value deeply.”

Reflecting Concerns from the Health Secretary

The prime minister echoed sentiments used by the Health Secretary, who warned recently how a disturbing form of discrimination reminiscent of past decades was now alarmingly frequent again with NHS staff were bearing the brunt of this trend.

The health secretary noted incidents of both verbal and physical attacks based on people’s skin colour had become so frequent that it had become “acceptable to express racism”.

“It is time to put a stop on racism across the UK and we’ve got to put such harmful attitudes that has emerged in our country where it belongs and reestablish a climate across Britain where racism is unacceptable to hold racist views,” the Health Secretary said.

Defining Choice for Voters

Starmer used his speech at the Labour party conference this autumn to draw political battle lines with his political opponents, saying that the public faced a “defining choice”.

He said he was engaged in a struggle for the nation’s identity, noting although voters expressed valid worries about illegal migration, there was “a moral line” that Farage and others had overstepped.

The PM pledged to “fight” anyone claiming that people who were not white did not belong and that households who had lived in the UK for generations must be removed, saying people promoting such views were “against national unity”.

“Encouraging racist violence and hatred, that goes beyond concern: it’s criminal. This party – this great party – is proud of our flags, but if they are displayed alongside graffiti, telling a Chinese takeaway owner to leave the country, that’s not pride; that is pure discrimination,” he told supporters.