TO STATE the obvious, we live in confusing times. When thousands of us marched on the streets of London on Saturday to counter the invasion of fascist Tommy Robinson and his racist followers, we heard them excoriate Keir Starmer in language perhaps more crude than our own, but not much more so.

Suddenly, we found ourselves on uncomfortable common ground. Starmer and his government have orchestrated the great betrayal of the working class. We can all agree on that. In most cases, we all want at least some of the same things — the right to affordable housing, decent-paying jobs and access to healthcare. Some of us call that socialism.

After that, our paths diverge dramatically.

Meanwhile, Starmer keeps digging his political grave. Perhaps Saturday was a reminder that purging the left and pandering to the right hasn’t paid off. His plane has lost both wings and is about to crash.

John McDonnell, one of several MPs still suspended from the Labour Party, commended the choice of the assembled marchers to turn out and show resistance to the racists. Speaking in Russell Square before the march set off, he urged Starmer to do the same.

“I say to Starmer, you have to make that choice. You either stand with us, or you’ll be against us. And I say also, if you make that choice not to support us, not to join us in the meetings, in the demonstrations, well, maybe it’s time for you to go.”

We have stood up to racists and fascists on our streets before, of course, and several speakers recalled that resistance, particularly in London’s East End. There was solidarity then, forged from a common cause to defend the rights of the working class, whoever they were.

The Morning Star’s Calvin Tucker reminded the audience how Stepney communist Phil Piratin led a campaign in the 1930s to stop tenant evictions, insisting that renters who supported the British Union of Fascists (BUF) also be protected.

After the success of the campaign, tenants who had been BUF members came over to the left. The understanding Piratin’s inclusivity had helped instil was that it was the landlords and the bosses who were the enemy, not each other.

“We are diverse, we are multicultural, we are multiracial, we are of all faiths and none and from all around the world,” said another suspended Labour MP, Apsana Begum, whose constituency of Poplar and Limehouse is in London’s East End. “We will not allow politicians of any party to allow any of our diverse communities to continue to be scapegoated.”

Asad Rehman, chief executive of Friends of the Earth, recalled the struggles he endured in his hometown of Burnley against earlier iterations of the current hate groups. “We had to simply fight for the right to be able to live free from attack from the National Front, who were fire-bombing our homes and terrorising us on the streets,” he said.

That experience taught him two lessons. “The first is when politicians normalise racism, we in black and brown communities always pay the price with blood on the streets,” he said. “And the second is that the fight for racial justice, for economic justice and for climate justice is one and the same. They are the fight for the right to live with dignity, and it’s a fight that we can only win when we win it together.”

As we marched toward Whitehall, that coming together began to manifest, but not in the way Rehman and other speakers still hope to see, as we found ourselves suddenly intermingled with the opposing side. As people peeled off from both marches, any buffer zone between us was no longer enforceable.

Back in Russell Square, Tucker had exhorted us to “challenge the racist narratives wherever we find them, but don’t make enemies of ordinary people when we do it.” Now in Trafalgar Square, our side was chanting, “Nazi scum, off our streets!”

At times, we felt dangerously close together. At others, we stood side by side, watching the parallel parades file past. Groups of men draped in Union Jack flags and grasping beer cans strutted and jeered on the pavement as we marched past. Later, those cans began to fly through the air, but aimed at the police, not at us, the true colours of the racist mob finally showing, the ones that have nothing whatever to do with flags.

Meanwhile, back in Whitehall, the sounds of excavations can still be heard as Starmer continues to bury the Labour Party along with his lamentable career.

In the space of a few days he has hosted the Israeli president; described the loss felt by the family of assassinated far-right hate-monger Charlie Kirk as “heartbreaking,” but not the losses felt by hundreds of thousands of families in Gaza; and heaped praise on sacked ambassador to the US, Peter Mandelson, while expecting us to believe he was unaware of Mandelson’s repugnantly cosy relationship with sleazy sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

How much deeper can Starmer go? US President Donald Trump will be here in a few days. The diggers are at the ready at Number 10.

Linda Pentz Gunter is a writer based in Takoma Park, Maryland, currently covering events in London.