UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Monday pledged swift action toward far-right rioters who stirred unrest across the country in recent days.
What did PM Starmer say?
“Whatever the apparent motivation, this is not protest. It is pure violence, and we will not tolerate attacks on mosques or our Muslim communities,” Starmer said. “The full force of the law will be visited on all those who are identified as having taken part in these activities.”
The rioters have been influenced by false information that suggested a Muslim immigrant was behind a fatal stabbing targeting girls at a dance studio in the northwestern English seaside town of Southport on July 29. The 17-year-old suspect behind the stabbings was not Muslim but rather born in Wales to Rwandan parents.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Monday that social media companies should do more to stop inflammatory content online. He emphasised that “criminal law applies online as well as offline” and said online agitators will be met with “the full force of the law.”
The rioters attacked a hotel in northern England suspected of housing asylum seekers and clashed with police. Officers were injured over the weekend due to altercations with rioters amid reports of looting and vandalism.
Places that have seen unrest recently include Liverpool, Bristol and the Northern Ireland capital of Belfast, among others. British authorities have taken over 300 people into custody in less than a week after the stabbings in Southport.
PM Starmer said that a “standing army” of specialist police officers would be deployed in areas of the country that experience bouts of unrest.
Who is believed to be inciting the riots?
Several figures in British society are believed to have influenced the recent unrest. The most prominent is 41-year-old Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who goes by the name Tommy Robinson.
Yaxley-Lennon, a far-right anti-Muslim agitator, previously led the ultranationalist English Defence League social movement.
Yaxley-Lennon is accused of using his account on social media platform X to share misinformation about the stabbings and engage in fearmongering. Yaxley-Lennon has over 875,000 followers on X, formerly Twitter, and frequently posts about “Muslim mobs” in the UK.
Nigel Farage, the leader of the right-wing populist Reform UK party, has also been criticized amid the riots. Farage has questioned the British government’s claim that the stabbings were “not terror-related” and has been accused of sowing anti-immigration sentiment after the Southport attacks.
