Keir Starmer to hold emergency meeting after riots intensify
Prime minister responds after days of violence and looting across the UK by anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim groups
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Prime Minister Keir Starmer will hold an emergency meeting with police chiefs on Monday after days of violent anti-immigration protests intensified, with buildings and vehicles torched and hotels holding asylum seekers targeted.
Riots have erupted across towns and cities in the past week, with 420 people arrested so far, after three girls were killed in a knife attack in Southport, Merseyside.
The murders were seized upon by anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim groups as misinformation spread online that the suspected attacker was a radical Islamist who had just arrived in Britain. Police have said the suspect was born in Britain and are not treating it as a terrorist incident.
Home secretary Yvette Cooper said rioters had felt “emboldened by this moment to stir up racial hatred”, with bricks thrown at police officers, shops looted and mosques and Asian-owned businesses attacked.
Over the weekend riots broke out in Liverpool, Bristol, Tamworth, Middlesbrough and Belfast, with crowds largely made up of young men wearing balaclavas and draped in British flags hurling rocks and shouting “stop the boats”, a reference to migrants arriving on the south coast in recent years.
In Rotherham, South Yorkshire, protesters sought to break into a hotel that housed asylum seekers.
Police have blamed online disinformation, amplified by high-profile figures, including Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who led the anti-Islam English Defence League, and Elon Musk, the owner of X.
Cooper told broadcasters that tensions had been amplified and inflamed online, and that the government would be pursuing the issue with social media companies.
“I think what you’ve seen is that networks of different individuals and groups have been trying to fan the flames,” she told Sky News.
While she said people had views and concerns about issues such as immigration, she blamed extremist, racist groups for the violence.
“Reasonable people who have all those sorts of views and concerns do not pick up bricks and throw them at the police,” she said.
In a televised address on Sunday, Starmer responded to the latest violence by saying, “I utterly condemn the far-right thuggery we have seen this weekend.
“Be in no doubt: those who have participated in this violence will face the full force of the law.
“The police will be making arrests. Individuals will be held on remand. Charges will follow. And convictions will follow.”
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