Violent UK riots pose challenge to Keir Starmer’s new government

London: When Labour’s Keir Starmer was elected as prime minister last month, he planned to tackle some of the long-term issues bedeviling Britain. His first priorities included reviving a stagnant economy and repairing the struggling National Health Service.

Now, he faces a more immediate and unexpected problem, one that is proving to be his government’s first major domestic test. England and Northern Ireland have been rocked by a week of anti-immigrant riots that have gripped cities and towns and escalated over the weekend. The riots came in the wake of a knife attack on a children’s dance class in the town of Southport, near Liverpool, that left three young girls dead, and the subsequent violence was driven by disinformation about the identity of the attacker.

He was not, as some claimed, an asylum-seeker, but that made little difference as the misinformation ricocheted online, from private messaging channels to social media platforms like X. He was born and raised in Britain and, according to the BBC, his parents are from Rwanda.

Suddenly, Starmer and his government found themselves fighting a two-pronged battle, online and in the streets where rioters rampaged in more than 15 towns and cities, injuring dozens of police officers, looting businesses, targeting mosques and setting fires outside a hotel that housed asylum-seekers.

So far, Starmer, a former chief prosecutor, has taken a law-and-order approach, vowing to crack down on perpetrators and bring charges swiftly, as well as putting more police on the streets and providing additional security personnel to Muslim communities.

And, so far, he has mostly avoided attacks from his political opponents, who have moved to unite in their opposition to the wanton violence. Still, Starmer faces challenges in dealing with the disorder that has badly shaken communities, partly, analysts say, because he inherited an overwhelmed criminal justice system.

The government has said it would fast-track hearings for those charged in connection to the riots, but the prison system was at full capacity even before the violence began. The situation was so bad that the new government had already introduced emergency early-release measures for nonviolent offenders.

Diminished trust in policing nationally along with cuts to community policing have also made it harder for officers to deal with disorder. And courts were already overwhelmed by their caseloads with a serious backlog at all levels of the justice system even before the new slew of arrests since the violence started.

“There are really serious challenges — all the way from policing through the criminal courts to prisons and probation,” said Cassia Rowland, a senior researcher at the Institute for Government, a British think tank.

She added that it is unclear whether the limit on prison spaces will be exceeded before the government is finished cracking down on rioters, and if so, whether officials will be forced to let some people go quickly.

“The government has made quite clear their ambitions to tackle some of these longer-term problems,” Rowland said. “But it will take time, which makes this really difficult to deal with in the immediate term.”

Still, the government has vowed a harsh and swift crackdown on what Starmer called “far-right thuggery.” Nearly 400 people have been arrested so far, but he and the police say they will track down others they know were involved in the riots and fomenting hate online, and arrest them.

Speaking after an emergency meeting Monday with government ministers, police representatives, civil servants, and representatives from the police and intelligence services, Starmer announced a plan for a “standing army” of specialist police officers to deal with the disorder.

“This is not protest, it is pure violence, and we will not tolerate attacks on mosques or our Muslim communities,” he said of the riots. “The full force of the law will be visited on those who have been identified as having taken part in these activities.”

Mainstream politicians — even those who believe that illegal immigration is a major problem — have remained united in their condemnation of the violence, with members of the previous Conservative government voicing unqualified support for a firm response to the riots. Rishi Sunak, the former prime minister and current leader of the Conservatives, who pushed a much-criticised plan to ship asylum-seekers to Rwanda, called out the “violent, criminal behavior that has no place in our society.”

Priti Patel, a former Conservative Home Secretary who introduced some of the country’s most stringent laws on asylum-seekers, said in a letter to the current home secretary that “now is a moment for national reflection and solidarity — to pull back from the wave of violence we have seen, to call it out for what it is,” and “for Parliament to speak with one voice in condemnation.”

Even tabloid newspapers that typically take aim at the Labour government instead focused more on the mayhem.

Some Conservatives, Patel included, have also urged Starmer to recall Parliament from summer recess so that lawmakers can have more of a say in the response. And James Cleverly, a Conservative lawmaker and former home secretary, told British news outlets the government was “slow off the mark” in dealing with the riots.

But for the most part, any criticism has been indirect and muted, save for a few detractors like Nigel Farage, the leader of the populist right-wing party Reform UK. Last week Farage, newly elected to Parliament, put out a video questioning official information about the attacker, which some said gave air to the rioters’ beliefs. On Monday, he did condemn the violence, but then criticised what he said were Starmer’s “faltering attempts” to address it.

In the longer term, analysts say that the government will be tasked not just with law and order, but with how to promote community cohesion in a society that feels increasingly divided.

“The government’s focus today, this week, will be the visibility of policing and showing that they’ve got control of the streets,” said Sunder Katwala, the director of British Future, a nonprofit that researches public attitudes on immigration and identity. “And using the court systems to communicate clearly that people are going to get prosecuted.”

But he said it should then use the riots as an opportunity to begin to heal divisions.

For the last 25 years, under successive administrations, there have been discussions about having a strategy for promoting cohesion and integration in Britain, he said, but for a long time the focus was on combating Muslim extremism and radicalization, especially in the wake of terror attacks in the United States and Britain.

Luke Tryl, the UK director for More in Common, a nonprofit group that studies political attitudes, said it is important to distinguish between some British people’s vocal frustration with immigration and the violence the rioters brought to communities.

“That is very separate to what we are seeing tonight,” Tryl told BBC Newsnight on Saturday as fires burned in several cities.

Starmer directed part of his statement to the nation Sunday to the communities who had felt the brunt of the violence.

“To those who feel targeted because of the color of your skin, or your faith: I know how frightening this must be,” he said, adding that the violent mobs do not represent the country. “And we will bring them to justice.