It truly is troubling just how many Brits, on both sides of the political divide, are willing to burn their cities down at the drop of a hat.
It truly is troubling just how many Brits, on both sides of the political divide, are willing to burn their cities down at the drop of a hat.
O n July 30, a man walked into a children’s dance class and promptly began to stab the kids and the adults who attempted to stop him. Three children died, and another eight children and two adults were injured.
Because the suspect was still a week away from turning 18, his name was initially not disclosed to the public. The only thing known early on about him was that he was black, and once the police refused to provide more information, speculation took hold and bad actors falsely claimed that the U.K. had just suffered an Islamist terrorist attack that the authorities were covering up.
After a judge issued an exemption, the suspect’s identity was subsequently released. He is Axel Rudakubana, born in Wales to Rwandan parents. Neither Rudakubana nor his family are Muslim; in fact, they are well-known for volunteering with their local church. We do not know his motive, but it is highly unlikely that this was a terrorist attack. Rudakubana is on the autism spectrum, and understanding what reasoning led him to commit his atrocity may prove difficult.
Regardless, by the time his name was made public, it was too late. Riots had already broken out across England and Northern Ireland, and they are at the time of this writing still ongoing. Almost 600 rioters have been arrested, and more than 130 police officers have been injured. Police stations and mosques have been burned down, as have hotels that the government uses to house asylum seekers.
Some American right-wingers have rushed to defend the rioters, arguing that they are merely protecting their country from foreign enemies. This line of thought is a dead end. Rioting is not and has never been a legitimate form of protest in a democratic country. This was true during the 2020 BLM riots, and it is just as true now.
Those claiming that British politicians have given their constituents no choice but to turn to violence are showing a glaring ignorance of British politics: Britain is not an absolute monarchy, but a democratic nation that held its last election just a month ago, when Labour leader Keir Starmer won a massive majority while the conservative Tories suffered the worst defeat in their 190-year history.
Ironically, many of the rioters likely contributed to this outcome: The Reform UK party, led by Nigel Farage, won over 14 percent of the vote nationally, greater than Labour’s margin of victory. By splitting the right-wing vote, Farage and his supporters ensured not only a Labour government, but a Labour government with a majority large enough that it is unlikely to lose a single vote in Parliament during the next five years. On Election Night, Reform UK supporters celebrated as much as or more than Labour over the defeat of what they saw as the milquetoast, insufficiently right-wing conservatives.
Now, it appears the hangover is here, as opponents of high migration reckon with the reality that the rest of this decade will be dominated by a Labour Party that has no serious intention of controlling the border. One of Keir Starmer’s very first acts as prime minister was to cancel the Rwanda scheme, which was intended to deter asylum seekers from coming to the U.K. The schadenfreude that many felt over kicking the one-nation Tories out of government is rapidly being replaced by a sense of horror at the government that has replaced them.
This feeling is exacerbated by the leadership vacuum on the right. Rishi Sunak announced his resignation on Election Night, but the Conservative Party deliberately chose to move slowly with the process of replacing him as leader. This made sense given the shellacking the party had just received and the need for an in-depth internal conversation about where it was headed. Yet, the ongoing leadership contest means no one currently speaks for and to the Right.
On the left, many are now doing everything they can to make sure this crisis does not go to waste. Ludicrously, some suggested Nigel Farage should be held criminally liable for the riots, and #arrestfarage and #faragesriots have trended on social media. It is as yet unclear what Farage has supposedly done to incite the riots, other than criticizing the migration policies of Labour and the Tories. To suggest that criticizing immigration is the same as inciting thugs to burn down mosques and police stations is as ridiculous as it is dangerous. To his credit, Farage has instead been clear in his condemnation of the riots, calling them “wrong at every level.”
For Keir Starmer, the problem with the riots is twofold. First, the counter-protesters: Almost as soon as violent protests began, violent counter-protests followed. These have now spread to a point where they no longer appear to be related to the original protests. They are no longer happening strictly in response to far-right gatherings but rather are being spontaneously organized by some of the same people who, since October, have been protesting the Gaza “genocide.”
Ordering the police to crack down on the protests will inevitably mean cracking down on the counter-protesters as well, since they at this point outnumber the far-right thugs. This would put Starmer in a precarious spot, given the obvious risk of escalation from this group whose numbers and resources are not as limited as those of the far-right, and given the opposition from deep within his own party that he would face. It is easy to order a crackdown when Farage voters and English Defense League thugs are the ones causing mayhem, but less so when it is the people who a month ago voted you into the highest office.
This conundrum is demonstrated best by the fact that this is actually the second riot of Starmer’s short premiership, during what can accurately be described as a Summer of Discontent. The first took place on July 18, eleven days before the current riots began. After four Romani children were taken into custody by child protective services, violent confrontations erupted between local residents and police, confrontations that would see a police car overturned, a double-decker bus torched, and a main road blocked by a bonfire set up by the rioters. In the end, the police retreated, and the children were returned.
Advocates of this lenient approach toward violent and illegal protests have argued that the focus should be on avoiding escalation, that a tougher approach would see innocent protesters and bystanders arrested, and that, in any case, the police do not have the manpower or other resources to arrest and charge entire mobs made up of thousands of protesters. These arguments have been repeated, in different forms, since illegal anti-Israel protests began in October of last year.
The relatively low number of arrests made in connection with the current riots may be seen as a reflection of political reality: Not only is Keir Starmer concerned about arresting too many people whom his own party’s grassroots view as “the good guys,” but he is also concerned about setting expectations for the rest of his time in office. If it turns out that a heavy-handed approach to riots is not just feasible but effective, voters are far more likely to demand it be used in the future. And that in turn could pose a political dilemma for Starmer if the next round of riots is touched off by the Left.
Starmer possesses the same talent for cold political calculation as his predecessor, Tony Blair. Like Starmer, Blair was elected after a long stint of Tory government, and like Starmer he effectively pushed back against and silenced the more radical elements of his party by threatening that any open division within the party would see the Tories elected to another five years. But the similarities end there. Blair inherited from his despised Tory opponents a booming British economy with a budget deficit that had been steadily declining for years. These conditions allowed him to keep his broad coalition more or less happy, with no one rocking the boat until the Iraq War split Labour and ended his career. His coalition and country also were not as ethnically diverse as Starmer’s.
As some harsher sentences have been doled out in the past few days, many on the right have rallied around a cry of “two-tier policing.” And indeed it is ridiculous that the British police, whether directed by the government or not, are using precious resources and manpower during a riot to arrest people in their homes for merely tweeting about the riots. As is their shameful tradition, the British police go after “soft targets” rather than thugs on the street who are far more likely to fight back.
But this still in no way justifies the riots. In addition to all of the damage the far-right rioters have caused, they have provided excellent cover for Islamists and far-left sympathizers to counter with their own senseless violence in the name of “protecting their communities.” The people who have encouraged these riots, including Tommy Robinson, have to carry their share of the blame for that as well, as well as for any new draconian hate-speech legislation that may be passed as a consequences of these events.
It truly is troubling just how many Brits, on both sides, are willing to burn their cities down at the drop of a hat. The focus of the British Right should be on unifying and rebuilding the Conservative Party to ensure that Keir Starmer’s premiership is contained to one term. Whatever one’s political orientation, political violence should hold no legitimate place in a democracy. This is the consensus upon which democracy rests, and while we may be dismayed with how left-wing politicians have at times failed to uphold this consensus, conservatives have nothing to gain and everything to lose from engaging in or endorsing street fighting.