Time to get tough on those who incite far-right violence

When Keir Starmer said that violent rioters would face the “full force of the law” – as every single previous British Prime Minister in history would have – there were some for whom this warning made the Labour leader a “traitor”.

People like the despicable Laurence Fox, a small-time actor and leader of something called The Reclaim Party, who posted on X/Twitter: “For decades British girls have been raped by immigrant barbarians and he’s [Starmer] finally come out. On their side. Fine. Then it’s war.”

A day after he posted that message, there was no suggestion that his account had been hacked and it had been viewed more than 4.3 million times, rather than deleted or removed by X. But then the social media platform’s owner, Elon Musk, also tweeted that he believed “civil war is inevitable” in the UK.

Meanwhile, Tommy Robinson, of English Defence League infamy, has been accused of inflaming the violence that has seen police officers and others hospitalised, shops and cars burned, and places housing asylum seekers attacked – from the comfort of his sunbed at a resort near Ayia Napa, Cyprus. When not spreading false claims about stabbings he knows nothing about, Robinson was tweeting that “even Russia is disgusted by Keir Starmer’s authoritarianism...”

Clearly, Putin – who recently welcomed home to Russia a convicted murderer, one of his paid assassins, with a hug – would love it if the UK fell into the hands of a far-right government which instead of prosecuting violent, racist thugs treated them as patriotic heroes.

The rioters have been committing acts of common criminality in plain sight and must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, with sentences that serve as an effective deterrent to others. Away from the streets, there are those who are also criminally responsible for inciting violence by deliberately whipping up hatred and championing the violence on social media.

The identities of many are known and, where appropriate, they too must feel the “full force of the law”. Failing to act against high-profile ‘influencers’ will only embolden their followers and risk further bouts of street violence, if not the civil war that some appear to seek.