Farage says slow police response stoked UK’s far-right riots

LONDON — Nigel Farage argued that a lack of information from British police about a deadly stabbing helped stoke far-right riots — and angrily pushed back at claims he himself whipped up unrest on the country’s streets.

The Reform UK leader has been under fire from fellow British politicians after he used a video on X — posted in the immediate aftermath of the killing of three girls in the seaside town of Southport — to question why the incident was being treated as a “non-terror incident” and suggest the “truth” about the identity of the suspect was being withheld.

Social media was at the time awash with false claims that the suspected attacker was a newly-arrived asylum seeker. But the suspect was later identified by police as Axel Muganwa Rudakubana, a 17-year-old born in Cardiff, who has now been charged with three counts of murder.

Grilled on his comments by LBC Tuesday, Farage pointed the finger at the police — who in the U.K. do not routinely name suspects under the age of 18.

 “What happened in Southport would not have been of the same magnitude had the truth been told and told very, very quickly,” the leading Brexiteer argued. “Had those questions been answered, far from stoking riots, it would have actually calmed them down considerably.”

The mass stabbing in Southport has sparked days of violence across the U.K., with hundreds arrested. Hotels housing asylum seekers and mosques are among the locations targeted.

`Speaking Tuesday, Farage offered a full throated condemnation of the violence, saying he had “always been 1,000 miles away from far-right agitators, from conspiracy theorists.”

But he declined to retract his X video, instead arguing: “I don’t believe we’re being told the full truth yet about this person. I want to know.”

The mass stabbing in Southport has sparked days of violence across the UK. | Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

He added: “I gave the police the opportunity to dampen down speculation. They should have done it and I bet they regret not doing it.”

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer will chair another meeting of the government’s COBRA emergency committee Tuesday evening as his new government seeks to get a grip on the spiraling unrest. The Labour leader has promised that a “standing army” of specialist police officers will help clamp down on rioting.

But Farage suggested this wasn’t enough. “Our danger is we become like France, where these things don’t go away,” he warned. “They flare up every three months, six months, every year.”

On X owner Elon Musk’s claim that “civil war is inevitable” in the U.K., the Reform UK leader said only: “I pray that he’s wrong.”