With Britain’s far right on the march, Labour has a problem

LONDON — Less than a month into the reign of the U.K.’s new Labour government, unspeakable tragedy struck.

In the seaside town of Southport, situated in north west England just outside Liverpool, three young girls —Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice Dasilva Aguiar, nine — were killed Monday in a knife attack on a Taylor Swift-themed danced class.

A 17-year-old has been detained by police. But, in line with usual British police practice, the suspect has not been named.

That’s an information void into which far-right conspiracies about an establishment cover-up to protect the perpetrator were poured — and turned quickly violent.

On Tuesday a large crowd, said by police to be connected to the extreme nationalist English Defence League, hurled projectiles at a mosque, set fire to police vehicles and attacked officers in Southport. Fifty-three officers were treated for injuries, with 27 taken to hospital. Four men have been arrested.

More unrest followed Wednesday night. Protestors let off flares outside No. 10 Downing Street and, 300 miles to the north east, others threw debris at police in the town of Hartlepool.

The protests were swiftly condemned by Britain’s new Prime Minister Keir Starmer as “thuggery,” and as an insult to a grieving community. “They will feel the full force of the law,” he vowed.

Beyond the immediate arrests, however, confronting the far right now presents an early, urgent problem for Starmer’s government.

The disorder was the second gathering linked to far-right activity in the space of less than a week, after tens of thousands of supporters of activist and English Defense League founder Tommy Robinson filled Trafalgar Square in London Saturday. A stabbing attack on a uniformed soldier earlier this month has also offered a rallying point for the far-right.

The Farage factor

Complicating matters as Labour looks for a response is Nigel Farage, the populist Reform UK leader and newly-elected member of parliament.

Neither Labour or the Tories before them have been able to halt the rise of a politician who has repeatedly distanced himself from the far-right — while adopting some of its more popular talking points.

Farage has spent the past 24 hours fending off claims he fanned the flames of Tuesday’s unrest with a video posted on X just hours before the riots took place. In it, he questioned why the incident in Southport was not being treated as “terror-related” and suggested the “truth” about the identity of the suspect was being withheld.

“I’m just asking questions because I’m struck that every time something appalling happens we’re told it’s non-terror or it’s mental health, there was nothing to worry our little heads about,” he said on his GB News show later.

Police officers stand guard outside the Southport Islamic Society Mosque in Southport, northwest England, on July 31, 2024 a day after clashes following a deadly knife attack. | Peter Powell/AFP via Getty Images

Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner said Farage should not “stir up this fake news online,” while Brendan Cox — widow of murdered Labour MP Jo Cox, who was killed by a man with far-right views — went much further.

He told the BBC that Farage’s remarks make him “nothing better than a Tommy Robinson in a suit,” a reference to the far-right, anti-Islam EDL founder.

Farage told the PA news agency such comparison was “beneath contempt.” The Reform leader has long kept his distance from Robinson, even quitting his old party UKIP in 2018 over its then-leadership’s “fixation” with him. But, his critics argue, his comments on the knife attack confer a kind of parliamentary legitimacy to views that would previously have stayed on the fringes of British politics.

Reform made real gains in July’s election — winning 14 percent of the vote and bagging five MPs — making him harder to dismiss as a fringe figure.

New Labour MP Josh Simons, who ran the Labour Together think tank which commissioned work on countering the populist right, said his party must continue to “call out pathetic hate” and “have the courage to respond to violence with love and support.”

Labour is meanwhile facing calls for a clampdown on the methods used by Britain’s far-right — but here too there are few easy options.

“Misinformation has spread like wildfire online, feeding unverified narratives about the culprit, their background and their motivations,” Hope not Hate’s Director of Research Joe Mulhall said.

The new government could move to try and further counter disinformation on social media platforms such as X, where misinformation about the attack flourished. The U.K.’s Online Safety Act, introduced by the Conservatives, is in the process of being implemented.

But the act doesn’t legislate for the removal of specific pieces of content. Instead, it’s about holding platforms to account more broadly — a point Ofcom officials have repeatedly tried to stress to MPs. Though it has no current plans, Labour could try to legislate further in this area.

Some, including the former Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf, have called on Starmer’s government to go much further and proscribe the English Defense League. Rayner told LBC Wednesday that Home Secretary Yvette Cooper will consider the proposal.

Others say Labour needs to relentlessly deliver to get at the root causes of the far right’s spread.

“Far-right and right-wing populism succeeds when it persuades a decent chunk of the majority that mainstream politics is not delivering for them, not working and we need something more radical,” Harry Quilter-Pinner, executive director of the left-leaning IPPR think tank — which is close to Labour — said. “The big thing that progressives in the U.K. need to be thinking about is how we get back to a point where the vast majority of people feel that mainstream politics serves their interests,” he added.

Laurie Clarke contributed reporting.