Forces are said to have intelligence of 25 planned far right gatherings over the weekend
Tory leadership hopeful Robert Jenrick has criticised Nigel Farage’s remarks about the Southport stabbings, saying they did not “make the situation better”.
Asked for his view on the remarks from the Reform UK leader, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
I don’t follow all the comments that Nigel Farage says but I don’t think any of us should be doing anything to make the job of the police more difficult at this time.”
I don’t think they made the situation better did they?
So I think we should all be choosing our words carefully, backing the police to the hilt and doing everything we can to ensure our streets are safe and this violence, which I’m worried is escalating, comes to an end as swiftly as possible.”
I have spoken this morning to the chief constable of Northumbria police and I’m very grateful to them. What they had to put up with was real sustained violence.
We have seen police injured, we’ve seen 10 people so far arrested but I very much hope that we’ll see more of that throughout the day.”
You can see there’s really significant damage, they’ve set fire to a police station, to cars, they’ve looted shops, they’ve abused people in the street, they’ve attacked police officers and Sunderland will be feeling the effect of that.”
Things like this really affect the way that local people feel but the clean up overnight from Sunderland council has clearly been absolutely massive.
And what I’m really heartened by, alongside the thousands of people contacting me saying ‘this is not what we’re about, we’re about that love and that compassion’ is the fact that people in Sunderland are going to come together this morning and help with that clean up.
We saw that these far-right groups were advertising what they called a peaceful protest yesterday in Sunderland.
That was anything but peaceful. It was out and out crime and violence and the police response was strong, protecting a mosque and really having to stand up to very sustained crime and violence from these thugs.”
