Tough on rioting, tough on the causes...

If anyone can be said to have had a ‘good riot’, then it is probably Sir Keir Starmer. He has emerged from the past 10 days with his reputation intact, if not enhanced, as his firm approach in the face of growing civil unrest would appear to have stopped the rioting in its tracks. And all within his first four weeks of government.

To be fair, he has had some help: the appearance of tens of thousands of counter demonstrators on the streets of towns and cities across the country last week quelled what had been anticipated to be another night of what Sir Keir has called ‘far right thuggery’.

And the football season also kicked off (no pun intended) at the weekend which will have distracted the attention of many. That there is a connection between the game and those rioting became apparent when the government briefed that it was in talks with football authorities to impose lifetime bans on convicted rioters. That was seen as an effective deterrent.

But let’s give Sir Keir some kudos too. He earned his knighthood back in 2014 for his services to ‘law and criminal justice’, including his time as Director of Public Prosecutions during the 2011 riots, so he has form in this arena. Stiff sentences are currently being handed down to many of the 300+ people so far charged. Televised sentencing has worked to quell enthusiasm for taking to the streets. His refusal to recall Parliament denied Farage and others the opportunity to grandstand in the Commons. And the optics of his cancelled summer holiday, and attendance at multiple COBRA meetings, look pretty good by comparison with the previous incumbents’ records.

But what now? While the symptoms of unrest appear to have subsided, underlying grievances undoubtedly remain. According to YouGov, a third of Britons support the protests against migrants and 1 in 14 (7%) are sympathetic to the rioters and believe the unrest is ‘completely justified’. 

When asked what is to blame for the rioting, 69% of respondents cite the news media and 67% say immigration policy. 47% say Nigel Farage.

So, on the one hand, it’s the drip feed of media headlines, such as today’s Daily Express front page: “Get a grip and fast! Labour is doing nothing to stop the boats”. And on the other, it’s the perceived paralysis of government policy: the previous government’s Rwanda plan abandoned while Labour’s new Border Security Command – tasked with ‘smashing criminal boat gangs’ – is yet to be put in place. Although, to be clear, the number of people arriving in the UK this way is a tiny fraction of overall immigration.

Similarly, a backlog of up to 90,000 asylum applications has built up, with upwards of 30,000 asylum seekers currently accommodated in hotels. These facilities provide an easy focus for discontent and are more often located in some of the poorest parts of the country where accommodation can be bought on the cheap.  Seven of the 10 most deprived areas of England have experienced the recent riots; those same seven places also house some of the highest numbers of asylum seekers receiving government support per capita. Currently very few asylum seekers are housed in the south of England or London.

Arguably, areas with enhanced social infrastructure would have been a better solution – something the government might consider when finding permanent accommodation for those eventually granted the right to remain.

Any response is complex. The government sees its English Devolution Bill as a key driver of national economic growth, empowering metro mayors to deliver Local Growth Plans that will revive neglected areas. It is also pledged to tackle the asylum backlog within 12 months, closing all hotels and resettling those granted asylum across the country. 

Perhaps we need to add to this a dose of education on the benefits of migration to the economic and social fabric of the UK. The Daily Telegraph is already on board, recently running the headline ‘Why the state pension cannot survive without immigration’. 

None of this is new or groundbreaking – it just needs to be done. As the New York Times put it, in an article on the unrest: the riots ‘are not telling this government anything it didn’t know. They are just making its task more urgent.’