Right Riot

There have been two phases to the riotous assembly Nigel Farage stoked following the investigation into the police handling of Henry Nowack's murder. There was the confrontation in Southampton itself. This was no grassroots anger bubbling over, but a flashpoint that saw the far right across London and southern England mobilise for a fight. All the fascist faces were there - Tommy Robinson, Laurence Fox, Paul Golding, Posey Parker, all dragged their knuckles from their fetid swamps to whip the bovva boys up into a frenzy. And they duly obliged, rampaging through inner city residential streets and attacking the police. No doubt many of them can look forward to a spell in pokey courtesy of the footage shared by their grifting mates.

Yet the political objective was achieved. Having spent the last two years stirring the pot, the far right have had their first summer riot. Another step toward how things used to be, when the National Front routinely took to the streets in the 1960s and 70s. But the second phase of this right riot has proven more successful then any of them could have dreamed. Paper after paper, news outlet after news outlet, have surged across and trampled on the cordon sanitaire and hurled the bricks and wheelie bins of far right talking points into mainstream public discourse. For example, Sky News asked if the police are indeed "anti-white", forcing the gibberish about two-tier policing onto television screens. They were joined in this by The Mail, a "debate" on Good Morning Britain, and The Sun "just asking questions". On top of this Chris Mason, the BBC's chief politics gossip-monger ran cover for Farage as he was criticised by the other party leaders in the Commons one Wednesday. Aha! said Mason, they were being political about Henry Nowack's death too! You've got to ask it's only a matter of time before the great replacement theory gets an airing, all in the interests of debate.What happened in Southampton gave right wing papers and their little helpers in broadcast journalism an excuse to treat far right rubbish, which they themselves know not to be true, as if it was based in fact and was a valid viewpoint. This is where their riot has proven particularly successful.

Characteristically, mainstream politics have been useless in its collective response. Keir Starmer and Ed Davey tried to look statesmanlike, while telling Farage off for not respecting the stated wishes of Nowack's father not to use his son's murder for the politics of division. Instead, if they had anything about them, they should be making clear that his speech instigated Tuesday night's unrest, as Farage knew it would, and make plain that Reform is but the electoralist expression of violent street thuggery. But even when the King responded better than Labour did ti the 2024 riots, anyone hoping for better will be waiting for a long time. Something underlined earlier on Thursday as Starmer was moaned about Elon Musk dialling up the race hate in this country. If only the Prime Minister with his huge majority were in a position to do something about malign foreign actors working to destabilise British politics. At the moment where the violent consequence of Farage's tub-thumping could see politics move decisively against him, there is an absence where the far right challenges to Britain's limited democracy could be met.

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