FARAGE: WRONG TO SAY RIOTERS ARE ONLY FAR-RIGHT THUGS

REFORM UK leader Nigel Farage has said the Prime Minister is wrong to blame the riots solely on the far-right.

He said on GB News: “We have seen rioting and violence on an horrendous level. The Prime Minister seeks to blame it all purely on the far-right.

“And yes, of course, there are far-right thugs and some of the actions, such as setting fire or attempting to set fire to hotels with people in them are truly disgusting and appalling. But we can’t say it’s all on one side.

“Last night, we saw in some parts of the country, mobs of young Muslims, masked, acting in a very intimidatory way, threatening journalists, slashing tyres, making people from Sky News and LBC flee the scene.

“We even saw a pub that was surrounded and intimidated. So, there’s fault on all sides. Street violence is never, ever right.

“I spent 30 years fighting elections, some successful, some unsuccessful, because I believe in solving problems via the ballot box.

“…people saying, actually, I’ve been orchestrating, organising, encouraging the riots, well, nothing could be further from the truth.

“And because of that level of incitement to hatred against me, I’ve had to have a very significant change in my security situation over the course of the weekend.

“But I guess there are some who are frightened that politically, one day, I could benefit from what is going on.

“Well, that’s not what interests me. What interests me is not just ending these riots and not just quelling them for now.

“I don’t want to live in France where these divisions occur once every few months, where parts of big French cities effectively almost become no-go zones.

“I want to find long term solutions. And one of the problems here, at least one of the perceived problems here, is two-tier policing. Right or not, there is a widespread perception of two-tier policing.

“I believe it began at the time of the Black Lives Matters protests. We saw people literally tearing down statues and chucking them in the dock, and nobody actually being stopped from doing it.

“We saw Churchill’s statue defaced. We saw the Cenotaph defiled and police officers taking the knee in the street supporting a Marxist organisation.

“And it goes on from there to a common perception that the way the riots in Leeds were handled compared to the way the riots in Southport were handled were very, very different.

“None of this, folks, is aimed at all at the men or women on the front line, and frankly, it is truly appalling how many police officers have been hurt over the course of the last few days.”