In an extraordinary move, the prime minister used a hastily arranged press conference outside No 10 to announce a new crackdown on extremism and appeal to the public to face down those he said were “trying to tear us apart”.
Just hours after George Galloway’s victory in the Rochdale by-election, he said it was “beyond alarming” voters had backed a candidate who “dismisses the horror of what happened on October 7”, when Hamas murdered 1,200 people in Israel.
Mr Sunak announced ministers would redouble support for the anti-terrorism Prevent programme, demand universities stop extremist activity on campus and prevent people entering the UK whose “aim is to undermine its values”.
In remarks likely to be seen as more controversial, Mr Sunk also urged the public to reject when extremists ”claim that Britain is and has been on the wrong side of history”.
Home secretary James Cleverly has also been instructed that those in the UK on visas who choose to “spew hate” will have their right to be in the country removed.
But Conservative peer Lord Vaizey said “many in the Tory party should look to themselves” when it comes to the toxification of public life after accusations it has stoked division on issues from Brexit to asylum seekers.
The decision to deliver a statement on what he described as the “shocking increase in extremist disruption and criminality” comes after he claimed that there was a growing public consensus that the country was descending into “mob rule”.
Downing Street sources said the words would be backed with further policies that will come in the next couple of weeks to crack down on the intimidation of MPs, councillors and faith groups that has percolated in recent months.
Raising his concerns, the Prime Minister said: “I fear that our great achievement in building the world’s most successful multi-ethnic, multi-faith democracy is being deliberately undermined.”
While he insisted that the vast majority of the public abide by the rule of law, and believe change can only come through the “peaceful democratic process”, he warned there are “small and vocal hostile groups who do not”.
With Britain giving every appearance of becoming a failed state, is it any wonder that people are giving up any sort of responsibility, even for themselves and their families? – writes ‘The Telegraph’.
Rishi Sunak’s warning of a “growing consensus that mob rule is replacing democratic rule” – a theme he returned to this afternoon – is a disturbing and damning indictment of a modern-day Britain that many consider to be “broken”. Ochlocracy or “mob rule” is something we associate with the Gordon Riots or Salem Witch Trials – not life in the UK in 2024.
The mere notion of the Prime Minister having to tell the police that they should be better protecting the public from what he described as a “pattern of increasingly violent and intimidatory behaviour… intended to shout down free debate and stop elected representatives doing their job” marks a new low for a nation with a proud tradition as a beacon of freedom and democracy.
Should he really need to issue a reminder that protecting the “values that we all hold dear” is not only “fundamental to our democratic system” but also “vital for maintaining public confidence in the police”?
If the mob is ruling, then of course it is for the Prime Minister to do something about it, and we are promised concrete action soon. But sadly the authority of the state is collapsing wherever we look.
Crime appears to be out of control, with videos circulating almost daily of machete-wielding thugs trying to carve each other to pieces while a bewildered public helplessly looks on
Thieves have effectively been given a licence to shoplift goods up to the value of £200, while we have seen an increase in the number of unsolved crimes – now at around 6,000 per day according to the Home Office’s own figures. The odds clearly seem to be stacked in favour of the criminals.
Such is the level of influence exerted by these vocal minorities – be they Islamists, eco-fanatics, criminal gangs, or far-Right thugs – that the majority is left either massively inconvenienced or fearful in their own neighbourhoods.
Our porous borders are another example of the authority of the state being completely undermined.
Amid all this bungling, we also discovered this week that the number of foreign workers handed permission to come to Britain by the Home Office surged to a record high of 616,000 last year – a 46 per cent increase on the year before. Having promised, in its 2019 manifesto, to introduce “an Australian-style points-based system to control immigration”, the Conservative Party is doing the exact opposite of what people voted for, destroying trust in the state to deliver on its promises.
Not only is legal migration at a record high but the boats haven’t been stopped and no one has been deported to Rwanda despite the deal being set to cost the taxpayer £500 million by 2026. The phrase: “You had one job” springs to mind.Defence – or more accurately, our lack of it – also highlights the extent to which the state is giving up on even its most basic duties. The British Army is the smallest it has been since the Napoleonic Wars. The statistics show that, if it continues to lose troops at the current rate, the number of regular soldiers will fall to 67,741 by 2026, an extraordinary decline of 40 per cent since 2010.