LONDON (AP) — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned the “tiny mindless minority” behind unrest that has plagued several cities after a horrific stabbing at a children’s dance class and vowed to put a stop to it as the 17-year-old suspect was named Thursday in part to counter misinformation blamed as one cause of the fiery clashes.
Starmer said the recent violence was “clearly driven by far-right hatred” as he announced a program enabling police to better share intelligence across agencies and move quickly to make arrests to prevent the kind of outbursts that have sent scores of police to the hospital the past two nights.
“This is coordinated; this is deliberate,” he said. “This is not a protest that has got out of hand. It is a group of individuals who are absolutely bent on violence.”
This is really worrying stuff, expanding police powers instead of actually tackling the root cause of the violence - which is people suffering from poverty, inequality and low future prospects.
The government could truly solve the issue by vastly expanding the budgets allocated to public services and social welfare. The NHS is crumbling and needs to be funded. Renationalise the railways and the post office and actually fund them. Build a shitload of social housing. And just watch as far-right sentiment melts away.
Additionally, the plans to use facial recognition is extremely alarming. This is well known to be a bad technology - loaded with fall positives, it’s racially biased, expensive and ineffective for actually accurate answers.
“The prime minister’s alarming pledge today to roll out facial recognition in an apparent response to recent disorder is a pledge to plunder more vital police resources on mass surveillance that threatens rather than protects democracy,” said Silkie Carlo, director of Big Brother Watch. “This AI surveillance turns members of the public into walking ID cards, is dangerously inaccurate and has no explicit legal basis in the U.K.”