A leading figure in Sir Keir Starmer’s Cabinet has condemned the “mindless thuggery of the far right” after riots spread through towns and cities in England and Northern Ireland.
After violence flared over the weekend, the Prime Minister called an emergency Cobra meeting.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting condemned “far right agitation” which led to the disorder.
After footage on social media showed looters stealing from a cosmetics store in Hull, Mr Streeting said: “Don’t tell me that people are just expressing legitimate grievances while they have got their hands full of stuff from Lush.”
His comments came at an event at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where he also warned of the “existential threat to democracy” from disinformation on social media.
Mr Streeting, who took over as Health Secretary after Labour’s landslide election victory, said he had been “shocked and sickened by the scenes on the streets of our towns and cities in recent days”.
The Labour MP added: “If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, that is what we are dealing with.
“This has been far right agitation, and I am sure a broader group of people have been pulled in and saw a chance to cause trouble, who are just idiots. But they need to face the full force of the law too.
“But we shouldn’t be in any doubt about the insidious nature of what lies underneath all of this, who is pushing it, who is amplifying it, who is quite literally in some cases fanning the flames. This is far right violence.”
He insisted those involved would “feel the full force of the law”, adding: “People will be found, they will be brought to justice and they will regret this for the rest of their lives.”
Mr Streeting said it was “distressing” to see some of the images from recent days, citing an incident in which doors were “being kicked in in Middlesbrough as families cowered inside”.
He insisted: “That’s not what our country is, that is not who we are, that is not what we are about.
“It is really important to remember, for the mindless thuggery of the far right we have seen in these few days, we have also seen an outpouring of love, of generosity, of community spirit.
“And it is the people who have been going along to clean up the mess, to rebuild the walls, to crowd fund for the library burned down in Liverpool – those are the people who represent our country. That is who we are and what our country is about.”
But he insisted the UK and other democracies needed to “wake up” to the danger posed by misinformation online.
Mr Streeting noted that in the run-up to the General Election an “audio clip went like wildfire across WhatsApp and other social media channels” which was “entirely fake” but which appeared to be his voice “using the most foul language about dead Palestinian children”.
He cited that as a possible reason why his majority in his Ilford North constituency had fallen to just 528, saying: “It was so shocking. If I had heard that I wouldn’t have voted for that candidate even if it was a Labour candidate.
“As we are finding in the world of fake news, propaganda, deep fakes, the lie travels a lot faster than the truth.”
He described this spread of disinformation as “an existential threat to democracy”, adding that “to live in a world where people can manufacture fake images and fake audio, it is dangerous”.
He said: “We have got to wake up – not just Britain, but as democracies collectively, to what is actually a threat to our democracy, to our national security, to trust in politics.”
