Why Starmer might be the ideal PM to stop mob rule

On Thursday last week, Sir Keir Starmer held an emergency conference with senior police officers, his home secretary Yvette Cooper and justice secretary Shabana Mahmood in the aftermath of violent protests in Southport.

- DAVID MADDOX

In a press conference which immediately followed the talks in Downing Street, the prime minister blamed far-right activists for the disturbances which saw a local mosque put under siege and a police car set alight while thugs threw rocks at police officers.

The trigger for the riot was the awful murder of three young girls at a dance club in the Merseyside seaside resort, after which misinformation about the alleged killer was shared online.

However, Starmer’s early action over the first riot has been followed by an explosion of similar incidents in towns and cities across the country, including Liverpool, Hull, Hartlepool, Sunderland and Belfast.

There are questions over whether the prime minister should cancel his holiday and demands to recall parliament. But Sir Keir’s former career as England and Wales’s chief prosecutor actually may mean he is uniquely prepared to see the UK through this crisis.

Lessons from the riots in 2011

Back in 2011, a year before the Olympics took place in the UK, riots broke out in London after police shot and killed 29-year-old Mark Duggan during an intelligence-led, targeted vehicle stop procedure on the Ferry Lane bridge next to Tottenham Hale station.

It later emerged that Duggan did not pose the threat that the police had believed he did and the fury over the incident saw riots and looting in London which then spread to other cities in the UK. At the time, Keir Starmer was director of public prosecutions and responsible for prosecuting those responsible for the criminal activity sweeping the country.

He kept courts open 24/7 and allowed magistrates to hand down longer and tougher sentences after 3,000 suspects were arrested and 2,000 brought to trial. Later Starmer would say: “For me, it was the speed [of processing cases] that I think may have played some small part in bringing the situation back under control.”