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Rishi Sunak has announced plans to crackdown on extremist activity in British universities and revoke visas from people who “spew hate on protests or seek to intimidate people”.
The UK prime minister on Friday stepped up his rhetoric about the threats to democracy in Britain, as he warned there were “forces here at home trying to tear us apart”.
His intervention, made in a televised address outside 10 Downing Street, came after leftwing firebrand George Galloway stormed to victory in the Rochdale by-election on Thursday, a result Sunak branded “beyond alarming”.
Amid a wave of regular, large-scale pro-Palestinian protests taking place in the UK, the prime minister said there had been a “shocking increase in extremist disruption and criminality” following Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7.
He said that too frequently the streets were being “hijacked” by small groups who were “hostile to our values”, resorting to threats of violence and intimidation.
He hit out at Islamist extremists and the far-right, both of whom he accused of “spreading a poison” and seeking to “weaponise the evils of antisemitism and anti-Muslim hatred for their own ends”.
His remarks came at the end of a week in which he struggled to contain a mounting row over alleged Islamophobia in the Tory party, after former deputy Conservative chair Lee Anderson was stripped of the whip for claiming that London and its Labour mayor Sadiq Khan were in the grip of Islamists.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer branded the comments racist and Islamophobic. Anderson said his words were “clumsy” but refused to apologise.
Using his Friday night address to issue a call for unity, and making a rare reference to his own faith as he described himself as a “proud Hindu and a proud Briton”, Sunak urged the nation to “stand together to combat the forces of division and beat this poison”.
While Sunak said the police had a difficult job policing demonstrations and were operationally independent, he said “we must draw a line” when protesters call for “violent jihad” or “beam antisemitic tropes on to Big Ben” — a reference to slogans being projected on to the Houses of Parliament.
Calling for a tougher approach from police forces to protests, he said: “I say this to the police, we will back you when you take action.”
In a direct appeal to those demonstrators “who choose to continue to protest”, he said: “Don’t let the extremists hijack your marches.”
The government would also unveil a “new, robust framework” on extremism later this month to ensure that no extremist organisations or individuals “are being lent legitimacy by their actions and interactions with central government”, Sunak announced.
Speaking from a podium, Sunak said: “You cannot be part of our civic life if your agenda is to tear it down.”
Ministers would “redouble” support for Prevent, the government’s flagship counter-extremism programme, he said. “We will demand that universities stop extremist activity on campus. We will also act to prevent people entering this country whose aim is to undermine its values.”
He added that James Cleverly, the home secretary, had “instructed that if those here on visas choose to spew hate on protests or seek to intimidate people, we will remove their right to be here”.
Starmer appeared to throw his backing behind Sunak’s address, saying the prime minister was “right to advocate unity and to condemn the unacceptable and intimidatory behaviour that we have seen recently”.
The Labour leader said citizens should be able to go about their daily lives without intimidation and MPs should be able to do their jobs without facing threats.
However Sunak’s message elicited a furious response from Momentum, the leftwing campaign group within Labour. “This was an outrageous assault on basic British rights from an out-of-touch prime minister,” said co-chair Hilary Schan.