Keir Starmer cancels holiday next week in wake of riots

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox

Get our free View from Westminster email

Please enter a valid email address

Please enter a valid email address

SIGN UP

I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy

Keir Starmer has cancelled his holiday next week in the wake of the riots across the country.

The prime minister had been expected to travel to the continent for a summer break with his family this weekend.

But it is understood he will instead work between No 10 and Chequers, the PM’s grace and favour country home, next week.

On Friday the Labour leader warned the police to remain on “high alert” amid fears of more trouble this weekend.

6,000 riot officers are being deployed to potential hotspots, in a bid to prevent more violence erupting.

But Sir Keir was told to to pack his “Factor 50” and go on holiday to reflect on his premiership so far as he came under fire from Boris Johnson over his handling of the far-right riots and his approach to immigration.

The former PM, who was found to have lied repeatedly over Partygate breaches of lockdown rules during the pandemic, accused Sir Keir’s government of being “deaf” to public concerns.

In his MailOnline column, he said the PM should go on his planned trip as it “has become ever clearer, over the past week, that your presence has made no difference whatever to the disturbances – or, if anything, made things marginally worse”.

The ex- Tory leader also accused Sir Keir of giving “the clear impression of a man who has no plan to stop illegal immigration, because he simply doesn’t care”.

Bill Esterson, the Labour MP for Sefton Central, in Lancashire, hit back at Mr Johnson, accusing the former PM of holidaying “when he was Mayor of London in 2011 during the London riots”. “Keir Starmer chose not to go on holiday to deal with the riots across the country this week,” he added in a post on X, previously Twitter.

Mr Johnson was in Canada when the London riots broke out and faced criticism at the time after he initially refused to cut short his family holiday to return to the capital.

More than 700 people have now been arrested over rioting, according to the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), of whom more than 300 have been charged.

Violence erupted in the wake of the fatal stabbing of three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed holiday club in Southport.

False claims the alleged attacker was on a watchlist and Muslim were used to stir up far-right mobs.

As the violence spread, rioters attacked mosques, ambushed riot police and set fire to a hotel housing migrants, while people were still inside.