Good morning. Amid escalating far-right violence across the UK over the past week, the instigators and apologists for the rioting have sought to spread a pernicious myth: the idea that white far-right “protesters” are the victims of a “two-tier” policing system that treats them more harshly because of their race and political views.
It’s an idea that has been propagated by Tommy Robinson, Laurence Fox, and various other rightwing social media demagogues in the past few days; it has even been blamed for an arson attack on a police station in Sunderland. Yesterday, Reform MP Nigel Farage claimed that “ever since the soft policing of the Black Lives Matter protests, the impression of two-tier policing has become widespread”. Spend more than a few minutes on social media looking at posts supportive of the violence, and the phrase “two-tier policing”, or a hashtag referring to the prime minister, #twotierkeir, is likely to come up.
