On LBC News, Nigel Farage has been pressed by Tom Swarbrick about his 30 July references to “reports” claiming that the Southport stabbings suspect was a Muslim who had recently arrived in the UK (an aspect of “cover up rhetoric” that I previously noted here). Here’s Farage’s reply:
One of the reasons the Southport riots were as bad as they were is we weren’t told the truth. There were stories on online from some very prominent folks with big followings, Andrew Tate, etc., suggesting the man had crossed the English Channel in a boat in October 2023. Other suggestions that he was an active Muslim, and much of this led to the riots that we saw.
I asked a very simple question: was this this person known or not [to the security services].
…Give us some clarity… I mean, I remember, the London Bridge attacker, we knew within an hour that this person was known to the security services. Whenever in Northern Ireland there was a terrorist outrage, very quickly people were told the background of the perpetrator. I asked a very simple question.
I could have said “some reports suggest he crossed the Channel last October. Some reports suggest he’s an active Muslim”. I did none of those things. What I asked for was clarity. We didn’t get clarity, and I would argue… that what happened in Southport would not have been at the same magnitude had the truth been told, and told very, very quickly. It wasn’t for many hours that we learnt more.
Here’s what Farage said at the time:
Was this guy being monitored by the security services? Some reports say he was. Others are less sure.
The next day, however, he reformulated what he had suggested:
…I also asked whether, amidst a sea of speculation, the 17-year-old involved had been under the watch of our authorities.
It’s remarkable that Farage would choose now to say that “some reports” means Andrew Tate. Most people would have understood Farage as referring to credible sources, some of which were supposedly saying the suspect was known to the security services while others were saying that this only might be the case. Anything emerging from Tate would very obviously have just been a derivative rumour. This false picture fell apart, which is why the next day Farage tried to give the impression that he had instead merely raised a broad and general question arising naturally from the circumstances.
Farage’s new self-justification fails to convince, due to several leaps and false premises.
First, Merseyside Police confirmed on the evening of 29 July that the suspect had been born in Cardiff. An update at lunchtime on 30 July said that an “incorrect” name (i.e. Ali Al-Shakati) had been circulating on social media. Farage’s statement was posted to Twitter/X a few hours after that – it appears he wants credit for not repeating specific claims that had already been debunked by the police despite the fact that the “security services” claim had been bundled in with them. Most reasonable people would have thought “well, the rest of the internet rumour was rubbish, so why should the supposed ‘MI6 watchlist’ claim be taken seriously?”. Farage, in contrast, appears to have thought “well, police have responded to the false claims overall, but here’s one detail that I can still get some mileage out of”. And he also appears to have thought, “an ‘MI6 watchlist’ can’t be right, since MI6 operate abroad, so I’ll amend to ‘security services’ as being more credible”.
Further, Farage’s comparators are bogus. A more reasonable inference from the London Bridge attack would be that if a suspect is known to the security services then this will probably come out very quickly, not that the lack of any such confirmation indicates a cover up. And in the case of Northern Ireland there was a very obvious terrorist context, with groups even phoning in to take responsibility for bombings. That’s why people were told “very quickly” (1) – but where context is unclear, it will take a few more before police will be in a position to update the public. Understanding the vast differences shouldn’t be difficult.
If Farage had merely wanted police to act more quickly to neutralise false rumours then that would have been explicit in his 30 July statement. He would also have highlighted what the police had actually said. Instead, he gave credence to the “security services” rumour, which in turn implied a context of Islamic extremism. As such, there is no reason to go along with his self-exclusion from the factors he says affected the “magnitude” of what happened in Southport, and elsewhere.
Now that the suspect has been charged and named, news reports must be guarded so as not to prejudice the trial, although unsourced claims about his alleged motivation continue to circulate on social media (I saw one instance promoted by Carl Benjamin). Given the circumstances, many social media users will either chafe at or ignore the legal requirement to describe Rudakubana as “the suspect”, and there’s scope here for bad actors to suggest that the word has been chosen by the media in order to favour him – this may seem ludicrous, but Laurence Fox claims that the media has published photographs of Rudakubana as a child in order for some reason “to make him look like the victim.”
Note
1. It should also be remembed, though, that what we were told “very quickly” as regards Northern Ireland wasn’t always correct.
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