Musk rejects claim he has incited disorder in Belfast – UK politics live

For four hours, Ugandan care workers Sumayah Nakazibwe and Stella Ariokot were barricaded into their house near Crumlin Road in north Belfast, smelling smoke leaking into their homes, and watching flames lick the walls of neighbouring properties.

“It all started like people were just marching, young boys between the age of nine and 20,” Nakazibwe said. “They were all putting on black, and masked.”

They watched from their window as the mob burned the tyres of a bus. “And then they collected the bins outside and then started also burning them,” she said. “And then we were like, maybe it will not escalate.”

But then the mob turned on to their street, where Romanian and Nigerian families also live, alongside British and Irish families.

“They started burning, petrol-bombing, the cars,” she said. “So when the smoke started, it was just coming direct to our houses. So we called the police, we called the fire brigade.”

Ruth Anderson, a Cabinet Office minister in the Lords, has told peers that 27 people were made homeless in Northern Ireland “because people went door-to-door to try and target foreign nationals”. She said:

Twenty-seven people were made homeless last night because people went door-to-door to try and target foreign nationals to burn them out of their homes.

I can only imagine the terror.

A two-month-old is the youngest victim who had to be moved from her home and I don’t think any of us will ever be able to forget the image of a nine-year-old child and their family being put in the back of a Land Rover to be rescued from violent, racist thugs who were seeking to undermine them and to undermine their very sense of belonging in a country that many of them have lived in for decades.

This is simply unacceptable and will not be tolerated.

That is all from me for today. Nadeem Badshah is now taking over.

Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor, Labour candidate for Makerfield and favourite to be next PM, has said that he favours a cap on the amount of money that can be given as a donation to a political party.

Campaigners have strongly criticised the government for not including a cap in its representation of the people bill that is going through the parliament, particularly given the rise in the number of billionaires giving huge sums to parties (normally Reform UK). Ministers have imposed a cap on the value of donations that can be given by people living abroad, but not a general cap.

As Josiah Mortimer reports in an article for Byline Times, Burnham said he was in favour of a cap in correspondencec with Shaun Bowler, founder of grassroots democracy campaign WakeUpGB.

Burnham told Bowler:

Yes, I do think there should be a cap on political donations. This would guard against the perception of any one party being unduly influenced or swayed by one person or organisation.

I am in complete agreement that there needs to be wholesale culture change in Westminster.

I would start with a higher cap but would definitely want to see that reduced over time … I do support the principle of caps.

For many years Nigel Farage was an enthusiastic supporter of proportional representation (PR). Ukip, his former party, was committed to PR, and at the last election Reform UK promised PR for the Commons in its manifesto.

But, over the past year, Farage and his colleagues have gone very quiet on PR. This has coincided with Reform UK rising so much in the opinion polls that it has now reached the point where, under the current system (first past the post – or FPTP), it could win a parliamentary majority with around a third of the votes at a general election. Under PR, it would do worse.

At his press conference today, asked if he was still committed to PR, Farage said that he was “open” to one version of it – but he insisted that his priority was to improve the integrity of the whole system first.

After mentioning Commonwealth citizens being allowed to vote and “family voting” (see 4.55pm), Farage said that he would drastically restrict postal voting. Reform UK believes postal voting is open to fraud (as Donald Trump does in the US) and Farage said he would only allow it for people with “a very good reason” to have a postal vote, such as a severe disability.

But he did not rule out a move towards PR at some point. He said:

I have consistently since 2015 said that our voting system is rotten in places.

So I’m quite prepared to think about changing the House of Lords, quite prepared to think about whether an AV plus model that gave representation to small voices would be the right way forward. I’m open to all of that.

But first we have to fix the integrity of our electoral system.

AV (alternative vote) plus is the model of PR proposed by the commission set up by Tony Blair and chaired by Roy Jenkins, the former SDP leader. The commission reported in 1998 but Blair ignored the recommendation.

Liz Kendall, the technology secretary, has said that the government will require social media companies to remove content inciting disorder more quickly at times of crisis.

In a post on X this afternoon, she said:

Those who use social media to incite violence and disorder are breaking the law.

Next week we will lay in Parliament an update to the Online Safety Act requiring services to take quicker action to remove illegal content circulating during times of crisis.

I have explicitly asked Ofcom to discuss urgently with X and other platforms how they will comply with the Online Safety Act.

This may have been what Keir Starmer had in mind when he told MPs at PMQs earlier that he would crack down on people fuelling division online. (See 12.30pm.)

But it remains to be seen how much difference the new initiative will make, given that campaigners regularly complain about social media firms ignoring the requirements they are already subject to about removing offensive or illegal material. And one of the social media users most criticised this week is not just a user of X, but Elon Musk, the man who owns and controls the whole platform.

Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, has suggested that there is a case for stopping Commonwealth citizens being allowed to vote in parliamentary elections.

He made the argument when he was asked if he was concerned that Reform UK were “losing momentum” by a journalist who pointed out that Reform hoped to win the Gorton and Denton byelection earlier this year, but were beaten by the Greens.

Farage replied:

I’m absolutely convinced we won Gorton and Denton amongst British-born people. Absolutely convinced.

And I have to say, whilst Commonwealth voting might have worked in decades gone by, it doesn’t work in an age of mass migration.

So there were people in Gorton and Denton who came to Britain, were living in the Gorton area, who came as part of the Boriswave, who couldn’t speak English, but still had a vote in that byelection.

Farage also claimed that Reform lost out in Gorton and Denton in part because of the prevelance of so-called family voting – a person being followed into the polling booth by a relative intent on telling them how they should vote. Gorton and Denton has a large number of Muslim voters, and after the byelection was over Reform UK suggested that some Muslim women were voting Green on the orders of their husbands.

(Quite why Muslim women would have been so keen to vote instead for Reform UK, a party that polls badly among women and whose candidate was anti-immigrant, has never been explained by the party.)

Reform UK cited evidence produced by four election observers working for an organisation called Democracy Volunteers as proof this was a problem in the constituency. And Farage mentioned that today at his press conference.

But, after Greater Manchester police investigated these allegations, they concluded there was no evidence of crime being committed.

Jamie Bryson, a prominent unionist commentator in Northern Ireland, has posted on social media rejecting suggestions that loyalist paramilitary groups should be stepping in to stop the rioting in Belfast. He says:

Multiple times I’ve heard today: “the UVF and UDA need to intervene to end this”. Many of the same people saying this are the same people who demand loyalists ‘go away’. You can’t have it both ways.

Loyalists are transitioning, and part of that is not fulfilling a community policing role in terms of exercising coercive control, even if such control would be exercised for what would generally be agreed to be a positive outcome (such as quelling serious rioting).

This is what people wanted. Policing is for the PSNI and loyalists shouldn’t be expected to step in when it suits.

At his press conference Nigel Farage defended Robert Kenyon, his party’s candidate in the Makerfield byelection, over a slew of offensive past social media comments uncovered since the campaign started.

Farage said:

These comments were posted a decade ago. They’ve been taken wildly out of context, but they’re the sort of comments that you won’t necessarily get if you’re an Oxford-educated career politician living in a nice postcode in London.

But I tell you what, they are the kind of comments you’ll hear in every pub in the country every evening, and we should be unapologetic that Rob is an ordinary bloke who’s carved quite a career for himself, had the guts to set up a business, served as an army reservist, is a patriot, likes his rugby, likes the odd pint, and said a few laddish things on social media 10 years ago.

Do you know what I’d say to that? I’d say, so what?

Alexandra Topping is a Guardian political correspondent.

Angela Rayner has hardened her position against Shabana Mahmood’s proposed immigration reforms, arguing that settled care workers should not face retrospective rule changes.

The former deputy leader of the Labour party, who has continued to be an influential figure on the backbenches, addressed a rally by Unison outside parliament in Westminster today, giving her backing to the union’s call for sector-wide visas for care workers to end “fear and exploitation”.

The UK’s largest union has mounted a campaign to help care workers who are tied to one employer because of their visa status, arguing that the current system – where care companies sponsor migrant care staff – allows unscrupulous bosses to abuse their power. “That fear is a weapon the worst bosses can wield,” said Rayner.

Last month an Indian man who came to the UK to work as a care worker through the post-Brexit visa scheme was awarded nearly £30,000 in a landmark case, because his employer failed to give him a single day of work for a year. An employment tribunal ordered the care company Swan Care Solutions Ltd to pay Shabin Shaji wages for the work he was “ready, able and willing to do”.

The Labour-affiliated Unison union have carried out a mass leafleting campaign in Mahmood’s Birmingham constituency to protest against a planned change in immigration policy, arguing that the changes will adversely affect migrant care workers. About one-third of all care workers and one-fifth of all NHS workers are migrants.

Addressing the union Rayner said that migrant care workers were “trapped in a system that does not protect them. And because it does not protect them, it does not protect us.”

Rayner has previously said it was “un-British” to move the goalposts on indefinite leave to remain (ILR), putting her at odds with the government’s key immigration proposal of increasing the standard qualifying period for permanent residence from five to 10 years. For care workers, the baseline would be 15 years.

In a move that will be seen to put more pressure on the home secretary, today she said there should be no retrospective rule changes to settlement for the care workers “who follow the rules and contribute to our society”, she said. She went on:

Care workers helped us through the darkest days of the pandemic. Care is a system we may all need, and rely upon. So I for one won’t rest until all those who give and receive care do so with the dignity and respect they deserve.

Elon Musk has rejected claims that he is to blame for inciting disorder in Belfast.

In a post on X, the platform he owns, Musk retweeted a post from Matt Goodwin, the Reform UK candidate at the recent Gorton and Denton byelection, saying:

It’s not social media that’s “inflaming tensions”.

It’s not Elon Musk.

It’s not Nigel Farage.

It’s not the ‘far-right’.

It is the very deliberate policy of mass uncontrolled immigration & open borders.

This policy has to end or it will destroy Western nations.

Musk added his own comment on Goodwin’s tweet, saying: “Exactly.”

Severin Carrell is the Guardian’s Scotland editor.

Thomas Kerr, deputy leader of Reform UK in the Scottish parliament, has been accused of trying to “fan the flames” of the far-right protests in Glasgow and other cities by calling for fresh demonstrations today.

In an urgent question to Scottish justice secretary Neil Gray at Holyrood, the Scottish Labour MSP Paul Sweeney said Kerr also referred to “strangers” in Scotland and had “fanned the flames of division.”

Police Scotland said on Wednesday far-right protestors in Glasgow targeted people due to their skin colour, injuring three members of the people and two police officers. (See 2.01pm.)

Sweeney, who represents Glasgow region, said:

Does the cabinet secretary agree with me that every one of us in this parliament has a duty to calm tensions in this country and not inflame them, and to be reminded that their first duty is to their constituents and the people of Scotland, and not American neo-Nazis on social media.

Gray said he “fundamentally” agreed with Sweeney, and implied Kerr was guilty of causing “fear and alarm”; migrants consistently helped keep Scottish services like the police, health and social care services running, he said. He went on:

Our culture, the culture and fabric of our society would not be the same were it not for migration into this country. We should celebrate it. We should protect it and cherish it. And always, always stand up to those who would seek to divide, intimidate, cause fear and alarm, including in this parliament.

Kerr, also a Glasgow region MSP, confirmed to BBC Scotland he wanted protesters back out on the streets on Wednesday but said he disavowed violence, racism and vandalism. He said:

Go out and protest. Go out and make your voice heard. We have a fantastic tradition in this country of freedom of speech and freedom of expression. Go out there and make sure the government hears your voice, but do not vandalise, do not incite racism and do not show violence.

Because as soon as you do that, you play into the hands of John Swinney and of Keir Starmer, who do not want to speak about massive, uncontrolled illegal migration. They want to turn it on you, so do not play into their hands, go out and protest peacefully, make sure your voice is heard, but do not take to the streets like we seen last night.

Farage turns to the events in Belfast last night.

He says the attack on Monday night was barbarous.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that this man [the accused] should not have been in this country. It is just as simple as that. He entered the country illegally. and is any surprise that people in Belfast and elsewhere are scared?

He says that does not justify what happened in Belfast last night.

None of that justifies what was perpetrated by some bad actors last night. There’s no doubt about that. There were some very, very bad actors doing bad things.

But, Farage went on:

But the vast majority of those people who were out on the streets in Belfast last night were not far-right, were not extremists, just [people] really scared about what’s going on in their communities and about the lack of government action.

He also claimed the events in Belfast showed how “incredibly disconnected” politicians in Westminster were from ordinary people.

Farage has an announcement. He says Reform UK would increase the VAT threshold for businesses (the point at which they would have to register for VAT) from £90,000 to £150,000.

He says this would cost about £2bn. But it would be worth it, he says, because it would lead to “changes in behaviour by making people hungrier to take on more work, to employ more people, to grow their businesses”.

Nigel Farage is speaking at his press conference now.

He starts with a whinge about the audience for the BBC Question Time from Makerfield not being neutral.

Referring to the campaign, he claims that his party is gaining momentum.

Campaigning is hard for a party like his, he claims, because their supporters are people from “alarm clock Britain” – which means they are out at work when you go round.

(In fact, Reform UK gets most of its support proportionately from people who are retired.)

The Nigel Farage press conference was meant to start at 3pm, but we’re still waiting. My colleague Josh Halliday is there. He says several dozen Reform UK members have gathered in the car park of a pub in Stubshaw Cross for the event. It’s a short walk from Andy Burnham’s campaign headquarters, he says. Josh is describing it as relatively low key.

During the Commons urgent question on the Belfast rioting, Karen Bradley, a Conservative former Northern Ireland secretary, said that some young people taking part in the rioting had been “groomed” by gangmasters “into committing violence day in, day out across Northern Ireland”. She said this was a version of modern slavery, and called for an inquiry.

Dan Jarvis, the security minister responding to the UQ, replied: “I absolutely give her that commitment that, working with colleagues in the Northern Ireland Office, we will do that.”

Politicians calling for a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland are leaning into “people’s worst fears and anxieties,” Claire Hanna has said.

Hanna, the SDLP leader, made the comment in the Commons during an urgent question that she tabled on the violence in Belfast.

She said:

People are, of course, entitled to their views on immigration, and, of course, government policy is imperfect, but this hasn’t been a debate or a conversation.

There haven’t been proposals, there haven’t been honesty about the trade-offs, there has been mob justice, and some of the same old, same old proposals for a hardened border on the island of Ireland. Political leaders have a duty to lead, not to lean into people’s worst fears and anxieties.

That video of the awful crime in north Belfast was unusual in its brutality, but the cycle of deflection and disorder has not been unusual. We have seen this movie too many times before.

In Belfast, we know all about blaming an entire community for the actions of others, we know all about scapegoating, we know all about tit-for-tat violence, and we know all about street justice.”

Earlier, during PMQs, Gavin Robinson, the DUP leader, suggested that the “open, porous border” between Ireland and Northern Ireland should be closed. (See 12.35pm.)