UK Edition
Jess Phillips accuses Farage of ‘grifting’ in row over Southport stabbings response
Reform UK leader appeared to suggest public being denied key details regarding identity of perpetrator of attack
Jess Phillips has accused Nigel Farage of “grifting” in a row over his response to the Southport killings.
Mr Farage, the Reform UK leader, claimed in a social media video that important questions about the deadly knife attack on children at a Taylor Swift-themed holiday club remained unanswered.
He speculated whether the “truth is being withheld” about the killing of three girls aged six, seven and nine, following social media rumours.
The suspect was falsely identified as an asylum seeker who had arrived in the UK in a small boat, while unsubstantiated claims that he was on an MI6 watch-list also circulated.
Ms Phillips, a minister at the Home Office, accused Mr Farage of acting in bad faith after he missed a statement by Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, in the Commons on Tuesday.
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, she wrote:
It came as Brendan Cox, the widower of Jo Cox, the MP who was murdered in 2016, compared Mr Farage to “Tommy Robinson in a suit”.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “It’s right out of the Trump playbook, and in my view it makes Nigel Farage no better than Tommy Robinson in a suit. It is beyond the pale to use a moment like this to spread your narrative and to spread your hatred, and we saw the results on Southport’s streets last night.”
In a separate post on social media, Mr Cox said: “Imagine your response to the death of three children being to peddle conspiracy theories that incite a riot. This is why Farage deserves the label far-Right... This is vile.”
Mr Farage had said in his video: “I just wonder whether the truth is being withheld from us. I don’t know the answer, but I think it is a fair and legitimate question. What I do know is that something is going horribly wrong in our once beautiful country.”
Robinson, a far-Right activist whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, shared a post in response to Tuesday’s unrest, which said residents were “understandably upset and angry”.
He issued “a total appeal for calm” after hundreds of rioters, whom Merseyside Police said it believed to be supporters of the English Defence League, clashed with police. Robinson is a former leader of the EDL, which he founded in 2009.
The violence saw a total of 53 police officers injured. Eight sustained serious injuries including fractures, lacerations, a suspected broken nose and concussion and were treated in hospital.
Four men were arrested and taken into custody, three on suspicion of violent disorder and one on suspicion of affray and possession of a bladed article.
Responding to Mr Cox’s claim that he “whipped up” rioters, Mr Farage told the PA news agency: “Absolutely disgraceful comment, nothing of the kind. I merely expressed a sense of sadness and concern that is being felt by absolutely everybody I know: what the hell is going on?”
Mr Farage said Mr Cox’s Tommy Robinson comparison was “beneath contempt”, adding: “Who are the perpetrators? Why? Very legitimate questions I was asking, and to conflate that with EDL or anybody else, frankly it’s desperate stuff.”