In Britain, just a month after Starmer’s victory last year, riots broke out across the country, fueled by far-right extremists. The catalyst was the murder of three young girls aged 6, 7 and 9, in Southport, northwest England, by a Black teenager wrongly identified at the time on social media — in posts amplified by the far-right — as a Muslim.
At the time, Farage suggested the police were withholding the truth about the suspect, earning him the fury of mainstream politicians. While stressing he did not support violence, Farage railed against what he called “two-tier policing,” a phrase popular among far-right commentators who claim police treat right-wing protesters more harshly than those on the left.
It’s an opinion that resonates in Jaywick. Chennelle Rutland, 56, is walking her two dogs along the beachfront, admiring the view as the sun sets, flaring the sky orange, then purple. The colors catch the surface of the flat sea. “It’s one rule for one and one rule for the other,” she says. “The whites have got to shut up because if you do say anything, you’re ‘racist’ and ‘far right.’”
It would be wrong to characterise residents of Jaywick as simply ignorant or full of rage. Many who spoke to POLITICO there were cheerful, happy with their community and up to speed with the news. But, just as they’d soured on their country’s centrist establishment, they were also tuning out its favored news sources.
In Jaywick, some of Farage’s voters prefer GB News, Britain’s answer to Fox News, which launched in 2021, or learn about current affairs from YouTube and other social media. The BBC — for decades the mainstay of the British media landscape — has lost a portion of its audience here. Right-wing commentators and politicians attack it as biased. Trump has lately joined in, threatening to sue over a BBC edit that he said deceptively made it look as if he was explicitly inciting violence. The BBC’s director general and head of news both resigned. In the process, another piece of Britain’s onetime centerground was giving way.