Starmer adviser calls for 'Covid-style' response to rioting across Britain... And claims public 'will back it'

It comes following clashes between police and protesters in Manchester and Liverpool while rioters set cars ablaze in Sunderland and Southport earlier this week.

Baron Walney told Times Radio that the British public will back measures they "feel are necessary to get this situation under control."

He said: "I think the government and new ministers will understand the British public will back them in whatever measures they feel is necessary to get this situation under control.

"Hopefully we can see this petering out now over the next few days and the extra effort which is being put on forces being able to have effect.

"But if that isn't the case, I think the British public will back further action from ministers in this emergency to get things under control.

"Back in Covid, they were prepared to back measures that were needed in that situation and I think they would take a similar approach to keeping rioters off the streets now given the scale of damage that has been done to communities."

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The crossbench peer told the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland radio programme: "The police should be prepared to step in where they can.

"Where there is these kinds of gatherings which are just designed to be fanning the flames of violence, (they) should be stopping people gathering. People absolutely have the right to protest in this country, but they do not have the right to riot."

Meanwhile, Home Office minister Lord Hanson told would-be rioters to "be prepared to face the full force of the law on this criminal activity."

Planned demonstrations in cities across the country got under way as tensions remained high after the killing of three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed holiday club in Southport, Merseyside, on Monday.

Axel Muganwa Rudakubana, 17, from Lancashire, is accused of the attack, but false claims spread online that the suspect was an asylum seeker who had arrived in the UK by boat.

Sunderland Central Labour MP Lewis Atkinson said a link could be drawn between the disorder in his constituency on Friday and the ashes of the EDL, which was founded by Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon.

The far right has drawn condemnation from MPs across the political spectrum after disorder in London, Manchester, Southport and Hartlepool over the past three days.

Cleveland Police said two boys, aged 11 and 14, have been arrested on suspicion of violent disorder after the protests in Hartlepool.

The EDL has disbanded but its supporters remain active, and Mr Atkinson said evidence suggested a Nazi offshoot of the group was involved in the violence in his constituency on Friday, in which an office was torched and a mosque attacked.