Almost three in four Britons worried about far right after riots

Nearly three-quarters of Britons are worried about rightwing extremism after anti-migrant riots, polling has found, with increasing numbers concerned about societal divisions.

The survey also found that while people generally believed politicians did not react especially well to the wave of disturbances, they generally felt Keir Starmer responded well – while Nigel Farage did not.

In one part of the polling where people were asked to name worries, public services and the economy were still of the greatest concern, with 84% and 83% respectively saying they were very or fairly concerned about these.

Below this, 73% of people said they were concerned about rightwing extremism, 11 percentage points higher than when the same questions were asked in March this year.

The findings come amid the worst unrest seen in the UK for a decade in a series of towns and cities after the fatal stabbing of three young girls at a dance class in Southport on 29 July.

With the 17-year-old boy charged with their murder , Axel Rudakubana, initially not named due to his age, far-right agitators helped to spread online misinformation about the attack, with some claiming the perpetrator was a Muslim refugee.

The Ipsos polling also found an increase in worries about leftwing extremism, up 7 points from March to 59%, and about religious extremism, with 74% citing it as a concern, 9 points higher than before.

Overall, 85% of those asked said they believed British society is very or fairly divided, the highest such level since 2019, with only 11% disagreeing.

Quizzed on the response to the riots, 57% of people said they thought the police had done a good job, with 19% disagreeing.

While for politicians 21% backed their response against 42% opposing, for Starmer the verdict was more supportive, with 39% saying he had done a good job versus 29% believing the opposite.

In contrast, the polling showed that only 21% of people thought Farage had responded well to the disorder, with 48% believing otherwise.

Farage faced criticism during the riots after he released online videos firstly asking if the police had withheld information about who had carried out the attack, and then challenging the argument that the disorder was largely the fault of the far right.

The verdict on social media companies was even more damning, with 60% of respondents saying they had done a bad job in connection with the riots, and just 12% supporting their actions.

One of the other notable features of the polling was the way that people took a notably more gloomy view of concerns about crime on a national level than when it came to their own area.

When asked if crime and antisocial behaviour are a big problem across the UK, 86% said this was the case, up from 79% in June. But when asked about the situation where they lived, this fell to just 40%, 1 percentage point lower.

Similar, when asked if they believed crime had risen in the past 12 months, 72% said this was the case nationally, against 41% locally.