Following the tragic Southport stabbings last Monday, the BBC Today programme has interviewed the man who attempted to stop the attacker in his tracks – and was knifed in the leg as a result. Jonathan Hayes spoke about his harrowing experience of coming across the knifeman and then trying to disarm him.
‘When I opened the door, he stood there. He had the hoodie on. Most of his face was concealed,’ he told the Beeb. ‘We locked eyes on each other, and he looked pretty menacing.’ Hayes said he was ‘grateful’ to be alive after the incident, before offering up some advice on the riots to the Prime Minister.
The have-a-go-hero said he was ‘dismayed’ to hear Sir Keir Starmer’s tough talk about using the ‘full force of the law’ against demonstrators and insisted the PM needed to better understand immigration concerns:
‘I actually don’t think that the trouble on the Right has got anything at all to do with the Southport stabbings. There appears to be a strong undercurrent of discontent for some time about the levels of immigration. And this is just a catalyst or a trigger, but I don’t think it’s the root cause. I do get dismayed when I hear Keir Starmer talking about [how] the police are going to come down with the full force of the law on these people. But they are not actually talking about the root cause, and they need to start listening and understanding that. They need to address the cause rather than the symptoms.’
Wise words indeed. Although the disorder on Wednesday evening was not as full-blown as expected – with anti-fascism counter-protestors mainly turning out to the streets instead – there is no guarantee that the rioting is over. Over half of Brits think Starmer has handled the riots badly, while 70 per cent are adamant that the PM should not take a holiday next week due to the unrest. With YouGov revealing that immigration is the most important issue amongst the public for the first time since 2016, perhaps it would do Sir Keir some good to listen…
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