The Guardian view on the riots: culpability in high places | Editorial

Rishi Sunak's former adviser for social cohesion is right to say that inflammatory rhetoric has nourished extremism on the ground

The weekend scenes of encircled mosques guarded by police, and hotels accommodating asylum seekers attacked by mobs intent on violence, were among the most disturbing seen on British streets for many years. In their scope and intensity, these riots were of a different order to relatively isolated incidents in the past, such as the petrol bomb attack on a Dover immigration centre in 2022. In Rotherham, where a group of rioters broke into a Holiday Inn and attempted to set the building on fire, the bravery of outnumbered police averted a potential tragedy.

Responsibility for this horror naturally lies with the perpetrators, who exploited the tragic murder of three girls in Southport last week as a convenient pretext for xenophobic violence. It is, as Sir Keir Starmer clearly intends, imperative that they are swiftly seen to suffer the consequences of such thuggery in court.