Faith in Democracy Falling? Poll Finds Large Number of Britons Support Anti-Migration Political Violence

Concerning potential symptom of flagging faith in the peaceful democratic process emerges as a poll suggests that a significant section of the public thinks that violence can be justified if politicians continue to overlook concerns around immigration.

A survey conducted by the British polling firm WeThink has painted a bleak picture for the future of the polity as an apparent breakdown in the trust of institutions to address the demands of the public has seemingly coincided with increasing willingness to back violent alternatives.

The poll, which surveyed 1,278 people between August 7th and 8th, during the height of the recent anti-mass migration riots that broke out across the UK, found that 39 per cent of respondents agreed with the statement: “When it comes to the refugee problem, violence is sometimes the only means that citizens have to get the attention of British politicians.”

Additionally, 34 per cent said that they felt attacks on refugee accommodations are “sometimes necessary to make it clear to politicians that we have a refugee problem,” while 32 per cent agreed with the notion that hostility towards refugees themselves is sometimes justified, even if such hostility ends in violence.

The survey also found that 36 per cent felt that “xenophobic acts of violence are defensible if they result in fewer refugees being settled in your town.”

So far, the riots, sparked by the mass stabbing at a children’s dance party by an alleged second-generation Rwandan migrant in Southport last month, have involved a tiny fraction of the UK population yet have seen over 1,000 people arrested. Police chiefs have warned that hundreds more will face arrest in the coming days. The unrest has seen people clash with police, ethnic groups clash, the looting stores, and setting fires, including one at a reported migrant hotel in Rotherham, a town that gained notoriety for its central position in the child rape scandals of recent decades.

The widespread violence, the scale of which has not been seen in over a decade in Britain, came during the first month of the new left-wing government of Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.

The new prime minister, who swept to power off the back of just over a third of the vote in July’s general election, has taken a hardline stance towards the riots, which he has characterised as being a creation of the “far-right”.

The survey from WeThink found that 54 per cent of those surveyed felt that the immigration policies from Westminster were the main cause of the riots. The survey firm is a new entrant in the British polling industry, but it is a member of the UK’s polling industry council and has recently collaborated on large-scale surveys for left-establishment press outlets.

As widely noted, and no less than by a report from the BBC, the Labour government has so far refrained from publicly discussing the “underlying causes” of the riots for fear that it would be “misinterpreted as suggesting some of the unrest was justified.”

Starmer’s stance towards the riots has seen widespread pushback from across the political divide. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage accused the prime minister of “completely” failing to understand the mood of the nation about the “societal breakdown” caused by decades of mass migration policies from both the Labour and Conservative parties.

As Breitbart London previously reported: “Parties or causes promoting the reduction of immigration came first in national elections in 2009, 2010, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and twice in 2019, without those promises ever coming remotely close to being fulfilled.”

British historian David Starkey claimed that the riots were a manifestation of the failures of the political class to address the public’s concerns about immigration, saying last week that Westminster is “reaping the whirlwind that it’s sown.”

“There’s a received higher doctrine, that there’s no such thing as borders and that the borders are a bad thing, human rights mean we’re all really the same. A second-generation Rwandan born in Wales is as Welsh as any. All this is lies, lies, lies,” Starkey told GB News.

“The protests are awful, they’re disgraceful, they’re shocking. But unfortunately, when people are shut up, when they’re not allowed to debate publicly, and when there aren’t rational means of objection, you get irrational ones… Every brick began in Westminster.”

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