Amid riots, UK's new, center-left PM gets early test over his country's illegal migration issues

New U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s honeymoon didn’t last long – just roughly a month after the leader of the country’s center-left Labor Party unseated conservative incumbent Rishi Sunak, Starmer is being tested by the violent anti-immigrant protests that have swept across the nation.

Starmer had hoped his landslide electrical victory would give him the political capital he needed to begin repairing ties with the European Union frayed by Brexit and shoring up the country’s cash-strapped public health system. 

Instead, he has been locking horns with conservative billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk after Musk commented that “civil war is inevitable” regarding the U.K. protests, and blasting Byron Davies, a minister-level Sunak backer, as “disgusting” for inflaming the violence.

Problems started July 29 when three young girls were fatally stabbed in an attack at a Taylor Swift-themed dance event for children in the seaside town of Southport, in northern England. Eight other children and two adults were hurt.

Police arrested a 17-year-old male and false information circulated on social media that the suspect was an Islamist migrant, which led to the anti-Muslim protests and an attempt in Southport to attack the town's mosque, according to Reuters. 

The teenager was charged with murder and attempted murder, but police say he was born in Britain and they are not addressing the attack as terrorism.

The situation appeared to escalate Wednesday when a reported 25,000 counter-protesters took the streets – some chanting “hate not welcome” and “refugees welcome here." But their presence reportedly kept nearly 100 anti-immigration protests from launching. 

Some counter-protesters appear to be seen in a video chanting, "Allahu akbar," which translates into “God is Great."

The violence sparked by the initial stabbings spread and began morphing into anti-immigrant sentiment in the country.

“This weekend’s events have broadened out and are now drawing from a common wellspring of anger,” the group Hope not Hate said in a statement.

There have also been reports of police violence, widespread arson, bomb scares. All told, more than 400 people have been arrested and some began to appear in court this week.

Starmer has canceled plans for a short August vacation, and Politico.eu described his situation in a headline as Starmer's "Summer from Hell." 

As in the U.S. and most of the rest of Europe, migration has been a hot button topic.

In 2016, the controversial Brexit vote was sparked in part by fears the U.K. could be “overrun” with unwanted migrants. Since then, six consecutive prime ministers (counting Starmer) have grappled with the topic with little to show for it.

The latest data reveal that migration to the country has actually increased in the eight year since the Brexit vote. 

In the United States, under President Biden, there has been a record 6.3 million-plus migrants-encounters at and between ports of entry just at the country's southern border, resulting in over 2.4 million migrants allowed into the country.

With Biden's vice president, Kamala Harris, as the Democrat's candidate in the November presidential election against immigration hawk Republican candidate Donald Trump, the issue of illegal immigration is a major topic that will in large part decides who wins the race. 

One of Sunak’s strategies to combat the rising tide of refugees and would-be asylum seekers was a controversial plan to deport them to Rwanda, a former British colony in East Africa some 6,000 miles from the British border, where asylum claims would be evaluated.

The theory was that the migrants would be less likely to set off for the U.K. if there was a risk they’d only be sent back to Africa.

During the campaign earlier this year, Starmer said the plan would be ineffective and overly expensive, and he vowed to scrap it as prime minister:

“I’m not going to continue a policy I don’t think it going to work and which is going to cost a fortune,” said Starmer, whose approval levels plummeted dramatically as the violence spread. 

Meanwhile, at least five countries (the U.S. is not among them) on Tuesday began warning their citizens to avoid unnecessary travel to the U.K. because of safety risks even as some in the U.K. itself wondered if the country was approaching “a boiling point” that could see police lose control of situations.