NOW FOR THE PAPERWORK: Britain’s creaking criminal justice system will fall under a piercing spotlight in the coming days (well … weeks) as it churns through a wave of rioters. Prime Minister Keir Starmer faces questions over court, police and prison capacity, not to mention the role of tech firms and the tinderbox of social forces that lies behind all this violence. Just as street clashes with the far right threaten to bleed into a second week.
A whole week of disorder: Fallout once again splashes chinese overseas british database most of the papers, including the Independent and Mirror … i (fears of police shortages) … Mail, Telegraph and Times (Starmer’s spat with X bigmouth Elon Musk) … Guardian (a call to treat demos as terrorism) … and Express, on Met Police boss Mark Rowley’s grumpy mic grab when he was asked if it’s all “two-tier policing.” (“I’m sorry I knocked it to the floor,” he said in a statement last night. You can almost hear the clenched teeth.)
Just a regular recess day, honest: Apart from talks with the sultan of Oman, there was not yet any public-facing activity on the PM’s diary today when Playbook checked, nor any hint of another COBRA meeting. Let’s see how long that lasts. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is meeting more police chiefs behind closed doors, while Courts Minister Heidi Alexander is on the morning round. At least there’s no danger of Alexander being interviewed by, y’know, her husband.
GROUNDHOG DAY: Alexander will surely wish this was all over and she could talk about swift punishment and all that. But it’s still a live situation — as the six people arrested and “several” hurt police officers in Plymouth last night showed. Burnley Council said three gravestones in the Muslim section of a cemetery were vandalized. The i has a handy map of where trouble has erupted.
**A message from Goldman Sachs: AI’s market implications reach far beyond the tech sector. On average, an AI chatbot query needs up to 10 times as much electricity to process as an internet search. The impacts of increasing AI adoption will be felt not only in tech, but in the markets for labour, power, infrastructure, and more. Get our latest research.**