The riots were fuelled by false claims circulated by far-right groups that the perpetrator of the attack was a Muslim and an asylum seeker, in addition to broader Islamophobic, racist, and anti-immigrant sentiments that had grown leading up to the protests.

[7] The Institute for Strategic Dialogue stated that the now-deleted "Southport Wake Up" group with 14,000 members on Telegram became integral in organising and promoting the subsequent riots, and inciting hatred and violence.

[71] The Merseyside Police Federation said that over fifty officers were injured at the Southport incident, with North West Ambulance Service reporting that twenty-seven were hospitalised and twelve were discharged at the scene.

[141] Sky News' Midlands correspondent Becky Cotterill posted to X the next day that the manager of the pub had told her the man had goaded his attackers by using offensive language as they walked past.

[156][157] In the Shankill area of Belfast, masked men rammed a hijacked car into an estate agents, amid false claims that the agency was renting homes to asylum seekers.

[160] On 7 August, over 100 far-right and 30 counter protests were reportedly planned across the country in 41 of 43 police force areas in England and Wales, with their main focus being immigration centres and lawyers' offices.

[164] Parts of London, including Brentford, Harrow, North Finchley, and Walthamstow, saw large counter-protests at sites mentioned on the list of targets where far-right protesters were supposedly going to gather, with the latter attracting an estimated 10,000 demonstrators.

[165][166] In Lewisham a rally was held, organised by Stand Up To Racism and other local anti-racist groups, to "show solidarity" with communities targeted by the far right, though there was no direct threat to the area.

[168] The Washington Post reported that patients in multiple areas including Walthamstow received text messages explaining that their doctor’s offices would close early on Wednesday to avoid "threatened disruption" due to the riots.

[189] Ricky Jones, a Dartford Labour councillor, was filmed addressing a crowd at a counter-protest in Walthamstow, East London, stating: "They are disgusting fascists and we need to cut all their throats and get rid of them all."

[196] In Paisley, Renfrewshire, 300 anti-racists, including representatives of trade unions and human rights organisations, protested against a planned far-right demonstration outside a hotel housing asylum seekers, but no anti-immigration protestors appeared.

[208] After the Southport riot, Prime Minister Keir Starmer wrote that those who had "hijacked the vigil for the victims" had "insulted the community as it grieves" and that rioters would feel the full force of the law.

[39] According to The Independent, Cooper was also "reviewing whether the far-right English Defence League [...] should be made a proscribed terrorist organisation", after its connection to the Southport riot,[75] a suggestion echoed by Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner,[216] although the EDL has ceased to exist in a formal sense.

[233] On 3 August, the Ministry of Justice began discussions about magistrates' courts in England and Wales remaining open overnight to preliminary rule on suspects arrested, due to the anticipated increase in people held in custody for riot related offences.

[235] By 5 August, police had arrested 378 people,[79] and the first court hearings were held on a range of charges including violent disorder, assault on an emergency worker, and burglary, with some defendants pleading guilty.

[239] Among those sentenced on 9 August was a 28-year-old man from Leeds, who received 20 months in prison for stirring up racial hatred online during the riots, after making a Facebook post stating that people should "smash the fuck" out of a hotel used by the government to house asylum seekers awaiting processing.

[246] On 14 August, a 53-year-old woman from Cheshire was sentenced to 15 months in prison after pleading guilty to sending a communication threatening death or serious harm over a Facebook post in which she suggested a mosque should "be blown up with the adults inside".

[255] On 18 September, a 25-year-old man from Birmingham was sentenced to two years and four months in prison, having pleaded guilty to distributing threatening and abusive material intended to stir up racial hatred.

[256] On 23 December it was reported that a 40-year-old from Southport, who had been identified as a man seen in a viral video of the 30 July rioting, had been sentenced to two years and six months in jail after pleading guilty to violent disorder at Liverpool Crown Court, which involved throwing bins at officers and punching a police vehicle.

[262] In October 2024 the BBC confronted a 20-year-old man, who was an administrator in the "Southport Wake Up" Telegram messaging group, known as "Mr AG", and revealed him to be Charles-Emmanuel Mikko Rasanen, a neo-Nazi from Helsinki, Finland who shared online instructions on how to commit arson with the UK rioters.

[271] The Labour MP for Southport, Patrick Hurley, said on BBC Radio 4's Today on 31 July, that the rioters were not local residents, but were "thugs who'd got the train in" and were "utterly disrespecting the families of the dead and injured children, and [...] the town".

She told Times Radio: "There's a clear difference between effectively blocking streets or roads being closed to burning down libraries, hotels, food banks and attacking places of worship.

[276] On 2 August, ahead of anticipated protests the following weekend, the Muslim Council of Britain recommended that mosques "review and strengthen their security protocols",[277][278] and counter-protests by anti-racists were organised under the banner of "Stop the far right: Don't let the racists divide us", predominantly by Stand Up to Racism.

[281][282][283] Hampshire's police and crime commissioner and Conservative politician Donna Jones released a controversial statement that was widely criticised, in which she said that arresting people was "treating the symptom and not the cause" and otherwise appeared to agree with the protesters.

A statement was subsequently released by Buckingham Palace describing how "The King shared how he had been greatly encouraged by the many examples of community spirit that had countered the aggression and criminality from a few with the compassion and resilience of the many".

[301] HuffPost described far-right activists as having "hijacked" the vigil for the victims,[302] and the Manchester Evening News reported "far right thugs, fuelled by lies, sought to exploit the tragedy".

[34] Politico described the cause of the violence as "Islamophobic resentment that had long brewed across the United Kingdom" as having surfaced, citing hate crimes associated with British Muslims as being the highest among any religious group in the country, according to government data.

[33] According to Hope not Hate, although the stabbing in Southport was the catalyst, "most of these protests and riots are more broadly focused, expressive of a wider hostility to multiculturalism, anti-Muslim and anti-migrant prejudice, as well as a visceral streak of populist anti-Government sentiment".

[309] Andrew Chadwick, a professor of political communication at Loughborough University, described a viral tweet as being "deliberately fabricated to generate hostility toward ethnic minorities and immigrants, and it's a potentially Islamophobic piece of propaganda".

[307] Matthew Feldman, an expert on right-wing extremism, commented "It is difficult to think of a much better example of online harms breaching the real world than a fake story demonising Muslims and people of colour and leading to riots on the streets".