‘If Nigel Farage was Prime Minister, all the UK would look like Belfast today’

What’s the story?

Windows smashed. Racist chants. Houses burned down. Terrified families evacuated.

'Brave patriots' showed their love for Great Britain in Belfast with the destruction of local neighbourhoods, following the attempted murder of a man in the city by a 30-year-old man, Hadi Alodid, from Sudan, who had been legally granted asylum in the UK.

Far-right agitators, including Elon Musk, Tommy Robinson, endorsed the actions of rioters from the safety of their social media accounts.

Broadcaster, journalist, and founder of the newly launched Zeteo UK, Mehdi Hasan, tells The News Agents that what happened in Belfast is all part of a meticulous plan, of which Musk is a key figure.

"Elon Musk is about to become the first trillionaire in the world, and he is funding Tommy Robinson's legal defence," Hasan says.

"He is promoting Rupert Lowe and Restore UK. That's not an accident. Why is the world's richest man spending so much time agitating in the UK?

"He's been doing this for a while. This is a coordinated attempt to push the far-right in all parts of Europe."

He does not believe the UK population is becoming more anti-migrant organically, but are instead being led, pushed or manipulated towards thinking that way.

Is the UK playing copycat with US politics?

'When America sneezes, the world catches a cold' – or so goes the old cliche.

Except it's not a cold this time, it's anti-migrant racism.

"You now have British politicians talking about mass deportations. You have political parties wanting to have a British ICE," Hasan says.

"It is very much looking at what Trump did on the right and trying to copy it."

A pledge from Reform UK to stop visas from anyone in Sudan, where a genocide is taking place, is the “definition of bigotry and collective punishment," Hasan adds.

"In Belfast, people are using phrases like ‘pogrom’," he says.

"It is very worrying when you have masked gangs in the street setting fire to people's properties who are not white.

"That is shades of some of the worst violence we've seen in the United States throughout US history."

What Keir Starmer's government needs to do

Hasan says the Labour approach to the situation has been entirely wrong – and Keir Starmer's government has been unable to convince the public of its success in reducing the number of migrants entering the UK.

In May this year, it was announced that in 2025, under Labour, 171,000 people entered the UK – half of the number for 2024, under the previous Tory government.

"If you look across the West, the centre left's approach to this is trying to meet the right-wing halfway, saying they have legitimate concerns." Hasan says.

"That hasn't worked."

He says Starmer needs to call on people to soak in the scenes of burnt-out cars and smashed windows on the streets of Belfast.

"Keir Starmer should take the opportunity to go on the offensive and tell people if they're worried about small boats and immigration now, have a look at what Belfast looks like today," Hasan says.

"That's what the entire UK will look like when Nigel Farage is prime minister.

"Is that the country they want to live in? Is the United States under Trump, with ICE militias grabbing and shooting American citizens on the street the future you want? Because that's the dystopian future heading your way under these cynical people."

The death of Henry Nowak, the 18-year-old who died when police didn’t believe his claims he had been stabbed by an attacker, has now also become a migration issue since JD Vance started speaking on the subject, with Emily Maitlis saying this only happened because he got his facts “magnificently wrong”.

"You need strong leadership in the West as a whole, not just in the UK, to resist MAGA-ism, Trump-ism, Vance-ism from spreading," Hasan adds.

"This is not happening organically. Elon Musk is funding it, JD Vance is coming over and pushing it.

“This is not accidental."

Listen to the latest episode of The News Agents.