Keir Starmer vowed ‘action will be taken’ today as he held crisis talks with police over the outbreak of rioting following the Southport knife attack.
After summoning chiefs to No10, the PM told them that ‘marauding mobs’ must not be allowed to cause chaos.
He condemned those involved in violent disorder as ‘thugs who have no interest whatsoever in the raw pain’ of the community.
Sir Keir is set to hold a press conference at 4pm amid fears of more trouble, after ugly scenes spread to London, Hartlepool and Manchester overnight.
In the capital, more than 100 people were arrested after crowds in Whitehall launched beer cans and glass bottles at police and threw flares at the statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square.
People wearing England flags and waving banners saying ‘enough is enough’ and ‘stop the boats’ congregated outside Downing Street.
Violence flared after social media posts wrongly claimed the killing of three young girls in a knife attack in Southport was carried out by a Muslim asylum seeker who crossed the Channel in a small boat.
The angry scenes also included loud chants of: ‘We want our country back’ and: ‘Oh Tommy Robinson’, referring to the right-wing activist. One man wore a shirt with the slogan: ‘Nigel Farage for Prime Minister, Tommy Robinson for Home Secretary’.
Confrontations continued late into the night in Hartlepool, where demonstrators set fire to a police car and pelted officers with missiles, including glass bottles.
Cleveland Police have so far made eight arrests, with more expected.
Manchester police confronted another demonstration outside the Holiday Inn on Oldham Road before dispersing the crowd after protesters started throwing beer bottles at officers and members of the public.
According to the Manchester Evening News, this incident also saw chants of: ‘We want our country back’, while a group of men were seen jumping in the path of a bus, smashing its wing mirror and assaulting a passenger.
Aldershot appears to have escaped the violence seen in other parts of the country, but a demonstration there was still met by riot police.
The string of violent incidents follows similar scenes in Southport on Tuesday, where demonstrators attacked police and set cars on fire.
In the meeting this afternoon Sir Keir is expected to praise the ‘bravery’ of police in dealing with both the incident in Southport and its aftermath, and encourage them to use their powers to ‘stop mindless violence in its tracks’.
Lord Walney, the Government’s independent adviser on political violence, said he hoped the meeting would examine powers to ‘refuse and prevent further so-called ‘protests’ that are being used by far right activists as a vehicle for serious disorder and violence’.
He said: ‘There is a right to protest in the UK but that is not a right to riot.’
The meeting comes as a 17-year-old boy – who cannot be named for legal reasons – has been charged with the murders of the three girls.
Alice Dasilva Aguiar, nine, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Bebe King, six, were fatally stabbed on Monday when a knifeman entered a Taylor Swift-themed dance class on Hart Street in Southport, Merseyside.
Eight other children suffered knife wounds – with five of them in a critical condition – while two adults were also critically injured.