British politicians including Keir Starmer, Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson have condemned the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, as several expressed fears about rising political violence and hate speech.
A phone call with Trump on Sunday afternoon, the UK prime minister condemned the attack at the campaign rally in Pennsylvania, expressed condolences for the victims and their families, and wished the former president and others who were injured a swift recovery.
Earlier, No 10 had said Starmer was “shocked by the scenes at the rally”, where one spectator was killed. Trump later posted on social media that he was “fine” after he was “shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear”.
Starmer tweeted his best wishes to Trump. “Political violence in any form has no place in our societies and my thoughts are with all the victims of this attack,” he wrote on X. Farage, the leader of the Reform UK party, who has attended many rallies in the US in support of Trump, said he would have been attending the rally had he not been elected as MP for Clacton at this month’s general election. He said he planned now to travel to this week’s Republican convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to show his support.
Asked how he felt, Farage told BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg: “I was very upset and I’m still upset. I’m obviously pleased that my friend Donald has got away with it, only just, but he’s got away with it. The narrative that is put out there about Trump by the liberals that oppose him is so nasty, so unpleasant, that I think it almost encourages this type of behaviour.”
Farage said he blamed the “mainstream media narrative” and “liberal intolerance”, though he accepted there was violent language used about political opponents. “I’ve faced continual attacks for over a decade now because it’s me, no one cares – in fact, it’s even funny.”
Farage, who had milkshake and wet cement thrown at him during the election campaign, said it was making it harder for politicians to meet voters, adding: “The problem with this is, how do you go out and campaign?
“Think of John Major 30 years ago, a soapbox in market squares, you couldn’t do that today. So we finish up with our political leaders never meeting a voter, never meeting the public. I suspect knowing Trump as I do, he will carry on regardless.”
The Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, whose sister Jo Cox was murdered in 2016 by a far-right extremist during the EU referendum campaign, said she had hoped to be talking about the England football final but that she had found herself again being forced to speak about political violence.
“And we are back again having that conversation about what democracy looks like, what our politics looks like,” Leadbeater told the BBC. “We have got to have that conversation about what a civilised democracy looks like. I have been having it since Jo was killed. I sadly feel that we are not making a huge amount of progress in this country and in other countries and we have got to keep having that conversation.”
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Other politicians expressed their shock and condolences for the victims over the course of the morning. The former prime minister and Conservative leader Rishi Sunak said he was “horrified by the attack in Pennsylvania … Violence and intimidation must never be allowed to prevail”.
Johnson said it was “a miracle that Donald Trump escaped an attempted assassination”, adding: “As we give thanks for his safety we are reminded once again of the tragic fragility of democracy in the face of violence and unreason.”
Speaking on Sky, the leader of the House of Commons, Lucy Powell, said it was an “appalling, horrific attack” and that in the UK general election there had also been “a rise in intimidation and attacks on serving politicians or people who want to be politicians in this country too”.
She said some colleagues had “real difficulties” while campaigning, adding: “They have seen intimidation in the streets when campaigning, they have seen some intimidatory activity around and nearby polling stations. We have seen some deepfakes being shared online about individuals that have turned out to be completely wrong, we have seen misinformation shared that fuels hatred and has a dehumanising effect on individuals.”
