User:Gilgongo/Two-Tier summary

Content moved to Two-tier policing and this section summarised, as per talk page

Critics have accused the police of "two-tier policing", claiming that the enforcement is biased and treats people from certain political or racial groups more harshly than others. These allegations have been popularised with the outbreak of Gaza war protests since 2023 and after the 2024 riots, and have been promoted by the right and far-right, and to a lesser extent the far-left. Critics on the left, such as Jamie Driscoll, argue that the police have a right-wing bias and are harsher against left-wingers, ethnic minorities, and pro-Palestinian groups. Critics on the right, such as Nigel Farage and Robert Jenrick, argue that the police have a left-wing bias and are more harsh against right-wingers and white people, and the white working class in particular.

Examples of prominent policing incidents in which the accusation have been made include a peaceful protest by Just Stop Oil climate protesters in July 2024, in which some protesters were given five-year sentences while a far-right rioter who assaulted a police officer was given a three-year sentence. In 2025, the government proscribed Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation, leading to the arrested of hundreds of peaceful protestors who expressed their support for the organisation. Protesters believed that the police had targeted them disproportionately, with far-right groups like the English Defence League still not proscribed and their supporters not persecuted. In June 2026 allegations arose again following the murder of Henry Nowak by British Sikh Vickrum Digwa; after being stabbed and later falsely accused of a racist attack by Digwa, Nowak was handcuffed by police and died shortly afterwards.

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Alleged examples

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In both articles:

Accusations of two-tier policing have been dismissed by politicians across the political spectrum, including Labour prime minister Keir Starmer and Conservative home secretary Priti Patel, though more recently, Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the Conservative Party, said that "It is quite clear that something is not right." on the issue.

The Sunday Times and The Guardian described two-tier policing as a conspiracy theory in 2024, and it was also described as such in a 2025 research paper by criminologists at the University of Salford and Northumbria University.

An April 2025 report from the cross-party Home Affairs Select Committee found no evidence of two-tier policing in the police response to the 2024 summer disorder, describing accusations as "baseless", and stated that "unsubstantiated commentary" about two-tier policing had undermined police officers.

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Assessments

A House of Commons Library Insight article following the Summer 2024 riots said that it was "extremely difficult" to compare police responses to different protests or instances of disorder, given the vastly different scale, context and incidents involved, concluding that there is no reliable way to measure whether police respond to incidents differently due to political pressure.

In 2024, researchers from the Royal United Services Institute argued in The Guardian that there was a "two-tier approach" to extremism that treated far-right violence less seriously than Islamist violence, with far-right violence often classified as "mere 'thuggery' or hooliganism" while similar acts motivated by Islamist extremism were quickly classified as terrorism.

A YouGov poll of 2,070 people conducted in August 2024 found partisan differences in perceptions of two-tier policing. Reform UK voters were especially likely to say that the police were more strict against the far-right and young men and more lenient towards Muslims, black people, the far-left, and climate activists. Conservative voters tended in a similar direction in some areas, but less consistently. Labour and Liberal Democrat voters most often answered "no real difference" for most groups. For example, only 16% of Labour voters and 17% of Liberal Democrat voters said police were stricter with disorder caused by the far-left, compared with 45% and 46% respectively who said there was no real difference. The exception was disorder caused by people of Black ethnicity, where Labour and Liberal Democrat voters most often said police were stricter. In each of the four voter groups, respondents were more likely to say police were stricter, rather than more lenient, toward disorder caused by the far-right and young men.

The National Police Chiefs' Council anti-racism commitment states their goal is equality of policing outcomes and is not committed to racial equality.

Alleged examples

In July 2024, peaceful Just Stop Oil climate protesters were given five-year sentences while a far-right rioter who assaulted a police officer was given a three-year sentence. Dale Vince said this disparity proved that there was "two-tier sentencing" and called for a review of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 to deal with this "completely disproportionate and inconsistent" system.

During the 2024 riots, MP and Reform UK leader Nigel Farage and American businessman Elon Musk levelled accusations of two-tier policing, with Musk nicknaming Prime Minister Keir Starmer "two-tier Keir" and Farage suggesting that the police had dealt with the riots more harshly than other recent protests. After an incident at Manchester Airport in July 2024 in which a police officer was suspended from duty and four men were arrested, Farage accused Greater Manchester Police and the Crown Prosecution Service of two-tier policing for not announcing charges by October. Mike Neville, a retired Scotland Yard detective chief inspector, described disorderly behaviour at the 2024 Notting Hill Carnival, a celebration of Afro-Caribbean culture, as the "ultimate example of two-tier policing", and said that if the same behaviour was replicated at football matches or elsewhere it would be banned.

In the summer of 2025, left-wing pro-Palestinian activists and politicians, including Jamie Driscoll and Owen Jones, made accusations of two-tier policing after the government proscribed Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation and the police arrested hundreds of peaceful protestors who expressed their support for the organisation. Protesters believed that the police had targeted them disproportionately, with far-right groups like the English Defence League still not proscribed and their supporters not persecuted. However, Jewish groups argued that the police had a two-tier bias in favour of these protesters in June 2025, after the police refused to arrest a pro-Palestine protester who had dressed as a Holocaust concentration camp inmate but replaced the star of David with a Muslim star and crescent.

In June 2026 allegations arose again, in discussions following the murder of Henry Nowak by British Sikh Vickrum Digwa; after being stabbed and later falsely accused of a racist attack by Digwa, Nowak was handcuffed by police and died shortly afterwards. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage linked the case to "anti-white prejudice" and called for promoting "the idea that white lives matter just as much as black lives”. He suggested that the actions of the police had resulted from two-tier policing. The following day, during Prime Minister's Questions, Farage, with reference to police anti-racism guidance, asked Keir Starmer to take action against what he again said was two-tier policing.