Burnham faces demand for face-covering ban after weekend disorder

Nigel Farage has called on the Prime Minister to ban burkas and balaclavas in public after anti-migrant protests in Dover and Portsmouth saw clashes with police. The Reform UK leader described face coverings as a "menace" to society, speaking after officers were injured in Portsmouth.

The protests, which also took place in Dover, featured demonstrators in balaclavas. One organiser, Danny Thomas - known online as Danny Tommo - has previous convictions including kidnapping. The Daily Mail reports he is privately educated. The Home Office policing minister blamed the Conservative Party for the unrest, though the mechanism of that blame was not specified.

Andy Burnham said the country must stop "the politics of poison seeping into our streets". The phrase does political work: it frames disorder as imported contamination rather than domestic discontent, a category that sits uneasily with the question of consent to migration policy. The protests follow years of record arrivals by small boat, a policy area where successive governments promised control and delivered the opposite. Whether street disorder is poison or symptom depends on which question you think comes first.

Meanwhile, an Israeli minister has criticised Burnham's decision to impose sanctions on Israel over Gaza, drawing a comparison to the Falklands and suggesting it could complicate relations with Donald Trump's administration. The intersection of foreign policy and domestic unrest is now live: the government's position on Israel is a flashpoint, and the protests are explicitly about migration and identity. The next test is whether Burnham engages Farage's demand or ignores it - and whether the disorders recur.