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The scenes of far-right, racist violence across the UK have been linked to online misinformation being spread on social media platforms, including a false name linked to the suspect in the stabbings of young girls in Southport.

X, formerly known as Twitter, has been one of the sites there haze and misinformation have been particularly widespread in recent weeks, and the platform’s owner, Musk, has openly used the site to spread conspiracy theories and criticize Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s handling of the riots and regulation of social media.

Rotheram, who has more than 75,000 followers on X, is the mayor for the region covering Southport. He told PoliticsHome that although X had not ‘created’ the riots in his region and the rest of Britain, it had a ‘causal effect’ on the violence.

“It’s just disgusting. It (X) is really in the gutter and something has to happen,” Rotheram said.

“The time is coming when we all have to examine whether we should broadly withdraw from it and that there should be another platform.”

However, he said he realized it was “difficult” to navigate as a politician, as he also did not want to risk “leaving the landscape open” to the far right.

“There won’t be people like us countering things they say,” he said.

“It might be kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy, that we end up with this being a communication tool for the far right and Nazis and haters, and is that what we want? But something has to happen, and if they (the social media companies) don’t police it themselves, then the government has to step in and police it for them.”

Rotheram agreed with comments by London Mayor Sadiq Khan last week that online safety laws should be urgently reviewed. Asked if the plot goes far enough, Rotheram replied: “Possibly not.”

“We’ve seen it escalate in the last few days with Musk and the way he’s trying to intervene and deliberately mislead people in this country in a certain direction. It’s really dangerous,” Rotheram said.

“Musk is adding fuel to the fire. There don’t seem to be those controls, or if there are controls, they’re not interested in implementing those controls. It’s become the Wild West, where everything happens on social media at the moment.”

Starmer has suggested he would consider taking further steps to regulate social media in the UK following the riots. “I think we’re going to have to look more broadly at social media after this disruption,” he told reporters on Friday.

Despite concerns over the role the site has played in spreading disinformation in recent weeks, the prime minister’s official spokesman said on Monday there had been no change in how the government uses social media when asked if it might consider leaving X.

They said the communications strategy aims to “reach the widest possible audience, and a number of channels are used to ensure we do that.”

The spokesman also declined to engage with Musk’s comments about Starmer’s handling of the riots, saying they would not get involved in a “back and forth” with the X owner. However, they said the Prime Minister would “completely disagree” when asked about Reform UK’s Nigel Farage claiming he is the “biggest threat to free speech” Britain has seen.

Merseyside was one of the areas affected by the riots, along with other cities in the north of England such as Middlesbrough and Hartlepool.

Last week, the The Labor MP for Middlesbrough said PoliticsHome that a legacy of “rampant inequality” had paved the way for “appalling behavior and abuse” to take hold in Teesside.

Rotheram appeared to agree that this had also been the case in his region, claiming social media had “really tapped into” some of the arguments that people were being left behind by the government.

“Inequality always has, maybe always will be… but there has to be a sense of justice, right?” he said.

“And that’s where people have been able to exploit the impressionable, the vulnerable, because it’s an easy argument, right? The reason your life is difficult, that your circumstances are the way they are, is because of someone else. Someone else is getting what you should be getting.”

Rotheram added that he had submitted a proposal to No10 outlining what would need to be done to help Southport recover from both the tragic deaths and injuries of the young girls in the knife attack, and also the riots that followed.

“It is a number of requests for the government to say, after what has happened, this is specific to Southport.

“So after what happened there, there will need to be some interventions quite quickly, but there also needs to be some ongoing support for that area, because they have to deal with the absolute, unfathomable tragedy of what happened, but then equally, the madness in what happened in their neighborhood.”

This is likely to include forms of community support and mental health, particularly for young people and children in the area.

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