Priti Patel, the home secretary, has said she backs the idea of a new law to make it easier to prosecute people who damage war memorials. She was speaking in the Commons during a statement on the Black Lives Matters protests and responding to the Conservative MP Jonathan Gullis who said residents in his Stoke-on-Trent North constituency were “outraged” at the Cenotaph graffiti and attempts to burn the Union flag. He asked Patel if she would back a desecration of war memorials bill. Patel replied: I completely support the sentiment and the point [Gullis] has just made. Earlier she said the “hooliganism” of a minority of people attending the protests at the weekend was “utterly indefensible”. (See 5.16pm.) Patel said that she would not “take lectures” from the opposition about racism because she had been a victim of it herself. (See 5.42pm.) She made the comment in response to claims that her hardline opening statement implied that she did not fully understand the anger felt by people about structural racism in Britain. Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, adopted a more empathetic tone in his own statement about the protests. Like Patel and other government colleagues, he condemned the violence. But he was better at expressing what sounded like genuine commitment to the ongoing cause of building “a better society”. (See 4.45pm.) Sir Keir Starmer has said that it was “totally wrong” for BLM protesters in Bristol to pull down the statue of the slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol yesterday. The toppling of the Colston statue has emboldened those seeking to replace other monuments or names associated with the slave trade or imperialism. In Oxford the campaign to get rid of a statute of Cecil Rhodes has been revived. In Bristol the Colston’s girls’ school has taken down its own Colston statute, and the Colston Hall is removing external signage ahead of a formal name change later this year. (See 3.23pm.) That is all from me for today. There is more politics coverage on our UK coronavirus live blog, which has been covering Matt Hancock at the UK government’s daily press conference.
And for the latest on the Black Lives Matters protests in America, here is our US live blog.