Video shows Britain's Keir Starmer thrown out of pub over Covid rules, not 'support for Muslims'

"The British prime minister went to a bar and was thrown out by the angry owner: 'You like Muslims so go elsewhere, you're not welcome here!'" read a simplified Chinese X post shared on August 16, 2024.

The video shows a man shouting "get out of my pub" to Starmer, who leaves the venue wearing a black mask.

Image

Screenshot of the false X post, captured on August 19, 2024

The video was spread following far-right riots across England and Northern Ireland which targeted Muslim and migrant communities after a deadly attack on a dance class in Southport, northwest England (archived link).

The violence was initially fuelled by false rumours spread online that the perpetrator was a Muslim asylum seeker.

Starmer vowed to maintain intensive efforts to stop further riots as courts started convicting people for their roles in the unrest (archived link).

The pub video was viewed hundreds of thousands of times across X, Facebook, Weibo, and in posts in multiple languages, including English, Thai and Hindi.

But the footage is old and unrelated to the Muslim community.

Claim lacks context

A reverse image search of a keyframe from the video and keyword searches found the same footage published by the Telegraph on April 19, 2021 (archived link).

The article details how Starmer was on a campaign visit as opposition leader to the city of Bath when the co-owner of a pub told him to leave.

Below is a screenshot comparison of the video shared in the false X post (left) and the video published by The Telegraph (right):

Image

Screenshot comparison of the video shared in the false X post (left) and the footage published by the Telegraph (right)

The BBC interviewed The Raven pub landlord, Rod Humphris, who said he was unhappy with the response by Starmer's Labour Party to government lockdown measures introduced by then-prime minister Boris Johnson (archived link).

On the day of the incident, the pub said on social media that there was "no intention by The Raven to hijack Keir Starmer's visit to Bath. Rod's opinion is his own" (archived link).

Labour's press office said the clip "shows Keir Starmer being confronted by someone spreading dangerous misinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic" (archived link).

The BBC and British newspaper The Guardian also published footage of the confrontation in April 2021 (archived links here and here).