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UK's PM criticized for comments that might have caused assault against rival

The United Kingdom's prime minister, already under pressure from lawmakers for his alleged lockdown breaches, faced fresh criticism on Tuesday after incendiary and inaccurate comments he made appeared to trigger an angry mob's haranguing of a major political rival.

Boris Johnson said last week during a combative exchange in Parliament with Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour Party, that his rival also had leadership failings, because did not prosecute Jimmy Savile, a television and radio personality who was found, after his death, to have been a prolific pedophile.

The comments were inaccurate because Starmer, who had been director of public prosecutions at the Crown Prosecution Service, had never been asked to look at Savile's case because he was not under suspicion at the time.

Johnson's claim Starmer spent "most of his time prosecuting journalists and failing to prosecute Jimmy Savile" immediately caused outrage, and elicited calls for him to retract it and apologize.

The comments, which political pundits said Johnson may have made to deflect attention away from his alleged indiscretions, led to the resignation of one of his top advisers, who walked off the job in disgust.

On Monday, an angry mob surrounded Starmer on the street outside his offices, and berated him for a range of things, including Johnson's allegation that he failed to prosecute Savile. One of those taking part carried a noose and another shouted "pedophile protector".

The Guardian newspaper said at least 10 horrified Conservative Party lawmakers have since joined the Labour Party in demanding Johnson apologize and retract his comments about Starmer.

Tobias Elwood, a Conservative Party lawmaker who chairs the House of Commons' defense committee, likened the inaccurate claim and reluctance to set the record straight to the behavior of former United States president Donald Trump.

He tweeted: "Let's stop this drift towards a Trumpian style of politics from becoming the norm."

The Financial Times said Chris Bryant, the Labour Party's chair of the Commons standards committee, also said Johnson had been using "the Donald Trump playbook".

Roger Gale, a senior lawmaker in Johnson's Conservative Party, said he thought the assault on Starmer was "the direct result of the deliberately careless use of language in the (House of Commons)".

The Financial Times newspaper quoted the Labour Party's shadow foreign secretary, David Lammy, who was with Starmer when he was surrounded by the right-wing mob, as saying "conspiracy theorist thugs" had "repeated slurs we heard from Boris Johnson last week".

Rosena Allin-Khan, the Labour Party's spokesperson on mental health issues, said on Radio 4's Today program on Tuesday "words have consequences".

"He could make this better and come to the House of Commons and make an unreserved apology for his awful smearing of last week," she said.

But Johnson's office told the BBC he had "other stuff to get on with today".

Johnson, while refusing to apologize, did, however, tweet that the mob's behavior was "absolutely disgraceful" and "completely unacceptable".