A man has been arrested in London after an incident in Birmingham in which a man was run over by a van after flags were removed from lamp-posts.

Officers arrested the suspect at Euston station near the meeting point of the “Unite the Kingdom” march. Another man was arrested on suspicion of encouraging people to attack a police officer.

West Midlands police confirmed on Friday it was investigating an incident where a man was run over by a van on Thursday evening in the Birmingham suburb of Stirchley.

A man in his 30s suffered a broken leg that required surgery. He remained in hospital after the incident on Thursday evening, police said.

A total of 31 arrests have been made at the Unite the Kingdom and Nakba Day protests in London as of about 4.30pm on Saturday, police said.

The Metropolitan police posted on X: “The rallies for both protests are ongoing.

“There have so far been 31 arrests across the whole operation.

“We will provide a more detailed breakdown at the conclusion.

“While this may seem high, to this point both protests have proceeded largely without significant incident.”

Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn told supporters at the rally in Pall Mall that Westminster needs a change in “policy” not “personalities”.

The Your Party co-founder said: “Whatever happens to Keir Starmer, I don’t know if he’s going to survive the coup, he should know about coups. I know about coups. I know what goes on.

“But I would say that if there’s to be a change, it’s got to be a change of policy, not the personalities.”

He added: “To those in Reform and the far right that do so much to attack us all and attack our communities, your hatred can succeed in dividing people, but your hatred will not build one council house, will not improve one hospital, will not teach one child, will not end somebody’s homeless life on the streets of London.

“The only thing that can change that is a change of economic, social, and international policy – that’s what brings us together.”

There are flyers lying on the road where people are marching for the Unite the Kingdom rally that say they want to secure “a future for white people”.

The flyer says: “In a country saturated with degenerates, grifters and imported political enemies … We are a brotherhood of White Europeans who share the same values.”

The text says anyone can join their “vanguard” and they can remain anonymous.

Here are some of the latest images from the pro-Palestine march:

The Unite the Kingdom march appears to be majority male and white, but there are a few families here and, very rarely, a person of colour.

Many people are holding crosses and signs related to Christianity. Some people are dressed as crusader-style knights, and one man held a mock medieval shield with a cross on it.

One flyer I’ve picked up says there is a “battle for Britain”, a country it describes as a “beacon of light in a dark world – a Christian nation built on truth, honour, and freedom”.

But there are also contingents of British-Iranian protesters who are waving the old Iranian flag. They are calling for the overthrow of the Iranian government and the reinstatement of the secular monarchy. This movement has found some common ground with sections (but not all) of the UK far-right, particularly anti-Islamism and support for the US and Israeli war on Iran.

Zarah Sultana, co-founder of Your Party, has told pro-Palestine protesters in Pall Mall that Andy Burnham is “not an alternative” to Keir Starmer.

“The establishment wants us to believe that change will come from swapping one Labour leader for another,” she said, according to PA.

“Perhaps Keir Starmer will be replaced by Andy Burnham, but let’s be honest, this is Andy Burnham, who voted for the Iraq war, an illegal war that killed millions of people.”

Burnham has been given the go-ahead to stand in the candidate selection process for the upcoming Makerfield byelection. He is widely considered one of the frontrunners to topple prime minister Keir Starmer.

Meanwhile, Wes Streeting is speaking publicly for the first time since resigning as health secretary this week.

Addressing a conference hosted by Labour-aligned political organisation Progress, Streeting commented on the Unite the Kingdom march taking place in London.

He said:

And what a day for us to have gathered. Today, Tommy Robinson and his followers are marching through the streets of our capital city. The last time he did, ministers were sent out by No 10 with a media script to explain the march rather than condemn it.

What we’ve experienced in our country in recent months is a type of racism that we haven’t seen on our streets since the 1970s and 1980s. Our country’s flags flown from lamp-posts and flyovers not as a symbol of national pride, but as a symbol of division, a message that those flags belong to people who look like me and not people who look like our deputy prime minister, our home secretary or our mayor of London.

There are thousands of far-right protesters in London right now, and lots of the city’s residents and tourists are bumping into them.

One person who turned a corner to see a sea of St George crosses suddenly stopped in her tracks. “Fucking hell,” she uttered.

The far-right rally blocked off the street where the historic five-star hotel, the Kimpton Fitzroy, is located. A calm-looking concierge was giving tourists carrying heavy suitcases advice on how to get past the crowds to nearby transport.

On the pavement nearby, a man shouts out: “Tommy Tom Tom Tom Robinson.”

Many people on the march are drinking. Irish pub chain O’Neill’s in Euston Road was standing-only by midday. Another nearby pub, Mabel’s Tavern, had people sprawling out into the street. Both pubs were using bouncers.

There is a noticeable amount of drinking at the rally, which is mainly populated by men. Bins are overflowing with cans, and some men are walking along with pint glasses they took when walking out of a pub. One man comes out a small shop carrying an unopened bottle of Jim Beam bourbon whiskey. “What the fuck have you got?” his friend asks, laughing.

Hundreds of Unite the Kingdom supporters are at Parliament Square, the endpoint of the march.

Labour MP for Poplar and Limehouse, Apsana Begum, is at the pro-Palestine march, where she addressed a crowd of people at Pall Mall.

PA has reported some of her remarks:

We know that the far right marches because our solidarity with the Palestinian people threatens their cause … the one which is based on intolerance, hatred, and division.

But today, we march, Muslims, Jews, Christians, people of all faiths and none, from all ages, from all ethnic backgrounds, bound by our shared humanity and our just purpose.

We will not be divided by the far right.

We will not be silenced by any government, and we will not go quietly while crimes against humanity continue and are committed with impunity.

Katie Hopkins, the former reality TV star who previously compared migrants to cockroaches, told crowds at the Unite the Kingdom protest in a video message she was “so proud of you”, PA reports.

She said:

I want to thank you all for being at the Unite the Kingdom rally today, whether you’re here in London or joining us from overseas, welcome to Great Britain.

I want to say a few things to you, if I may. I see you, and I see our capital city, and it looks for the first time in a very long time like the place that I remember, and our capital city and a place that we can all call home, and I’m so proud of you.

Far-right protesters have arrived into London through the capital’s major train stations in Kings Cross and Euston, and are walking south towards parliament.

Many people arrived with England flags and union jacks wrapped over their backs, some with “STOP THE BOATS” written on them. For those who did not bring their own, they could buy flags – or bucket hats with flags on them – from any of the multiple street sellers outside the station.

One seller is calling out: “Flags or hats, sir?” as men passed by. Dozens of police officers are standing around, and police vans were parked along the road.

Some protesters are stopping to take photos of a hot pink McLaren sportscar outside St Pancras, before heading down to the demonstration.

Many people are visibly drunk. A woman on the protest raised her middle finger to a helicopter overhead with a camera attached to it. “Hi,” she says. “Fuck off”.

Tommy Robinson has posted a video on X from his Unite the Kingdom rally, claiming it numbers in the “millions” and is “the biggest event in British history”.

Police have yet to provide estimates on the number of demonstrators today, but last year’s event in September is thought to have drawn somewhere between 110,000 and 150,000 people.

The pro-Palestine march today marks the Nakba, or catastrophe, of 1948, in which about 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homeland after the creation of Israel. The march also includes anti-racism counter-protesters to Tommy Robinson’s rally.

Tommy Robinson spotted among the crowds at his Unite the Kingdom rally:

PA reported several people in the crowds at the pro-Palestine march chanting “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”.

The chant has been the subject of intense political debate, with Keir Starmer previously saying he believed it was antisemitic.

Met police guidance states the slogan “could potentially constitute an offence, but our advice at this point is that we would not likely pursue a prosecution”.

Here’s an explainer by the Guardian’s Daniel Boffey on where the chant comes from and what it means:

A woman has been arrested after she appeared to refuse to remove a fabric face mask she was wearing at a pro-Palestine protest forming up in South Kensington, the Press Association reports.

She was part of a group of protesters who were all asked to remove fabric and surgical face coverings.

A separate group, who were wearing orange jumpsuits with masks over their faces bearing a photo of Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, were also asked to remove their masks.

Speakers at today’s far-right rally, according to its advertising, include the mother of a woman killed by an asylum seeker, and the American conspiracy theorist Glenn Beck, a former anchor on the rightwing Fox News channel who left amid claims he was too extreme for the Rupert Murdoch-owned network.

March organiser Tommy Robinson went to the US in February where in Washington he met more than a dozen lawmakers and was hosted by the US state department. Previously he had been banned from entering the US because of criminal convictions.

The promotion material for the march features an AI-generated video that denounces Muslims and ends with a sequence where Robinson is on a stage adored by a crowd of tens of thousands and contains the line: “Tommy Robinson’s vision, this is our destiny.”

While the video for UTK may be AI fantasy, Nick Lowles, of Hope Not Hate, said the reality was that Robinson was popular among a significant minority of Britons.

Polling shows he is known by more than 80% of respondents, and while the number of those disliking him is high, 17% like him: “Lennon can put more people on the streets than any other person. He is a phenomenon,” said Lowles.

Here are some of the latest images of protesters gathering in London:

The human rights group Amnesty International has condemned the Unite the Kingdom rally as “a march that brings racism, violence and fear to the streets of London”.

The group’s UK chief executive, Kerry Moscogiuri, said the rally organised by Tommy Robinson aims to “whip up hatred towards Muslims, migrants and people of colour”.

She added:

This rally is driven by a vicious combination of tech companies profiting off the amplification of hate online, funding by the likes of US tech billionaire Robert Shillman to further their own agendas and the scapegoating of migrants and people of colour for rising inequality by media commentators. Instead of countering this narrative, we have seen politicians responding by doubling down on racist rhetoric.”

As the Guardian’s Daniel Boffey reported previously, Shillman, known as Dr Bob, financed a fellowship that helped pay for Robinson to be employed by the rightwing Canadian media website, Rebel Media, now called Rebel News, on a salary of about £5,000 a month.

Moscogiuri called on the government to “do more to protect racialised communities from this rising tide of violence and hate, and stop us going down this dangerous path”.

Nick Lowles, director of the anti-fascist campaign group Hope Not Hate, has shared a poll on Tommy Robinson’s popularity this morning as the far-right leader’s Unite the Kingdom rally gathers pace.

According to a poll of 45,000 people conducted by Hope Not Hate, 17% of British people like Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. This rose to 34% among men aged between 25 and 34.

In a post on X, Lowles said: “Obviously a lot more people disliked him, but his reach and support is like nothing we have seen before.

“Some people might question why I post this, it is simple. Unless we are honest about what we are up against, then we will not properly be able to find ways to counter him – especially amongst those people who are slightly attracted to him but who can be persuaded otherwise.”

We have some early images on the newswires of demonstrators gathering in Kingsway in central London for Tommy Robinson’s Unite the Kingdom rally:

Sir Mark Rowley, commissioner of the Metropolitan police, used a separate article in The Muslim News, a UK-based outlet, to insist that both protests are being policed on exactly the same basis, under the same legal framework, with similar conditions and timings and the same expectations.

Pointing out that specific conditions relating to speakers at both protests had been introduced for the first time, he said: “These place a responsibility on organisers to ensure that those they invite do not use these events as a platform for unlawful extremism or hate speech. Where this happens, both the speaker and the organisers will face consequences.”

Rowley added: “Our duty is clear: to protect communities, to uphold free speech and to police lawful protest without fear or favour. We will make arrests where we see anti-Muslim and antisemitic hate crimes.”

However, one of the organisers of the pro-Palestinian march today, John Rees, accused Rowley of being “reckless” with free speech.

“I think it is amazing that in the middle of a speech a police man will turn up on stage and arrest somebody for saying something,” Rees told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“If you are anyone in this country who is concerned about civil liberties and freedom of speech then I think we are going to a very dark place when that happens.”

Rees accused the police of allowing Tommy Robinson to “take over” the entirety of the area around Whitehall, the governmental district of London, after he had chosen today in a deliberately provocative way to ensure both protests coincided.

Strict conditions on the timings and the routes of both demonstrations are in place.

Tommy Robinson’s Unite the Kingdom march will begin in Kingsway and move along the Strand before ending in Parliament Square. Crowds are expected to gather for the rally from 11am.

Meanwhile the annual pro-Palestine Nakba Day march begins at noon in Exhibition Road in Kensington before heading to Waterloo Place and finishing in Pall Mall.

Keir Starmer has described the far-right activist known as Tommy Robinson and others organising a major rally in London today as “individuals with long records of violence and extremism”.

As tens of thousands started their journeys into the city today ahead of the self-styled Unite the Kingdom (UTK) march, the prime minister used an article published on the website of LBC radio to again condemn Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon.

“Their goal is to inflame and divide. And they are seeking the support of far-right agitators around the world to make that happen,” wrote Starmer, whose government has blocked 11 people, including a Polish far-right MEP, from coming to Britain ahead of the event.

“I refuse to stand by and allow that poison to be imported into the UK,” he added.

It emerged on Friday that another of those banned from coming to UK is Ezra Levant, a long time Canadian supporter of Robinson, who has been involved in the activist’s reinvention of himself as an online influencer and self-styled journalist.

Starmer used the same article to also issue a warning to those taking part in the pro-Palestine Nakba Day rally, which is also taking place today along a different route in London.

Prosecutors have been told to consider whether protest placards, banners and chants viewed on social media may amount to offences of stirring up hatred during the rallies.

The new guidance, issued before what police have described as an “unprecedented” security operation, urges prosecutors to assess whether slogans, symbols or chants may influence audiences online if they are filmed and shared.

Starmer wrote: “The cause of a Palestinian state is just and, alongside a safe and secure Israel, one that is recognised by this government.

“But on marches that support that cause, it is not hard to find individuals who abuse it to spread antisemitism and intimidate Jewish communities. And this is taking place against the backdrop of a deeply worrying rise in antisemitic incidents – including terrorist attacks. The end result is that British Jews feel unsafe in their own streets.”