A mother-of-three who works as a swimwear designer has been arrested on suspicion of stirring racial hatred by spreading a fake Muslim name for the suspect in the Southport attack. Bernadette Spofforth, 55, was taken in for questioning by police on Thursday.

Foreign agitators, including the Russian state news channel, had leapt upon false claims the Southport suspect was a small boats immigrant and there have been claims this played a role in provoking days of riots and unrest.

Police said Spofforth had been arrested on suspicion of publishing written material to stir up racial hatred, a public order offence under a 1986 law, and false communications, an offence created under the Online Safety Act 2023.

Last week The Times revealed that Spofforth, who owns a dog and enjoys walking, lives a well-to-do family life in a £1.5 million house in the rural north of England.

The businesswoman was a campaigner against Covid lockdowns and net zero policies, and until recently was the managing director of a children’s clothing company called Splash About International. She also has several US patents to her name.

She has been accused of writing on her account that Ali Al-Shakati was the Southport suspect, an “asylum seeker who came to the UK by boat last year”, and was on an “MI6 watch list”. “If this is true, then all hell is about the break loose”, the post, believed to be under consideration, said.

An hour after publishing the post at 4.49pm on Monday — she deleted it.

Spofforth denied she was the first to share the name, saying she copied it from a fellow lockdown sceptic’s account. She said it was a “really stupid mistake” that she regretted.

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The website Logically, which uses open source investigators and data science to report on misinformation, analysed the spread. It found the fake news spread around the internet at speed, suggesting it may have helped provoke the anti-immigration riot in Southport the following evening.

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