Prime Minister warns UK has ‘cohort of loners who are extreme and need to be factored in’ to security plans
Sir Keir Starmer has warned the UK has a “cohort of loners who are extreme and need to be factored in” as a leaked Home Office review said the UK should deal with extremism by focusing on concerning behaviours and activity rather than ideologies.
The prime minister said his government is “looking carefully where the key challenges” on extremism are, adding it is “very important” to focus on threats “so we can deploy our resource properly”.
“Obviously, that’s now informed with what I said last week in the aftermath of the Southport murders, where we’ve got the additional challenge, I think, of a cohort of loners who are extreme and they need to be factored in,” he said.
“So that’s the focus. In the end, what this comes down to is the safety and security of people across the United Kingdom, that’s my number one focus.”
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Sir Keir was speaking after a leaked Home Office extremism review suggested the UK should be focusing on behaviours and activities such as spreading conspiracy theories, misogyny, influencing racism and involvement in “an online subculture called the manosphere”.
The Home Office said Islamism and extreme right-wing ideologies are the “most prominent” issues they are tackling today.
In August, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said the Home Office was conducting a “rapid analytical spring on extremism” to map and monitor trends and inform the government’s approach to extremism.
Last week, Sir Keir Starmer said he would change the law if needed to recognise the new threat posed by extremists without specific ideologies ahead of the jailing of Axel Rudakubana for the stabbing to death of three young girls in Southport last summer.
The 18-year-old had been referred to the anti-terror Prevent programme three times but was not deemed as an extremist under the scheme’s criteria. And, although he pleaded guilty to murder, police were unable to identify Rudakubana’s motive, so his crimes fell outside the definition of terrorism.
Alice da Silva Aguiar, Elsie Dot Stancombe and Bebe King were murdered by Axel Rudakubana
Recommendations could be breach of freedom of speech
The leaked review, obtained ahead of its publication by the Policy Exchange thinktank, recommends reversing the guidance, introduced by then Home Secretary Suella Braverman, for police to reduce dealing with non-hate crime incidents.
It says a new crime, making “harmful communications” online illegal, should be introduced instead. The Conservative government rejected this on freedom of speech grounds.
Policy Exchange’s Paul Stott and Andrew Gilligan said recommendations to class claims of two-tier policing as a “right-wing extremist narrative” will also raise concerns over freedom of speech.
Dangerous individuals could be missed
They said including “behaviours” such as violence against women and girls, spreading misinformation and an interest in gore or extreme violence in the definition of extremism could “swamp already stretched counter-extremism staff and counter-terror police with thousands of new cases”.
This could increase the risk “that genuinely dangerous individuals are missed – it risks addressing symptoms, not causes”, Policy Exchange said.
The review itself admits many who display such behaviours are not extremists.
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Could the Southport killings have been prevented?
Review ‘downplays Islamism’
Following Rudakubana’s guilty plea last week, Sir Keir said the UK “faces a new threat” and the teenager represented a new kind of threat with “acts of extreme violence perpetrated by loners, misfits, young men in their bedroom, accessing all manner of material online, desperate for notoriety”.
He said he would change the law, if needed, “to recognise this new and dangerous threat” and said a review of “our entire counter-extremism system” would take place “to make sure we have what we need to defeat it”.
The review also “de-centres and downplays Islamism, by far the greatest threat to national security”, Policy Exchange said.
It said environmental extremism and Hindu extremism should be tackled, as well as “left-wing, anarchist and single issue extremism”.
And Policy Exchange said it has “ignored, even repudiated” recommendations by previous Prevent reviewer William Shawcross that the programme is the wrong place for dealing with the psychologically unstable.
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‘Southport must be a line in the sand,’ the PM says
Government focused on Islamism and right-wing ideologies
A Home Office spokesperson said: “The counter-extremism sprint sought to comprehensively assess the challenge facing our country and lay the foundations for a new approach to tackling extremism – so we can stop people being drawn towards hateful ideologies.
“This includes tackling Islamism and extreme right-wing ideologies, which are the most prominent today.
“The findings from the sprint have not been formally agreed by ministers and we are considering a wide range of potential next steps arising from that work.”
Conservative shadow home secretary Chris Philp said: “By extending the definition of extremism so widely, the government risks losing focus on ideologically motivated terrorists who pose the most risk to life.
“In fact, the Shawcross Review of Prevent made clear that counter-extremism and the counterterrorism strategy should be more focused on terrorist ideology, not less.
“Prevent must be equipped to deal with the terrorist threats in our society, and we should not be dialling back efforts to confront this.
“What the government seems to be planning is a backwards step in the interests of the political correctness we know Keir Starmer loves.
“Starmer wants the thought police to stop anyone telling uncomfortable truths that he and his left-wing lawyer friends don’t like.”
The family of a father shot dead in a suspected case of mistaken identity in north London have said he “deserves justice” as they appealed for information.
Mahad Abdi Mohamed, 27, died from a gunshot wound to the head in hospital after he was hit with bullets fired from a stolen Mitsubishi Outlander, which was later found burnt out.
Detectives believe those responsible for his murder had set out to hurt someone else in a “pre-meditated and targeted attack” in Waverley Road, Tottenham, at 8.45pm on Thursday 20 March.
Mr Abdi Mohamed’s younger sister, Amal Abdi Mohamed, 23, said he was a “loving father” to his five-year-old son, who “looked up to him like a superhero”, and was planning to get married in the summer.
Mahad Abdi Mohamed with his sister, Amal Abdi Mohamed. Pic: Met Police
“He was taken away from us through gun violence,” she said.
“A bullet didn’t just take his life, it tore through our family, through our heart, and it’s truly shocking, it’s devastating, and it’s so senseless, because this type of violence should never be normal.
“It should never be something a family ever has to expect, prepare for, or live with.”
Mr Abdi’s 26-year-old friend, with whom he had been breaking his Ramadan fast, was also shot in the leg and was treated in hospital for a wound police said was not life-changing.
The Metropolitan Police arrested four men on suspicion of murder, who have been released on bail pending further investigations.
Detectives are appealing for witnesses who saw a silver Mitsubishi Outlander in the area, which was found burnt out in Runcorn Close, the following morning.
A Mitsubishi was found burnt out the following day. Pic: Met Police
“This tragic event and Mahad’s death, has had a profound impact on the community and all those who loved him. Someone out there knows what happened. And that person, or people, must come forward,” said Detective Chief Inspector Rebecca Woodsford.
“Regardless of how small you think your information is, please share it with us. It could be the missing link we need to secure justice for Mahad and his family.”
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‘To stay silent is to be complicit’
Many of Mr Abdi Mohamed’s family members were in tears as they visited the scene of his murder as part of the appeal for information.
“My sweet Mahad was the kind of person who could light up a room without even trying,” said his sister.
“His laugh was so loud, and it still echoes in our memories.”
Ms Abdi Mohamed said her brother “was funny, he was honest, and overall he was just a good man” but “wasn’t perfect”.
She said he had “made mistakes but turned his life around” working at Waterloo Station, and part-time at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and Royal Ascot as a security guard.
Mr Abdi Mohamed with his mother, Zahra Ali Seef. Pic: Met Police
“How do you look at a child who adored him day and night, and tell them that he’s gone and you don’t have the answers why? That boy will have to grow up with no dad,” she said.
“If you think you may know anything or have seen anything – you may think it doesn’t matter, but it might be the key to giving us an answer, and it might be the thing that finally lets our family take a breath.
“To stay silent is to be complicit.
“To stay silent is to let a grieving mother suffer in confusion. To stay silent is to let a little boy grow up not knowing what happened to his father.
“If you know something and you haven’t come forward, please think about that. Think about a family that cannot begin to heal because the truth is still hiding in the shadows. My brother deserves better. He deserves justice.”
UK
Post Office Capture scandal: Sir Alan Bates calls for those responsible for wrongful convictions to be ‘brought to account’
Sir Alan Bates has called for those responsible for the wrongful convictions of sub postmasters in the Capture IT scandal to be “brought to account”.
It comes after Sky News unearthed a report showing Post Office lawyers knew of faults in the software nearly three decades ago.
The documents, found in a garage by a retired computer expert, describe the Capture system as “an accident waiting to happen”.
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Post Office: The lost ‘Capture’ files
Sir Alan said the Sky News investigation showed “yet another failure of government oversight; another failure of the Post Office board to ensure [the] Post Office recruited senior people competent of bringing in IT systems” and management that was “out of touch with what was going on within its organisation”.
The unearthed Capture report was commissioned by the defence team for sub postmistress Patricia Owen and served on the Post Office in 1998 at her trial.
It described the software as “quite capable of producing absurd gibberish” and concluded “reasonable doubt” existed as to “whether any criminal offence” had taken place.
Ms Owen was found guilty of stealing from her branch and given a suspended prison sentence.
She died in 2003 and her family had always believed the computer expert, who was due to give evidence on the report, “never turned up”.
Patricia Owen (right) was convicted in 1998 of stealing from her post office branch. She died in 2003
Adrian Montagu reached out after seeing a Sky News report earlier this year and said he was actually stood down by the defending barrister with “no reason given”.
The barrister said he had no recollection of the case.
Victims and their lawyers hope the newly found “damning” expert report, which may never have been seen by a jury, could help overturn Capture convictions.
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What is the Capture scandal?
‘These people have to be brought to account’
Sir Alan, the leading campaigner for victims of the Horizon Post Office scandal, said while “no programme is bug free, why [was the] Post Office allowed to transfer the financial risk from these bugs on to a third party ie the sub postmaster, and why did its lawyers continue with prosecutions seemingly knowing of these system bugs?”
He continued: “Whether it was incompetence or corporate malice, these people have to be brought to account for their actions, be it for Capture or Horizon.”
More than 100 victims have come forward
More than 100 victims, including those who were not convicted but who were affected by the faulty software, have so far come forward.
Capture was used in 2,500 branches between 1992 and 1999, just before Horizon was introduced – which saw hundreds wrongfully convicted.
The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), the body responsible for investigating potential miscarriages of justice, is currently looking at a number of Capture convictions.
A CCRC spokesperson told Sky News: “We have received applications regarding 29 convictions which pre-date Horizon.
25 of these applications are being actively investigated by case review managers, and two more recent applications are in the preparatory stage and will be assigned to case review managers before the end of June.
“We have issued notices under s.17 of the Criminal Appeal Act 1995 to Post Office Ltd requiring them to produce all material relating to the applications received.
“To date, POL have provided some material in relation to 17 of the cases and confirmed that they hold no material in relation to another 5. The CCRC is awaiting a response from POL in relation to 6 cases.”
A spokesperson for the Department for Business and Trade said: “Postmasters negatively affected by Capture endured immeasurable suffering. We continue to listen to those who have been sharing their stories on the Capture system, and have taken their thoughts on board when designing the Capture Redress Scheme.”
Sir Keir Starmer could end up allowing Donald Trump to use British bases to launch strikes on Iran, Harriet Harman has said.
Speaking to Beth Rigby on the Electoral Dysfunction podcast, Baroness Harman said this was despite the prime minister being part of a generation “shaped” by opposition to the Iraq War.
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Baroness Harman was solicitor general when Sir Tony Blair decided to take Britain to war in Iraq alongside the United States in 2003.
She said the decisions made by Sir Tony would be “burning bright” in Sir Keir‘s mind.
Tony Blair’s decision to go to war in Iraq will be ‘burning bright’ in the PM’s mind, Baroness Harman said. Pic: PA
“He’s part of the political generation of the Labour Party that grew up, which was shaped by its opposition to what Tony Blair was doing in relation to Iraq,” Baroness Harman said.
“So it would be a massive change for him.”
Asked if the UK could end up giving permission for US aircraft to use British military bases on Cyprus and Diego Garcia, but not go any further than that, Baroness Harman said: “Exactly”.
Soldiers guard the security gate of RAF Akrotiri, a British military base in Cyprus. File pic: Reuters
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Sky News reported on Thursday that Attorney General Richard Hermer has raised questions over whether Israel’s actions in Iran are lawful, potentially limiting what support he believes the UK could offer the US.
Baroness Harman said that for Sir Keir, the “rules-based international order is the most important thing”.
“If the attorney general says that the government can’t do something because it’s illegal, it can’t do it. So he’s in a very crucial position,” she added.
Harriet Harman (R) with Beth Rigby
But Baroness Harman said it would be difficult for Sir Keir to say “thank you for the trade deal” to Mr Trump and then deny the president use of the airbases.
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