What France's fight against Islamism can teach Labour

Spectator

a day ago

So far this year France has deported 64 individuals from its database of radical Islamists. More are planned in the coming weeks and months, putting the minister of the interior, Bruno Retailleau, on course to surpass last year's total of 142. A senior unnamed prefect was quoted in yesterday's Le Figaro declaring:
We are very committed to this issue; it is an ongoing effort by the state, given what is at stake. It is even monitored weekly by the (interior) minister at the central level.
Retailleau is supported by his predecessor, Gérald Darmanin, who has been the Minister of Justice since last December. It was Darmanin who last year commissioned a report into the Muslim Brotherhood, a report that, when published in May this year, revealed the disturbing extent of their growing influence in the country.
The government of France considers that the rights of the victims are the priority
When Darmanin ran the interior ministry, his chief of staff was Alexandre Brugère. He has been the prefect for western Paris since November last year and in that time he has been relentless in prioritising 'the deportation of undocumented foreigners who disturb public order'.
Brugère has this year expelled 370 undesirables, a 61 per cent increase on the same period in 2024. Some are petty criminals or members of drug cartels but most are radical Islamists. Last month Brugère expelled four such individuals, including a Syrian who had his refugee status revoked after expressing support for the Islamic State.
Brugère has promised to remain 'extremely firm in the fight against Islamism', conscious of the gravity of the threat posed by extremism. This was underlined earlier this year by Céline Berthon, the head of DGSI, France's equivalent of MI5. 'Our biggest challenge today is online radicalization,' she said in an interview in March, explaining how individuals 'can be influenced or controlled from outside, particularly by terrorist organizations present either in Syria and Iraq for the Islamic State, or in Afghanistan and Pakistan for the Islamic State in Khorasan.'
A similar warning was issued by MI5 Director General Ken McCallum last October. 'We're also seeing far too many cases where very young people are being drawn into poisonous online extremism,' said McCallum in a speech from the Counter Terrorism Operations Centre. The division of MI5's counter-terrorist work, he added, was 'roughly 75 per cent Islamist extremist, 25 per cent extreme right-wing terrorism'.
Doubtless MI5 is working as tirelessly as its French counterpart to monitor the Islamic extremists, but what is being done by the government? If Labour has deported any Islamic extremists flagged by MI5 they haven't been made public, which is perhaps surprising given the Prime Minister's oft-mentioned determination to clamp down on the extreme right.
Last week, it was announced that members of the government's national security and online information team (NSOIT) have been tracking people who make critical comments online about migrant hotels and policing standards. It is the same team deployed during the Covid Pandemic to keep tabs on anti-lockdown campaigners.
While Labour appears less ardent in its monitoring of Islamic extremism, the Tories can't claim to have done a great job either during their time in office. In April 2024 there was a pledge to introduce legislation to 'protect the public from…foreign nationals who are sowing division and spreading hate in communities, potentially having them removed from the country.'
Why so long? In 2017 – after seven years of Tory governance – it was reported that since 2004 Britain had deported 11 extremists; in the same period France had expelled 120.
The Conservatives' promise to finally act came to naught; three months later, they were out of office, replaced by a government led by Keir Starmer. This is the same Keir Starmer who, as a barrister in 2008, represented the Palestinian-born Abu Qatada as he fought a deportation order to Jordan where he was wanted on charges of terrorism. Among Qatada's many incendiary declarations was a 1999 fatwa 'authorising the killing of Jews, including Jewish children'.
Often described as Osama bin Laden's 'ambassador in Europe, Qatada sought to remain in Britain because – as Starmer told the judge – 'deportation and the revocation of refugee status both interfere with domestic civil rights'. The judge dismissed Starmer's argument as 'fallacious' but it took another five years before the government overcame the Human Rights lawyers and finally deported Qatada.
Starmer's role in defending Abu Qatada was a line of attack for Rishi Sunak in last year's televised election debates. The morning after the debate, the Labour party issued a statement in which they said: 'In this country, everyone is entitled to a defence, which means lawyers cannot choose who they work for.'
This line of argument was addressed by Bruno Retailleau in October last year, a month after he was appointed Minister of the Interior. 'In the face of disorder, we must find the right balance between protecting individual freedoms and protecting society,' he said. He then singled out the European Court of Human Rights, which had recently prevented France from deporting an Islamist and said in such a case 'the balance is no longer right, as we are protecting the rights of dangerous individuals more than those of the victims'.
Retailleau and the government of France consider that the rights of the victims are the priority and that dangerous individuals must be deported. This doesn't appear to be the priority of the British government.