Is Sir Keir Starmer a Right-wing extremist?
Is Sir Keir Starmer KC – Left-wing human rights lawyer, former director of public prosecutions, and Labour Prime Minister of the United Kingdom – a dangerous Right-wing extremist? Common sense, evidence and reality say emphatically not. Government materials issued as part of Prevent training programmes give a less clear answer.
The Prime Minister's warning that uncontrolled migration risks turning Britain into an 'island of strangers' would appear to risk falling foul of the definitions used in a Prevent course taken by thousands of public sector professionals with a duty to make referrals to the scheme. This defines 'cultural nationalism' as a type of extreme Right-wing terrorist ideology, including the belief that 'Western culture is under threat from mass migration and a lack of integration by certain ethnic and cultural groups'.
Sir Keir is no more an extremist than any other writer who has expressed concern over the unprecedented scale and pace of migration and cultural change in recent years. Why, then, has the Government risked labelling him as such?
The short answer is that, riddled with political anxieties over the composition of terrorism in Britain – 80 per cent of the Counter Terrorism Police network's live investigations involved Islamism in 2023, compared with 10 per cent for the extreme Right – Prevent has given the appearance of loosening the definition of the latter in order to provide an artificial 'balance' to its work.
As the Shawcross Review found in 2023, the programme has adopted a 'double standard' when dealing with Islamists and the extreme Right. The results have been farcical, with an 'expansive' definition of Right-wing extremism capturing 'mildly controversial or provocative forms of mainstream, Right-wing leaning commentary that have no meaningful connection to terrorism or radicalisation' even while Prevent funded organisations whose leaders have publicly made statements 'sympathetic to the Taliban' and referred to militant Islamists as 'so-called 'terrorists' of the legitimate resistance groups'.
Such absurdities might be overlooked if Prevent had also proved ruthlessly effective at preventing atrocities. It has not. Prevent has failed to identify dangerous and violent suspects on multiple occasions, including Southport killer Axel Rudakubana, who was referred and dismissed on three occasions before carrying out his attack.
A deradicalisation programme that seems to show less interest in deradicalising potential terrorists than in policing Right-wing thought is unfit for purpose. It beggars belief that two years after the Shawcross Review we are once again having the same conversations. Prevent must be reformed – or if incapable of change, dismantled entirely.
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