Fear of offending minorities is putting the public in danger

If showing videos of Donald Trump is now sufficient to trigger a referral to Prevent, the Government’s anti-terrorism programme, then something has gone badly awry with the British state.

This is not an isolated absurdity. It is merely the latest example of a public bureaucracy that has lost its sense of proportion, zealously policing the expression of Right-of-centre views while exhibiting a marked reticence when faced with extremism emanating from the Left or from Islamist ideology.

We have recently seen Jamie Michael, a former Royal Marine, barred from working with children for protesting against illegal migration. Lucy Connolly and Allison Pearson have become standard-bearers for free speech. Each case is different, but the pattern is unmistakable: a governing culture that treats patriotism as a pathology, the English flag as a provocation and mild conservatism as a precursor to extremism.

Prevent itself began with a sound instinct. Established after the 7/7 bombings under Tony Blair, it was designed to identify those on the path to extremism and intervene early, before violence occurred. That objective remains unimpeachable. The Home Office maintains that more than 6,000 people have been diverted away from extremist ideologies through the programme, and there is no reason to doubt that Prevent, at its best, has saved lives.

Yet Prevent has also failed, repeatedly and catastrophically, in the moments that mattered most. Several terrorists who went on to kill. The murderer of Sir David Amess and the Southport terrorist had both previously passed through the Prevent system before they struck.

They were known, assessed, and then fell through the cracks. The last Conservative government commissioned Sir William Shawcross to conduct an independent review. His conclusions were stark. Prevent, he said, had succumbed to “mission creep”, had been insufficiently robust in tackling non-violent Islamist extremism, and operated a clear double standard: expansive in its treatment of the extreme Right, curiously narrow when confronting Islamism.

The statistics tell their own story. Around 80 per cent of MI5 and counter-terrorism police live investigations relate to Islamist extremism. Yet in 2020-21 only 22 per cent of Prevent referrals concerned Islamism.

Shawcross recorded testimony from a former senior counter-terrorism officer who suggested that this imbalance was driven less by threat assessment than by a desire to placate certain groups and preserve political support for the programme.

Prevent, in short, had become timid where it needed to be fearless. As home secretary when Shawcross delivered his report, I set about implementing his recommendations, most of which were completed.

But if authorities still believe that concern about mass migration amounts to terrorist ideology, that a video of Donald Trump might constitute a hate crime, or that books by Douglas Murray qualify as extremist material – as reported by The Telegraph earlier this year – then the deeper problem remains unresolved.

The uncomfortable truth is that Prevent is still missing the real extremists in our midst. What is required now is not cosmetic adjustment but a serious overhaul.

Referrals must once again correspond to the actual national security threat. The definition of extremism must be tightened so that mainstream, legitimately held Right-wing political views are no longer swept into the net. And above all, there must be a cultural change – one that permits, indeed demands, a more muscular approach to Islamist extremism in our communities.

Anti-Semitism must be recognised and confronted with far greater seriousness. Those celebrating the atrocities of October 7, defending Hamas or operating through groups such as Palestine Action should be a priority for intervention. There should be zero tolerance for hate preachers in mosques or radicalising imams in prisons. None of this is controversial; it is merely honest.

Yes, there is an extreme Right, and it should be monitored and challenged. But it is not comparable in scale or lethality to Islamist extremism in Britain today. To pretend otherwise is the refuge of politicians too frightened to name the principal threat for fear of offending minorities.

When officials and ministers insist on equating the two, they are not demonstrating balance; they are obscuring reality. In doing so, they leave the country less safe – and the public increasingly sceptical that the state still knows the difference between dissent and danger.