Report

Modern day Britain’s terror threat

Think tank: The Henry Jackson Society

Author(s): Dr Rakib Ehsan

October 10, 2021

This report from UK think tank the Henry Jackson Society looks at a mismatch between Britain’s counter-terrorism efforts and its overall terror threat.

This was published shortly after the terror-related killing of long-standing British parliamentarian Sir David Amess. The briefing argued that there is a fundamental mismatch between Britain’s counter-terrorism efforts and its overall terror threat. It found that despite the Government’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation repeatedly finding that the UK faces the greatest terroristic threat from Islamist extremism, far more public resources are being devoted to other forms of extremism. The briefing warned that “the UK cannot afford to be paralysed by political correctness and tribal identity politics in the fight against Islamist extremism – a terror threat that concerns both Muslims and non-Muslims in Britain to similar degrees”. The paper recommended that public authorities of relevance must provide a comprehensive explanation for forms of disconnection between the ideological composition of referral cases to Prevent (and cases which are eventually upgraded to the Channel component of CONTEST) and terror-related offences (including terrorist attacks).