Home Office: ‘two-tier’ police claims are an ‘extreme right-wing’ narrative

You can tell a government report has gone down badly when ministers are distancing themselves before it has been officially published. Today, it’s the Home Office’s ‘Rapid Analytical Sprint,’ commissioned in the aftermath of the Southport riots last August to determine future counter-extremism policy, that is causing trouble for ministers. The leaked document claims that fears over two-tier policing are an ‘extreme right wing narrative’. It also says that grooming gangs – referred to as ‘alleged group-based sexual abuse’ – are an issue exploited by the far-right to stir hatred against Muslims.

Recommendations include the police increasing the use of controversial ‘non-crime hate incidents’ and the introduction of a new crime of ‘harmful communications’ to tackle online abuse of MPs. Both suggestions seem somewhat tin-eared, to say the least. The first recommendation appears to contradict a government promise, made after the row over the police investigation into Daily Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson, to strengthen protections for freedom of expression. The latter suggestion was ridiculed when it was first suggested as a response to the murder of the Conservative MP David Amess by an Islamist extremist in 2021.

The review’s censorious conclusions are supplemented by a dizzying array of what constitutes ‘behaviours and activity of concern.’ The ‘damaging extremist beliefs’ listed in the ‘Sprint’ include a vast range of attitudes and acts – among them misogyny, violence against women and girls, having ‘a fixture on gore and violence without adherence to an extremist ideology,’ ‘spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories’, ‘influencing racism and intolerance,’ ‘preventing integration’ or involvement in ‘an online subculture called the manosphere.’

Yet dramatically widening the definition of extremism in this way means significantly de-prioritising Islamism, which, as Policy Exchange notes, made up 80 per cent of police counter-terror workload last year.

It’s no surprise then that after the details of the review were leaked by the think tank Policy Exchange, Dan Jarvis, the Security Minister, said he and the Home Secretary had rejected the report’s recommendations, despite having commissioned the review. The complicating factor for ministers is that the report mirrors much of Keir Starmer’s earlier rhetoric on grooming gangs.

When the grooming gang scandal erupted again three weeks ago, the Prime Minister claimed that ‘far right’ talking points had leaked into the mainstream; this report does the same. That could make it more difficult for the government to distance itself from a report whose recommendations are clearly politically toxic.