Yvette Cooper wants to lock up your sons

In his independent review of the Prevent programme last year, Sir William Shawcross warned that something had gone very wrong with Britain’s counter-terrorism strategy. Instead of focusing on Islamism, Prevent was wasting its time investigating complaints of ‘far-right’ extremism from left-wing teachers, e.g. 14-year-old boys ‘caught’ watching TikTok videos of Nigel Farage. He has pointed out that 75 per cent of MI5’s caseload is taken up with Islamist threats, but 11 per cent of referrals to Prevent are related to Islamist terrorism. The result, Shawcross said, is a ‘dangerous’ surge in anti-Semitism, as we can see from the pro-Palestinian marches that have disfigured our cities for the past year. These reached their apotheosis last Saturday, when 300,000 protestors paraded through London spewing bile about the state of Israel and celebrating the largest pogrom against the Jews since the Holocaust.

If you think Yvette Cooper is going to rectify this, think again. In August, she announced a review of Britain’s counter-extremism programme, whereby the definition of extremism would be broadened to include ‘extreme misogyny’. Her priorities have evidently taken root in her department, because last week it was reported that high-level meetings had taken place between Home Office officials and counter-terrorism experts about how to tackle the alleged growth of ‘misogyny’ among teenage boys. The solution, they concluded, was to encourage teachers to refer boys who make sexist remarks to Prevent.

Ominously, we also learned the government is planning to slap Asbo-style orders on children found to be downloading ‘terrorist content’, which, if Cooper has her way, will include Carry On films and copies of Portnoy’s Complaint. Any spotty youth who’s given one of these orders will have to undergo mandatory psychiatric treatment, in a sinister echo of life behind the Iron Curtain.