Right-wing extremism fastest-growing threat in UK, counter-terror chief warns
Right-wing extremism is the fastest growing terrorist threat in the UK, police have said.
The UK head of counter-terrorism Neil Basu said seven of the 22 plots foiled since March 2017 have been linked to far-right ideologies.
About 10% of more than 800 live terror investigations were linked to right-wing terrorism while the Government’s controversial Prevent programme has seen referrals nearly doubling since 2015/16 to 18%.
The Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner said at a briefing on Thursday: “It’s small but it’s my fastest-growing problem.”
But Mr Basu said the biggest threat still comes from Islamist and Jihadist terrorists.
“Despite the increases, right-wing terrorism remains a relatively small percentage of our overall demand, but when nearly a third of the plots foiled by police and security services since 2017 relate to right-wing ideology, it lays bare why we are taking this so seriously,” he said.
“As a proportion of our overall threat it’s definitely increasing, whereas the Islamist threat is staying the same, albeit at a very high level.”