CEP Senior Advisor Ian Acheson writes: "Shawcross has now disagreed publicly. The Home Office had, he said, ‘ignored’ key recommendations to beef up Prevent’s performance and the glass remained only ‘half full.’ I have some experience of bureaucratic sleight of hand at work when it comes to reviews and recommendations. When I was tasked by the Government to look into the Prison Service’s colossal and unforgivable failures in containing Islamist extremism a few years ago, I made 69 recommendations which were mysteriously repurposed into 11 without my consent; eight were finally accepted."

CEP Senior Advisor Ian Acheson writes: "How do you create a low-trust society? One way to do so is to have an administrative class which seems to treat the views of ordinary people with contempt. Today’s news of a leaked Home Office report on counter-extremism is a classic of the genre. The report, commissioned by the Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, in the wake of the August 2024 riots, says that claims of ‘two-tier policing’ are a ‘right-wing extremist narrative’. "

CEP Senior Advisor Ian Acheson writes: "The assailant in the Southport massacre has pleaded guilty to the murders of three children in the town last year. Keir Starmer has leapt with unusual speed to authorise a public inquiry into what drove Axel Rudakubana into his frenzy of killing and if it could have been prevented. We now know that the state’s protective agencies crossed Rudakubana multiple times; he was referred three times to the government’s Prevent strategy, which is supposed to spot and stop tomorrow’s terrorists before hateful thought turns into lethal action."