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 Strategic Advisor Liam Duffy interviewed: "The terrorism definition should not be changed in the wake of the Southport murders but a new offence to address the gap for lone individuals planning mass killings should be considered, the UK’s terror watchdog has said. Jonathan Hall KC said the legal definition is “already wide” and expanding the threshold would “increase the possibility of inaccurate use and, in theory, abuse”.

In accordance with the severity of his crimes, Clifford will be held in one of the maximum-security Category A prisons designed for the most dangerous offenders, at least initially. “There are only a limited number of prisons that can house those who have committed crimes of such gravity it must be impossible for them to escape,” says Ian Acheson, a former prison governor and senior adviser at the Counter Extremism Project. 

CEP Senior Advisor Ian Acheson writes: "At least two people have died and several injured after a car was driven down a busy shopping street yesterday in Mannheim, in western Germany. A 40-year-old man has been arrested.

It is not clear yet if this attack was ideologically motivated. But car attacks like this are becoming horrifyingly common in Germany. In Magdeburg and Munich either side of last Christmas a total of seven people were murdered in two separate car rammings. In both cases, the suspected attackers were foreign nationals."

CEP Senior Advisor Ian Aches writes: "What sort of mojo do you want your police officer to bring with them the next time you’re stopped and searched? The Metropolitan police asked Londoners to help them use this procedure better: one quoted consultation response was to stop using ‘bad energy’ in such an encounter. Perhaps the answer to London’s awful street crime problem is more astrology than criminology. Such comments have influenced the creation of a new ‘charter’ eighteen months in the making, which signals the advent of kinder, gentler frisking in the nation’s capital."