Rightwing extremists increasingly likely to consider terrorist attacks, MI5 chief says

Extremists holding anti-immigration opinions are becoming increasingly likely to consider carrying out terrorist attacks against immigration centres and asylum hotels in the UK, the head of MI5 has warned.

Ken McCallum said a shift from radicalised rightwing sentiment to violence was “the most marked trend” in the spy agency’s caseload over the past year, contributing to a rise in the overall UK terror threat level.

In an annual threat update, the director general said there had been an increase in cases where “extremist versions of anti-immigration and anti-Muslim grievance are tipping into terrorist intent”, such as planning attacks on migrants and Muslims.

A number of of aggressive anti-migrant protests have been held this autumn by the far-right Patriot Platform at Portsmouth and Dover, while racially and religiously motivated offences are running at record levels.

McCallum said young people were particularly likely to gravitate towards extreme rightwing terrorism, and at one point this year the security service was “investigating a radicalised … 13-year-old in the UK”.

A year ago, he added, a 16-year-old from Inverclyde received a 10-year prison sentence after he pleaded guility to planning mass murder by firebombing a Muslim centre in Greenock.

The warning formed part of a wide-ranging update from the spy chief at MI5’s London headquarters near Westminster on Tuesday morning.

He said Iran was trying to expand hostile activities in the UK and it now had “ambitions to come at harder targets, like military sites”, such as the RAF Fairford airbase in Gloucestershire.

In the past year, MI5’s counter-Iran operation had led to more than 50 arrests in the UK, with much of Tehran’s increased agression aimed at “British Jewish communities” including terrorist plots and arson attacks against synagogues, business and ambulances.

McCallum also said that:

• Russia remains “aggressor number one” as the Kremlin continues to lash out against the west with assassination plots, explosive threats and cyber-attacks that at times stop “not much short” of conventional warfare.

• Moscow tried to interfere in the 2016 Brexit referendum with anti-EU coverage on RT and Sputnik media, and via troll social media accounts, but there was a big difference between “what may have been attempted and what actually resulted”.

• He was “particularly focused” on the risk of hostile states or terrorists using AI to generate new, deadly bioweapons, and announced the creation of a new AI threat assessment centre to distinguish fact from fiction.

• There was a “concerning trend of violence targeted at political figures, religious or community groups”, as demonstrated by the killing of the former minister and Reform UK spokesperson Anne Widdecombe.

• Threats from other states had quadrupled in the last decade and were running on par with MI5’s counter-terrorism mission. “We have again entered a new era of national security,” he said.