Britain’s terror threat is now at the highest since 9/11, a security insider has warned. The expert has warned there is a “real risk” of co-ordinated terrorist action or of a lone outsider carrying out an isolated attack on these shores.
They also warned of record levels of “chatter” between extremists intercepted by spies which were at their highest levels since the September 11 terror attacks in the US.
Politicians have also been informed that the Israel-Hamas war has been used as a “recruitment advert” by terror groups around the world.
It is also understood security officials fear the possibility of a rise in extremist activity during the month of Ramadan in the Muslim world, which starts next Sunday.
One MP with knowledge of the latest briefings told the Daily Mail: “The level of extremist chatter is off the scale. This is something they’ve seen growing and growing.”
They added: “It’s like when the Twin Towers came down in 2001, there was a big spike of hate.”
The warning comes in the wake of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s speech outside Downing Street where he warned there are “forces” which are ready to tear the country apart with their “hateful ideological agenda”.
In his speech on March 1, Mr Sunak singled out Islamist extremists and the far right who he said were desperate to set “Briton against Briton”.
He urged Britain to “stand up for our shared values”. Mr Sunak also slammed the recent by-election in Rochdale, declaring it “beyond alarming” that former Labour MP George Galloway secured victory. He said: “Islamist extremists and far-right groups are spreading a poison: that poison is extremism.
“It aims to drain us of our confidence in ourselves as a people, and in our shared future.”
Former Home Office Minister Robert Jenrick has also warned today that the police and intelligence services are too “stretched” to deal with the “cancer of Islamist extremism”.
He wrote in an article for The Mail on Sunday: “Despite the rise in far-Right activity, the threat still overwhelmingly comes from Islamists.”
