By Dr Charlotte Littlewood

The new counter-terrorism report from the Independent Commission on UK Counter-Terrorism isn’t reform, it’s a glossy, academicised piece of anti-Prevent activism.

Under the veneer of legal nuance, it advances the same agenda long pushed by groups such as CAGE and MEND, organisations flagged by Michael Gove as meriting investigation for extremist links; to drop all measures that counter Islamism.

At the heart of the report lies an appealing idea, a single access point for all concerns about individuals vulnerable to violence.

As a former Prevent practitioner, I understand the logic, a “one-stop-shop” approach makes sense with respect to the triage apparatus of Prevent. It already has the apparatus to handle mixed, unclear or violence-fixated cases, and could expand that role with more manpower and minimal structural change.

What the Commission proposes, however, is something else entirely. It would hollow Prevent out, keeping the shell of multi-agency safeguarding but stripping the core ideological analysis that makes it counter-terrorism.

The report takes an explicit stance against recognising extremist ideology as a driver of terrorism, overlooking the fundamental reality that what distinguishes terrorism from other forms of violence is precisely its ideological motivation.

Most revealingly, it calls for a review of “the most appropriate language” to describe terrorist threats, signalling clear discomfort with the terms Islamist and Islamism.

This is not a semantic........

© LBC