Unforeseen consequences

The timing, presumably, was chosen carefully and could hardly have been better. A year or so on from the murderous terror attacks on the Manchester Arena and London Bridge, the home secretary steps forward to assure the public that he takes the threat seriously. Sajid Javid’s motives are undoubtedly honourable and his plans have some merit. They are, however, not without risk. For Javid would now like the vast number of potential suspects, in various categories of “subject of interest”, to be lightly watched, in effect, by schools and local authorities as well as the police and security services. It would only take a relatively small number of cases of busybodies reporting people to the police to generate significant ill feeling, not to say ridicule.

More than that, though, is the principle about weakening civil rights always being justified by the horror of terror. Javid is edging towards a more authoritarian state, one where hitherto routine activities are immediately matters for suspicion and police action. The chances are, in reality, that such suspicions and police raids will be disproportionately aimed at the Muslim community, rather than the far right, a still underplayed source of violence.

In a way, Javid is seeking to redress the shortfall in community policing and security service funding by coopting other public and private bodies into the fight against terror. It would, though, be more reassuring if he felt able to allow the professionals the resources to do the job, rather than recruiting Sixt and borough councils to the cause of national security.

Javid is right in one respect. It would indeed be, as he says, “wrong and reckless” to reduce security co-operation between Britain and EU countries after Brexit.

To which point the question then arises: who is the single European interior minister who is proposing leaving the EU in the first place? And who will take responsibility for the risks that will inevitably arise? London, June 6.