The truncheons and tunics have been replaced by high-vis jackets and tasers, but we still like to think the police here are different. In their local expertise, and the way they represent the public, not the state, those famous “Peelian principles” are still rattled off by politicians on both sides of the Commons. Now, though, Labour is set to announce the biggest shakeup of British law and order since 9/11, changes that could fundamentally transform the relationship between citizens and their rulers.
Focused on extremism and counter-terrorism (CT), the government’s plans potentially mean UK forces finally adopting a continental-style model, one encompassing tiers of municipal, regional and national units. If nothing else, that could mean centralised, government-directed police bodies. Combined with the looming return of ID cards, there are reasons to worry. He may not mean to, but there’s a real chance that Sir Keir Starmer could yet establish a de facto secret police force — with ominous consequences for everyone in Britain.
According to the National Police Chief’s Council’s official report into the future of CT policing, our current policing model will last until at least 2030. But speaking to The Guardian, an official government source stated counter-terrorism policing units would now gain independence from local forces, becoming part of a new force and sitting in a newly minted “national centre for policing”.
The issues this raises, not least in terms of accountability, are stark. The UK’s counter-terrorist policing network is vast, involving everything from the surveillance of Islamists to so-called “domestic extremism” — both of the far-Right and law-breaking protest group variety. The controversial Prevent programme is also part of its remit, even as CT policing works closely with MI5. The spooks, used to running rings around the police in Whitehall, will undoubtedly have their own views on this hefty-looking competitor.
This isn’t to say reform is necessarily a bad thing. Having worked on several high-profile terrorist investigations, I understand the value of effective CT policing. Yet in the aftermath of the riots last summer, I fear an illiberal ghost in the machine. I suspect the hastily rejected Home Office “sprint report” — dismissing discussions of two-tier policing as “far-Right talking points” — has left an impression. The report may have had a stake hammered through its heart, with Security Minister Dan Jarvis insisting it contained no “new policy”. But does its spirit live on? I think it’s possible. After all, we have a Prime Minister whose views on the subject largely seem influenced by Netflix.
Why, then, this sudden change of direction for CT policing, especially when rumours of a national CT regime have clung to New Scotland Yard for years? Think again to the aftermath of the 2024 riots. Sir Keir, shaken by his inauspicious debut, acted tough with rioters and those accused of online incitement. Intriguingly, he also suggested the formation of a national public order force to quell future disturbances. A cynic might note that Labour has never been a keen advocate of public-order policing. Certainly, the party appeared to recuse itself over the contested pro-Palestine marches that have dogged London. Before last summer’s disturbances, indeed, the Labour seemed most worried about disorder in… 1984. Shortly after the last election, Labour committed itself to a public inquiry into the disturbances at Orgreave during the Miners’ Strike, red meat to the party’s restless Left.
Starmer’s proposed “gendarmerie” was short-lived. After all, a standing force of 2,000-plus riot cops would mean significant costs to cash-strapped constabularies. Instead, existing “mutual aid” arrangements, whereby forces lend each other personnel, will be rehauled. Nonetheless, the proposal offers a clue to government thinking: its ongoing desire for a centralised force it can direct and influence, if not control directly. Politicians will strenuously deny it, but this is as true now as it was in the late Nineties and early 2000s, when Tony Blair bewailed a lack of joined-up policing during disputes over petrol and farmers.
What, then, of the specifics? As it stands, National CT policing is headquartered with the Met in London. Its officers work on regional counterterrorism units, seconded from their home police forces. This causes issues around employment regulations: sometimes officers are forced to transfer forces completely to take a CT role on. These are legitimate concerns, which might say more about inflexible police regulations than the efficacy of the CT network. Nonetheless, CT is chronically short of experienced detectives. Why? Because it draws them from austerity-hit local police forces, which themselves suffer acute shortages of qualified investigators.
In short, CT doesn’t exist in isolation from mainstream policing: it’s umbilically attached to it. But does that mean Starmer craves a British version of the FBI, with its own directly recruited staff? This is where the vicious politicking between senior law enforcers and spooks comes in, not least in the form of the National Crime Agency (NCA). Formerly the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), the NCA was a Blairite attempt to create a national force, liberated from the tedious bonds of police control, scrutiny or accountability.
Rising from the ashes of the old National Crime Squad, the wonky phoenix was still riven by turf wars between former police and customs investigators. The NCA is now colloquially known as either “No Coppers Allowed” or the “National Chaos Agency”, with its officers drawn predominantly from the civil service. Essentially there to fight organised crime, it’s not been a tremendous success. This isn’t simply sour grapes from a former copper either. I’ve spoken to serving officers, and they bemoan its risk-averse and sluggish culture. The NCA also has accountability issues. After all, the NCA answers to central government. Its “agents” can simultaneously hold the powers of police, immigration and customs officers (something they’ll proudly tell you).
The NCA, which initially couldn’t decide if it was an intelligence or law-enforcement body, was once cruelly mocked as “MI7” by the real spooks. Yet that hasn’t stopped the Government from airing another idea: “brigading” national CT policing with the NCA. That’d create a veritable super-agency, one responsible for terrorists, gangsters — and, er, incels.
“That’d create a veritable super-agency, one responsible for terrorists, gangsters — and incels.”
The NCA will undoubtedly be salivating at the prospect: CT is the jewel in the policing crown, offering prestige, promotions, influence and funding, and will finally condemn those “MI7” jibes to history. Indeed, this internecine struggle is as important to some senior officers and civil servants as catching terrorists. That’s unsurprising: a national CT body would, at last, be genuinely comparable to a British FBI. More alarmingly, it might even be a prosecutorial version of MI5, a powerful, European-style secret police, of the sort Britain has traditionally shied away from. After all, the existing Security Service shares similar thematic responsibilities, but has no powers of arrest. Though it has primacy over CT intelligence, it doesn’t over any reactive investigations.
How would this new all-powerful CT agency fit into existing British law enforcement? It’s not hard to imagine a national body, some 10,000 officers strong, eventually flexing its muscles and rebelling against the spies. MI5 won’t take this lying down, possibly leading to a dilution of the CT model, dysfunction — or, given the current British state, both. On the other hand, MI5 might be told to concentrate on its pre-9/11 counterintelligence role, focusing on catching foreign spies on British soil. Certainly, there’s ample evidence of Russian and Chinese spooks operating in our towns and cities.
What about the operational issues at stake? In my experience, one of the British CT model’s strengths is precisely that umbilical connection to local forces I mentioned earlier. A detective with SO15, the Met’s counterterrorist command, can pick up a phone and talk directly to a community PC in a London borough. The detective might even have worked on the same beat. Local knowledge was immediate and easily available. Having experienced liaison between the Met’s intelligence bureau and the NCA, I cringe at what the future might look like. Sure, there will be the usual hot air about integrated local liaison, which too often means coalface officers grafting while specialists take the credit. I can anyway imagine local goodwill towards a national unit evaporating fast. CT operations can also only work if officers are flexible. Intelligence gathering — managing sources, analysing reports, surveillance — is generally less resource-intensive than post-crime investigation. The latter usually involves literally hundreds of “boots on the ground” as detectives gather evidence, take statements and trawl CCTV footage. The current arrangement, with forces supporting operations on their own patches, therefore makes sense.
My real concern, though, is proportionality. As we saw with the Home Office’s notorious sprint report, an illiberal aura emanates from the department’s mandarins. Our political elites are obsessed with online “harms” and discourse, desperate to determine what constitutes “disinformation”. If you doubt how much police officers mimic the concerns of their political masters, consider this recent bulletin from the Prevent programme to parents, prompted by none other than Adolescence. To quote the scheme’s coordinator, the fictional drama has prompted some “incredibly important” discussion, not so different from the Prime Minister’s own take.
This week also saw more devils, more details, and potentially more unintended consequences: ID cards. A group of Blue Labour MPs aligned to Morgan McSweeney are rolling the turf for mandatory digital identification. This is another piece of reheated Blairism, adding credence to theories the former PM still wields considerable influence. An implicit justification for the move is surely illegal immigration — but, interestingly, Starmer would rather make us all carry papers than simply leave the ECHR.
I’ll leave the contradictions in the Prime Minister’s blend of human rights and authoritarianism for political commentators. Suffice it to say, a national CT force would be strongly in favour of universal digital ID. It would make tracking us all, for whatever reason, much easier. And never mind the ocean of contradictions. The average Labour MP usually has plenty to say about stop and search and racial profiling. Add identity cards to the mix? You ain’t seen nothing yet.
As I mentioned earlier, all this feels strangely European, oddly French, where every government department gets its own spooks to spy on each other. Britain has traditionally thumbed its nose at continental models of hapless municipal coppers, gendarmes and secret policemen.
That, it seems, is about to change. Most fair-minded people will agree the police must be as effective as possible, especially when protecting us from terrorism. But reasonableness and accountability matter too, things we largely took for granted when dealing with our cops in the past. We need to be confident officers are focused on the real threats to our safety, especially around Islamic extremism, and not get distracted by political hobby-horses. I’d therefore say this to our political class: be careful what you wish for. Especially given modern Britain’s grim record on free speech, I’m reluctant to trust what might well become Starmer’s secret police.
