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Theresa May’s counter-extremism plan will create an incompetent police state

After the terrorist attack in Finsbury Park, the Tories proposed a series of policies that would effectively police and criminalise thoughts. This will do nothing whatsoever to address what incubates violent extremism.

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Police investigate at the scene of the crime in Finsbury Park, 19 June 2017. Ik Aldama/DPA/PA Images. All rights reserved.Theresa May’s response to the upsurge of violence that has hit Britain since the beginning of 2017 will fail for one fundamental reason: she refuses to hold her own government to account for its systematic incubation of extremism. 

"As I said here two weeks ago, there has been far too much tolerance of extremism in our country over many years – and that means extremism of any kind, including Islamophobia,” said the Prime Minister, hours after a 47-aged man, Darren Osborne, ploughed a van into Muslim worshippers outside the Finsbury Park mosque.

This was the fourth terrorist attack in the UK over the last three months. The first was the attack outside parliament; the second was the Manchester suicide bombing at the Ariana Grande concert; the third came in the form of van and knife attacks in London Bridge.