Braverman's immigrant rhetoric is 'incredibly unhelpful' in tackling far-right extremism - Met's ex-counter-terror chief
12 December 2022, 19:14 | Updated: 13 December 2022, 08:15
Suella Braverman's comments on rhetoric have been "incredibly unhelpful" in combatting far-right extremism, London's former top anti-terror police officer has said.
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The Home Secretary has previously been criticised for her tough rhetoric on migrants, including making the claim that seeing a flight take asylum seekers to Rwanda would be "her dream".
And Neil Basu, the former anti-terror chief in the Met, told LBC's Andrew Marr that people in important positions should be "incredibly careful" about what they say, to avoid stoking tensions.
'Some of the rhetoric by our new Home Secretary has not been helpful'
Asked whether Ms Braverman's comments on the Rwanda policy "feeds into this right wing extreme online world", he said: "I think it's incredibly unhelpful.
"I mean, I'm not sure why the language was chosen other than to be, to look politically tough, but I've said in the past, you know, people with incredibly important positions who have a microphone and a platform need to be incredibly careful about what they say in public."
"And [there is a] lack of a sort of reasonable debate on these issues, which is an incredibly important issue and very worrying for all kinds of sections of society.
"And it needs to be debated. It doesn't need to be shouted down, but some of that rhetoric... by our new Home Secretary has not been helpful in my view."
Speaking in only his second interview since leaving his post last year, Mr Basu blamed the rise of the far-right on deindustrialisation and unemployment, alongside tension-stoking rhetoric.
He said that if "you look back in history anywhere that looks like economic hardship, plus a sort of polarised and, and fairly vicious and dehumanising rhetoric on immigration, you put those two things together and it is an absolute recipe for extreme right wing behaviour.
"And then of course, we have been suffering from Islamist jihadist threats, and both of those terrorists groups feed off each other. Their aim is to destabilise society and set one side of society against another do."
Mr Basu added that Brexit had also helped foster far-right views in the UK.
Asked by Andrew if leaving the EU had led to a rise in extremist views, he said: "It's not been helpful because I think it unleashed in a lot of people a a sort of xenophobia and a nationalism that clearly feeds into this narrative."
Mr Basu added that "there is no way we can be complacent" about the rise in far-right extremism, telling Andrew that the ideology is the fastest-growing strain of terrorism in the UK.
"When I started in counterterrorism in 2015, [far-right terrorism] was probably only about 6% of our casework," he said. "When I left in 2021, it was well over 20%." Islamist jihadism is still the biggest issue by volume of cases, he said.
It comes after German police foiled an attempted coup by a far-right group to overthrow the government and install a prince as leader in their place. Pointing out that the far-right conspiracy theory Qanon has been influential in Germany, Andrew asked if social media had led to an increase in radicalisation.
Mr Basu said: "What that's led to is probably what I consider humankind's greatest invention turning into something of a curse. The mechanism for distributing hate is there 24/7 in everybody's hand."
Police have come under fire - including from the government and Ms Braverman - for "woke" initiatives, at the same time as convictions rates drop and crimes go unsolved. But Mr Basu said that diversity and inclusion schemes were important - and no barrier to successful policing.
He said: "I think I probably retired with the reputation as being the most woke police officer in the United Kingdom, and yet if you look at my track record over 30 years, I've put more gangsters and terrorists behind bars for huge sentences than just about anybody else."
