Tugendhat rejects suggestion that government exploiting extremism threat for political advantage – UK politics live | Politics

During his media round this morning Tom Tugendhat, the security minister, defended his decision to write a joint article with the Foreign Office minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan last week saying defence spending needs to rise “at much greater pace than at present”.

The article was implicitly critical of the budget, and was seen as pushing at the boundaries of what is allowed under collective responsibility.

In his interview on BBC Breakfast, Tugendhat said that the government has already set out a commitment to raise defence spending to 2.5% of GDP and that Rishi Sunak was “absolutely right” on this.

Asked whether the article (a post on LinkedIn) had been approved by No 10, Tugendhat said it was not normal to clear social media posts through Downing Street.

And speaking on Sky News, Tugendhat said:

Look at the world that we’re seeing today. Look at the rise in autocracy. Look at the challenges that we’re facing.

This prime minister has set out that agenda and we need to deliver it. I want to achieve 2.5% now, you know, as soon as possible, that is exactly what we need to achieve. First step to do is to get to 2.5% and then we’ll have to adjust as the challenges we face evolve.

Good morning. This week the government is due to issue a new official definition of extremism, and it comes after Rishi Sunak has been talking up the threat, which he has partly linked to to the pro-Palestinian marches that have been taking place since the outreak of the Israel-Hamas war. Two weeks ago, in a briefing to police officers, Sunak said: “There is a growing consensus that mob rule is replacing democratic rule.” Then, in a surprise Friday night speech outside No 10, he said that extremist groups were “trying to tear us apart”. Later this week Michael Gove is expected to publish a new definition saying “core behaviours” that could constitute extremism include attempts to “overturn, exploit or undermine the UK’s system of liberal democracy to confer advantages or disadvantages on specific groups”.

While there is no doubt at at that events in the Middle East have triggered a huge increase in reported incidents of antisemitism and Islamophobia, some of the government’s response has been criticised as alarmist, or even hypocritical. This is a message posted by Charlie Falconer, the former Labour lord chancellor, on X, last night.

Falconer was commenting on a Guardian story by Kiran Stacey saying that three Conservative home secretaries, Priti Patel, Sajid Javid and Amber Rudd, are among a group of experts in this field who have signed an open letter saying that the government should be building a political consensus on this issue and “it’s particularly important that that consensus is maintained and that no political party uses the issue to seek short term tactical advantage”. It does not directly accuses the government of politicising the issue, but the authors of the letter clearly fear this is a risk, and their intervention follows the row triggered by Lee Anderson, the former Tory deputy chair, claiming that Sadiq Khan, the Labour London mayor, was under the control of Islamists.

Javid and Rudd were both relatively liberal home secretaries (at least, in Tory terms), but Patel was, and is, a rightwing hardliner. Any Tory minister whose crackdown on extremism is deemed by her to be going a bit too far would be wise to consider that perhaps it is.

Here is Kiran’s story.

Tom Tugendhat, the security minister, was on the media round. Asked about the letter signed by Patel, Javid, Rudd and others, he said they were “absolutely right” to say that the government should not be using this issue for party political advantage. He went on:

I don’t think we should, and I don’t think we are.

When it was put to Tugendhat that Sunak’s claim that the UK was becoming subject to “mob rule” was not helpful, he declined to defend it. “We all speak in our own way about various different issues,” he said. But he defended what the PM said in his speech in Downing Street (which did not repeat the “mob rule” claim). Tudgendhat said:

I think the prime minister set out on the steps of Downing Street a very, very clear – and, I would argue, very inclusive – agenda on keeping British people safe. He made the point, and I think it’s the correct one to make, that extremism in this country sadly has resumed. We must take action to confront it.

Here is the agenda for the day.

Morning: Rishi Sunak is doing a visit.

Morning: Keir Starmer is visiting a school in Essex with Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary.

10.30am: Richard Tice, the Reform UK leader, holds a press conference.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

12.30pm: Former prime ministers Sir John Major and Gordon Brown speak at the launch of the Institute for Government’s “Fixing the Centre of Government” report.

2.30pm: Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, takes questions in the Commons.

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