Starmer and Macron hope for ‘progress' on defence and migration at summit
The two leaders will hold a summit when the French President travels to the UK for a state visit next week, with the two leaders speaking on Saturday ahead of Mr Macron's journey.
Issuing a readout of the conversation between the Prime Minister and Mr Macron, a Downing Street spokesperson said Sir Keir 'looked forward to welcoming the President to the UK next week, with both leaders agreeing that the state visit will provide a historic opportunity to showcase the breadth of the UK-France relationship.
'Turning to the UK-France summit on Thursday, they hoped to make good progress across a wide range of our joint priorities including migration, growth, defence and security.'
The two leaders are also due to host a meeting of the coalition of the willing while Mr Macron is in Britain, with the two leaders expected to dial in to speak to other allied nations who are looking to support any future peace deal in Ukraine.
There have been extensive talks between the two nations on migration, and the summit comes as the UK has been repeatedly pushing the French authorities to do more to prevent small boats from crossing the Channel.
The number of people who have arrived in the UK by small boat passed 20,000 earlier this week.
Downing Street welcomed action from French officers on Friday, after reports suggested knives had been used to puncture a boat in waters off the French coast.
A Number 10 spokesman said: 'We welcome action from French law enforcement to take action in shallow waters, and what you have seen in recent weeks is a toughening of their approach.'
Existing rules have been changed to allow police officers to intervene when dinghies are in the water.
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an hour ago
- Telegraph
Terrorists teaching prisoners how to make bombs
Terrorists inside British prisons are teaching organised criminals how to make bombs, according to a study. In return, extremist inmates are learning from gang members how to launder money, use the dark web and obtain weapons that could be used in terror attacks. It comes amid increasing warnings about the rising threat of Islamist gangs following attacks on prison officers in jails. Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, said: 'Extremists and career criminals now operate with near impunity inside some of this country's highest-security prisons. 'That is a complete failure of leadership – and a dangerous abdication of one of the state's core duties: maintaining order behind bars. 'When Islamist terrorists and organised crime figures are left to forge alliances, we aren't just witnessing a security lapse – we're watching a national threat incubate in plain sight. This cannot be allowed to continue.' Prisons have often been thought of as operating like universities of crime, with inmates learning how to become more accomplished thieves, fraudsters and even drug dealers. But according to a new report, that knowledge exchange is starting to take place between ordinary criminals and terrorist inmates. Described as the prison crime-terror nexus, a study has found terrorists are learning illegal financial techniques to better fund their operations, while gang members and organised criminals are discovering how to assemble devastating new weapons to use against their rivals Drawing on interviews with prison officers, former governors, counter terror officials and prisoners, the research suggests divisions that may have once existed between terrorists and other inmates are beginning to break down. Dr Hannah Bennett, author of the study, said: 'Some prisoners are coming out knowing how to make a bomb. Others are learning how to use the dark web or commit financial crime. For many, it's about protection – but it's also about opportunity.' The study warns that a failure to identify and disrupt these exchanges risks allowing violent alliances to flourish both inside and beyond the prison walls. In some cases, released prisoners have continued hybrid activity – either joining gangs with ideological leanings or aiding terror networks in evading surveillance. The report points out how the terrorists behind the devastating 2004 Madrid bombings financed the operation through drug dealing while al-Qaeda operatives have also been known to raise money through sophisticated credit card fraud operations. Dr Bennett warned that the most fertile institutions for such a crossover are maximum security prisons where there is evidence of corruption, violence and a lack of oversight. She described these prisons as 'black hole' environments, adding: 'Where you have violent, chaotic prisons with no consistent regime and inmates who are co-located without proper oversight, the risk is exponentially higher.' One inmate who was interviewed for the study said the authorities seemed oblivious to what was going on. He said: 'We are blind to it. There are prisoners coming out more radicalised, more connected and more capable – and no one's clocking it.' Prof Ian Acheson, a former prison governor who also served in the Home Office as the director of community safety, said: 'We have several 'black hole' prisons where a combination of weak authority, inexperience and poor leadership means the state has effectively surrendered the environment to prisoners. 'The Chief Inspector of Prisons keeps identifying these places and it is extremely concerning to see some of our high-security prisons are in that number. 'Here, ideologically inspired offenders and organised crime leaders can mix freely. Where you have such lethal capacity cheek by jowl with people with the capability to obtain weapons and help escapes there is an enduring risk to national security. 'It's a perfectly rational partnership for those whose only interest is profit. And it can happen in prisons where ferocious violence and staff retreat is becoming the norm.' The findings come after several high-profile attacks on prison officers and reports of drones delivering drugs into prisons. In April, Hashem Abedi, the Manchester Arena bomber, who is serving life for 22 murders, attacked three officers in a separation unit at the high security HMP Frankland, in Co Durham. And in May, Axel Rudakubana, the Southport killer, allegedly threw boiling water from his kettle over an officer at HMP Belmarsh. Dr Bennett's report calls for urgent reform of prison intelligence strategy, including improved staff training, a clear operational definition of the prison nexus threat, and a structured assessment tool to identify high-risk jails. She concluded: 'The risk is not just ideological or criminal – it's both. If we continue to treat them in silos, we're going to miss what's happening in the overlap.' Ministers must pay attention to this insight into how terrorists and criminals work together in prisons By Prof Ian Acheson Prisons are traditionally places where alliances are made between criminals who see incarceration as an occupational hazard. Criminologists find this opportunistic behaviour, if distasteful, perfectly rational. When I worked in the prison service in the 1990s, an inordinate amount of my time was spent trying to disrupt and deter organised criminals and paedophiles from networking to extend their power on either side of the prison walls. This cosy old paradigm has been changed forever by the inclusion in the prison population of increasing numbers of terrorist offenders. People who kill for ideas are very different from those after money or sexual deviants. But the idea they cannot cooperate is dangerously naive and woefully under researched. This is why newly released research into the Prison Crime Terror Nexus by Dr Hannah Bennett is so significant. Dr Bennett is one of those rare researchers who combines theoretical and operational experience. We met at the University of Staffordshire and I have supported her work which I am glad to see published. Ministers should pay great attention to this study. Today's prison environment is poisoned by drugs and extreme violence. Terrorists attacks on prison staff have avoided death by millimetres and seconds. The potential for those with the capability to give support to those with the capacity for terrorism is not an abstract idea, it is a real and present danger. Dr Bennett has offered an insight into how terrorists and criminals work together in the prison environment for mutual benefit. Her findings are the result of multiple interviews with prisoners and prison professionals, many detailing a chilling degree of mutual cooperation and a high degree of dysfunction in intelligence collection and dissemination from the front line to the HQ boardrooms. In part this breakdown reflects the different objectives of the prison service and policing. I know from personal experience just how difficult it is to get senior officials at the headquarters level to understand their primary role in protecting national security. Too many prison professionals at senior levels subscribe to a kind of 'reclamation theology' that puts saving souls ahead of hard nosed threat management. This cultural blindness contributes to what Dr Bennett calls with rather more delicacy than I am capable as the 'intelligence capability gap'. This lack of appetite to join the dots and do something about it is most apparent in how Dr Bennett adopts and extends the theory of 'black hole prisons'. These places are akin to failed states where rampant instability, weak or absent authority, corruption, poor leadership and a rampant drugs economy create voids of power quickly filled an exploited by stronger forces such as gangs and extremists. Dr Bennett has taken this theory and applied it to identify the meeting points of organised crime and terrorism in some of our allegedly most secure prisons. These are places like HMPs Belmarsh, Long Lartin, Whitemoor and Frankland that hold the majority of our terrorist offenders in close proximity to crime family bosses and postcode gang leaders. These are not places where it possible to say the state is fully in control. Cooperation between these groups is likely when shared opportunities and goals transcend ideological differences or any adverse consequences. This is not an altogether new phenomenon. In 1994 at Whitemoor prison, shortly after it opened, IRA terrorists escaped the prison briefly with a London gangster Andy Russell. Russell was serving a sentence for hijacking a helicopter to spring two prisoners from HMP Gartree some years before. All had been held in the special security unit (SSU) a supposedly escape proof prison within a prison. Staff there had been so intimidated the gang was able to smuggle in weapons and explosives. In some of the high-security prisons I have listed today, cell window drone deliveries make it at least theoretically possible that the drugs payload they have controlled by organised criminals could have weapons and ammunition included. We are closer to ths reality than any official is prepared to admit. Dr Bennett has offered a framework for prison bosses to identify where this nexus is likely to emerge. 'Prisoners are in control' When I worked in prison order and control at a national level, our preoccupation was identifying the characteristics of prisoners who would cause riots and ensuring that there was a balanced mix across all establishments to prevent disorder. It is somewhat paradoxical that the threat or widespread disorder has receded today in large part because prisoners are in control of an environment where drugs are easily available and authority is in retreat. This Faustian pact will not hold where ideologically motivated prisoners are located. For many, not all of these terrorist offenders, the war against the state goes on and the targets have merely changed from civilians to the men and women in uniform looking after them. It is vital that meticulous research like Dr Bennett's is seen and considered by ministers and not through the lens of bureaucrats who have allowed this nexus to flourish. Terrorists and organised criminals have worked together before and will do so again. The stakes are very high.
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
Classified report to reveal full scale of Iranian threat to UK
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Telegraph
2 hours ago
- Telegraph
Have no sympathy for Labour's ‘grown-ups', they brought this on themselves
The pattern for life under Labour has been set. Ministers, hopelessly out of their depth, try to save money, fail, reverse, ending up spending more, and yet the Left calls them closet-Tories and swans off to Jeremy Corbyn. The excess of lefty MPs in the Commons hasn't brought order to Labour but, like an experiment involving overbred mice in a cage, they've started to eat each other. No 10 will try to make a virtue of this. They will say: 'Keir Starmer is where the public is. He is trying to fix the mess left by the Tories in a fair way – balance the books, control the borders – and opposition from both Corbyn and Reform proves he is the non-ideological man we need.' He's the human version of the BBC. Everyone hates it, so it must be good. Except no one watches the BBC anymore, just as dwindling numbers vote Labour, and the vision of Starmer as a man patrolling the middle-ground doesn't ring true. It's more accurate of Rachel Reeves. For all her sins, she's been saying the same things for over a decade (loudly, through a fixed smile). As shadow work and pensions minister, she promised to be tougher on benefits than George Osborne. She did not serve under Corbyn. She called for immigration to be curbed after Brexit. By contrast, Starmer's career is built on a series of U-turns he believes it is our patriotic duty to forget. Forget that he was a militant Remainer, that he knelt for Black Lives Matter or that he won the Labour leadership calling Corbyn's manifesto 'our foundational document' stuffed with 'radicalism and hope'. Starmer, who said 'the free market has failed', stood for a 'moral socialism' that 'opposes austerity'. Left-wing activists had spent the 2010s alleging that welfare reform amounted to murder; John McDonnell quoted someone saying they wished to 'lynch' Esther McVey. Starmer's Labour might have turned on the Corbynites, but it drew from the same pool of assumptions and resentments. Torsten Bell called the two-child benefit cap immoral. David Lammy said his constituents were 'ruined by austerity, left hungry by Universal Credit'. Angela Rayner apologised for calling Conservatives 'homophobic, racist, misogynistic… scum.' Starmer ran ads that suggested Rishi Sunak was soft on paedophiles and his wife was a tax dodger. He called Boris 'pathetic', a man who 'had no principles, no integrity' (I 'loathed' him, he later said). Having abandoned a coherent critique of Tory economics – which, to be fair, had no coherence anyway – Starmer reframed politics from Left v Right to Good v Evil, and this is what a new generation of MPs presumably believed when they won in 2024. Everything the Tories had done was wicked and unnecessary, a choice born of greed. So, what happened when Reeves took over the Treasury, found Rishi had in fact spent too much money, and announced that 'Dickensian choices' had morphed into Labour necessities? Hurt and panic. Akin to a Puritan discovering their mother is a lush and daddy frequents a drag bar. And so the children rebelled – and we should have no sympathy for the adults who once claimed to be back in charge. Why? Because their moral tone before entering office implied that any effort to limit the state was class violence. Another example from Torsten Bell (there are many): in 2021 he wrote that revising the Covid-era uplift to Universal Credit, worth £20 a week, might damage not only 'family finances' but people's 'mental health'.Tory policy could drive you mad. Of course, the Left has well established in the popular mind that mental health is as serious as physical, so must get PIPs; that Britain is a nation of immigrants and human rights, so we can't deport lawbreakers; and the Earth is on fire, so we can't use new sources of fossil fuel. Many of the problems Labour inherited are the by-products of assumptions Labour has helped embed within British institutions (including within the Tory Party, which is why it did little to reverse the trend). Why was Starmer shouted at when he laid a wreath for the victims of the Southport killer last year? Why has Reeves been derided for crying in the Commons? Because most voters do not see Labour as a change agent with Fairy-soft clean hands, but rather as the latest iteration of a grubby establishment that has run this country for decades, and which shares as much blame as the Conservatives for where we are – arguably, more. New Labour bound Westminster with legal restraints, such as the Human Rights Act or the Climate Change Act, while empowering quangos that operate as watchdogs against elected officials. Whoever you vote for, policy options are narrowed so far that we can really only travel in one direction. Thus the economy is in constant crisis because spending is axiomatic, frugality penalised and alternatives for growth shut off (ask Liz Truss). Reeves, in her first year, found herself testing what this political system would tolerate with her modest mix of tax hikes and savings. Last week's welfare rebellion rules out further cuts, while her fiscal rules render it harder to borrow, leaving only taxes on the table, which will kill the growth that grows the pie that makes progressive government feasible. Changing course will be difficult. Starmer and Corbyn have profound differences, but they share the psychological defect of seeing themselves as Very Good People – a condition that makes it easy to give criticism but hard to take it. Good People cannot accept they are wrong because their rightness, or righteousness, is the rock upon which they construct a life. Sitting in Westminster, it's fun to hear Labour MPs bitch about each other. The Starmerites truly loathe the Corbynites; they are 'professional activists 'who harm the people they're meant to help'. The Corbynites say the Starmerites will never fix a capitalist system they don't understand, and thus haven't learnt to hate. Out of power, this conflict was barely worth a column in the Morning Star, but as we enter Year Two of the revolution, journalists must study every nuance, unpack every conference motion, to see where this civil war is taking us. If you want a vision of the future, Winston, it is pro-Gaza activists glueing themselves to a truck at London's Pride parade on Saturday. Black flags v rainbow flags. A family row with consequence, because the entire country is stuck in the traffic behind, pumping the horn, waving our fists, but going nowhere.
