BRITAIN

BRITISH intelligence is to take responsibility for tackling the terror threat from Right-wing extremists as part of a major overhaul.

Amid increasing concern that white supremacists are trying to stir up a racial and religious war on UK streets, MI5 will for the first time take the lead in combating the problem.

In the past, the police have been directly tasked with monitoring far-Right groups. It means the ideology will sit in the same security service portfolio as Islamist terrorism.

Extreme Right-wing activity will be designated as posing a key threat to national security.

Four far-Right terror plots have been thwarted in Britain since 2017, compared to 13 involving Muslim fanatics. The authorities have expressed fears about a resurgence from neo-Nazi groups, especially since the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox by white supremacist Thomas Mair in 2016.

In February, Darren Osborne was jailed for life for attacking Muslim worshippers with a van in Finsbury Park, North London, in June 2017.

And, in the past week, a man has been charged with sending 13 pipe bombs to opponents of President Donald Trump. A second man was arrested for murdering 11 Jewish worshippers during an anti-Semitic gun attack at a synagogue in the US city of Pittsburgh.

In the UK, there are about 100 live investigations into extreme Right-wing individuals and groups. Although the threat is not assessed to be of the same magnitude as that posed by Islamic State or Al-Qaeda, security chiefs are aware that extreme Right-wing organisations are attempting to provoke violence and by sowing discord.

MI5’s techniques and greater powers of surveillance will allow intelligence agents to discover more about threats posed by the extreme right than the police are able to.

It will formally take responsibility for identifying suspects, assessing their danger, analyse networks of extremists and rank threats.

Police will stay in charge when it comes to launching an operation to disrupt a plot or by making arrests.

Last month, Home Office figures revealed the number of white terror suspects being apprehended or arrested was higher than those who were Asian for the first time since the July 7 bombings in 2005. In the year to June, 133 were white and 129 were Asian ethnic background.

Neil Basu, Britain’s top counter-terrorism police officer, told the home affairs select committee that the extreme Right-wing was growing across Europe. He said: “There is no doubt that crosses the border into the UK and there have been attempts by groups here to coordinate with European partners as well.”