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MI5 rightwing extremism terror threat warning from Ken McCallum
Ken McCallum, MI5's director general, warned on Tuesday at the agency's London headquarters that the mi5 rightwing extremism terror threat picture has shifted: extremists with anti-immigration views are increasingly likely to consider terrorist attacks against immigration centres and asylum hotels, in the agency's annual threat update.
By Haut Monde Post
• October 13, 2026
• 3 Min Read
Ken McCallum delivered the warning in a wide-ranging update at MI5's London headquarters near Westminster on Tuesday morning, setting out how the mi5 rightwing extremism terror threat caseload has changed over the past year.
Anti-immigration grievance tipping into terrorist intent
McCallum told his audience that a shift from radicalised rightwing sentiment to violence was "the most marked trend" in MI5's caseload over the past year, and that it had contributed to a rise in the UK terror threat level.
The agency, he said, has seen a growing number of cases in which grievance directed at migrants and Muslims crosses into planning attacks against them. In his words, "extremist versions of anti-immigration and anti-Muslim grievance are tipping into terrorist intent". Extremists holding anti-immigration opinions, he warned, are becoming increasingly likely to consider carrying out such attacks.
The intelligence picture sits alongside crime data: racially and religiously motivated offences are running at record levels.
Young people drawn to extreme rightwing terrorism
McCallum flagged the age profile of the threat. Young people, he said, are particularly likely to gravitate towards extreme rightwing terrorism, and at one point this year MI5 was "investigating a radicalised … 13-year-old in the UK".
The concern follows concrete cases and street-level agitation:
- •The far-right Patriot Platform held aggressive anti-migrant protests at Portsmouth and Dover this autumn.
- •A year earlier, a 16-year-old from Inverclyde received a 10-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to planning mass murder by firebombing a Muslim centre in Greenock.
State threats: Iran and Russia
Beyond terrorism, McCallum said threats from other states have quadrupled in the last decade and now run on par with MI5's counter-terrorism mission.
On Iran, he said Tehran is trying to expand hostile activities in the UK and has "ambitions to come at harder targets, like military sites", naming the RAF Fairford airbase in Gloucestershire. MI5's counter-Iran operation led to more than 50 arrests in the UK in the past year. Much of Iran's increased aggression has been aimed at "British Jewish communities", including terrorist plots and arson attacks against synagogues, businesses and ambulances.
Russia, McCallum said, remains "aggressor number one", citing assassination plots, explosive threats and cyber-attacks that at times stop not much short of conventional warfare. He added that Moscow tried to interfere in the 2016 Brexit referendum through anti-EU coverage on RT and Sputnik and troll social media accounts, while stressing a big difference between what was attempted and what actually resulted.
AI risks and a new assessment centre
McCallum said he was particularly focused on the risk of hostile states or terrorists using AI to generate new bioweapons, and announced the creation of a new AI threat assessment centre to distinguish fact from fiction. "We have again entered a new era of national security," he said.
