What’s in the UK’s new definition of ‘extremism’

And how will groups deemed to meet the new criteria be sanctioned? United Kingdom Communities Secretary Michael Gove has unveiled the government’s new definition of “extremism” to the House of Commons amid heightened domestic tensions since the onset of Israel’s war on Gaza in October. However, in parliament on Thursday, Gove took the step of naming the neo-Nazi British National Socialist Movement, the far-right Patriotic Alternative, the Muslim Association of Britain, the Cage advocacy group, and Muslim Engagement and Development as UK-based organisations that will be held “to account to assess if they meet our definition of extremism and will take action as appropriate”. A Muslim Conservative peer, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, who has long urged her party to tackle Islamophobia among its members, said on X on Wednesday: “Michael Gove will not divide us in his ideological pursuit of a policy that has been rejected and criticised by victims of terrorism, ex Home Secretary’s and even the Archbishop of Canterbury.” John Mann, an independent adviser to the government on anti-Semitism, told the BBC: “I think that the government needs to listen to people who are advising that the politics of division will not work.” He said it should prioritise “bringing communities together”. Eight years later, a New York Times podcast on the issue alleged that Gove had ignored warnings that assertions of an “Islamic extremist takeover” of Birmingham schools, known as the Trojan Horse affair, were “bogus”.