King’s Speech

Baroness Altmann Excerpts

Monday 18th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Altmann (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, our country is in the grip of an extremism crisis. Whether it is left versus right, woke versus traditionalists, globalists versus nationalists, there is a growing prevalence of extremist rhetoric and activity, which is increasing social division. I will concentrate my brief contribution on the shocking rise in antisemitic rhetoric and violence, and I declare an interest as a proud British Jew.

Of course, this represents a crisis for the British Jewish community, but it is symptomatic of wider problems in Britain as a whole, and we should heed the warning signs that this could be a harbinger of looming societal breakdown. Antisemitism is being fuelled by a toxic mix of Islamist and far left anti-Israel extremism, plus some from the far right, with worrying involvement by overseas actors. We see the weekly protests on our streets, the fear in our universities, as highlighted in last week’s shocking StandWithUs report, and increasing violence against Jews on our streets. The Home Affairs Select Committee emphasised the failure of the current approaches, including Prevent, and the need for earlier intervention to tackle extremism. Well, it may be a little bit too late for that, but I welcome the Bills to ban the IRGC—why has it taken so long?—and to tackle state threats.

It is long past time to beat about the bush. Most recent anti-Jewish plots and attacks have come from Iran and its proxies. We have seen Kata’ib Hezbollah from Iraq, a relation of Iran, claiming responsibility for the latest violence on our streets. The IRGC and others of its proxies are helping to fund this and are using British banks and property purchases with impunity to pay people to commit these acts. MI5 tracked 20 potentially lethal Iran-backed plots last year. There is a growing use of co-ordinated unlawful tactics by direct action protest groups linked to the Middle East, engaging in extremist activity just below the terrorism threshold but incited by ideologically motivated, foreign-influenced Islamists, again linked to the IRGC.

A 2024 Electoral Commission report found that 46% of general election candidates had reported abuse, threats or intimidation, so this has spread to the core of both national and local politics in this country. Why do we have groups siding with the terror regimes that are suppressing their own people with violence, torture and murder? How has this infiltrated our political discourse? The Government must urgently follow through with sustained action to confront the hatred and the extremist Islamism fuelling it. We need stronger powers to close charities that promote extremist ideologies. We must act decisively against the British banks that have become a soft touch to help fund this violence, despite reams of money laundering rules. Companies House should properly co-ordinate and correlate names of known foreign malign actors and common directors of previously known terror-linked companies. I hope that we will be able to control these extremist threats forcefully and speedily by taking advantage of the legislation we have.