King’s Speech

Lord Stevens of Birmingham Excerpts

Monday 18th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)]

The firebombing of synagogues, the Golders Green stabbings, the Heaton Park murders—the whole country clearly needs to wake up to what is happening. The Government are right, finally, to proscribe the Iranian IRGC—which the head of MI5 says has been linked to over 20 deadly plots on our soil in just the past year—but timing is now of the essence. JTAC has raised the terrorism threat level to “severe”, meaning it assesses that a further terrorist attack is highly likely in the next six months. The question I pose to the Minister is: will the Government apply that same timescale to the legislation needed to ban the IRGC?

In doing so, what assessment have the Government made of the work of the Iranian embassy here in London and of the reports that the Iranian embassy is trying to enrol supporters in an official martyrdom initiative? Clearly, action on state-based threats is vitally urgent, but, as my noble friend Lord Hennessy reminded us earlier in his valedictory speech, our system of government now also depends on what he described as the “mobilisation of decency” and civility, tolerance and the duty of care.

Compare and contrast that with the anti-Jewish racism so blatantly on display in some of our political parties in just the past few weeks. We had an electoral candidate describing people as “Jewish cockroaches” and another who had said:

“Ramming a synagogue isn’t antisemitism. It’s revenge”.


A candidate elected in Tower Hamlets described the Holocaust as a “holohoax”. A candidate elected in Hackney said that Israel was harvesting organs to alter the “DNA of Zionists”. A candidate arrested, but elected in Lambeth, had previously said that 9/11 was not the action of al-Qaeda, but a false flag attack by Israel. What is clear in all these instances, and many more—this is just the tip of the iceberg—is that, in fact, in this Islamist fantasy world, the hatred of Israel is utterly indistinguishable from the hatred of Jews. They are one and the same.

Caroline Lucas was clearly right to call for urgency of action within the Green Party, but it is not just the Green Party. In her speech, the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsey of Wall Heath, laid out some further practical action that the political parties should take. I echo the point that the noble Lord, Lord Walney, made, which is that there is a lacuna in the law, which the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, is investigating. His report was due in February, I think. Will the Government commit that, if they see that in the next month or two, they will incorporate any recommendations that require legislation in one of the Bills on the docket this Session? Can they also tell us whether the Representation of the People Bill, which will be before us, and which is apparently intended to tackle harassment and the intimidation of voters, will have anything to say about the door-to-door intimidation of voters in places such as Sheffield, Brighton and Hackney, who are being asked whether or not they are willing to disavow support for Israel?

If one imagines an equivalent situation where Tommy Robinson’s supporters were out engaging in a similar exercise in Bradford, asking whether voters there would disavow Pakistan, or in Tower Hamlets in respect to Bangladesh, that would rightly be seen as the kind of racism it is. Why should this be tolerated? This is an urgent crisis that demands action. The Government need to get on with it.