Yvette Cooper is expected to reject Government advice to widen the definition of extremism to cover environmentalists, the far left, and men prejudiced against women.
The Home Secretary does not agree with findings of the “rapid analytical sprint on extremism” she commissioned in August following the summer riots sparked by the Southport murders.
The report leaked to Policy Exchange suggested the UK’s approach to extremism should be based on concerning behaviours and activity rather than ideologies.
Those include spreading misinformation, influencing racism, and involvement in “an online subculture called the manosphere”, according to the right-leaning think tank.
The Government should expand extremism’s definition to cover environmental extremists, the far left, anarchists, conspiracy theorists, and others, the report also says.
But ministers are set to continue with a focus on Islamist and far-right extremism.
The Prime Minister said it was important to focus resources on the threats faced by the UK.
Sir Keir Starmer told broadcasters: “When it comes to extremism, it’s very important that we are focused on the threats so we can deploy our resource properly and therefore we’re looking carefully where the key challenges are.”
He added: “Obviously, that’s now informed with what I said last week in the aftermath of the Southport murders, where we’ve got the additional challenge, I think, of a cohort of loners who are extreme and they need to be factored in.”
A Home Office spokesperson said findings from the sprint report “have not been formally agreed by ministers and we are considering a wide range of potential next steps arising from that work”.
The Government will set out its response in the House of Commons after rejecting the report’s recommendations, City minister Emma Reynolds told ITV’s Good Morning Britain.
The report also recommends reversing a code of practice to limit the number of “non-crime hate incidents” being recorded and floats the idea of creating a new crime of making “harmful communications” online, according to Policy Exchange.
It says claims of “two-tier” policing are an example of a “right-wing extremist narrative”.
Paul Stott and Andrew Gilligan, of Policy Exchange, said in an analysis of the report that the suggested approach risks swamping authorities with new cases.
“Some of the definitions of extremism also threaten free speech, defining aspects of normal and legitimate political debate as extremist,” they added.
The Conservatives branded moves to reverse the limit on non-crime hate incidents “extremely concerning”.
Shadow business secretary Andrew Griffith told GB News that the Home Secretary should publish the report “immediately” and claimed there was a “cell within the Home Office that is not concerned about ordinary crime, ordinary policing”.
After Axel Rudakubana, 18, pleaded guilty last week to murdering three girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class, Sir Keir said it was understandable that the public would look at the crime and “wonder what the word terrorism means”.
The Prime Minister said the teenager represented a new kind of threat, distinct from politically or ideologically motivated terrorism, with “acts of extreme violence perpetrated by loners, misfits, young men in their bedroom, accessing all manner of material online, desperate for notoriety”.
He said that, if needed, the Government would change the law to recognise the “new and dangerous threat” and “review our entire counter-extremist system to make sure we have what we need to defeat it”.
Rudakubana was referred to the Prevent anti-terror programme three times but those referrals were closed due to his apparent lack of a clear ideology.
The Home Secretary has ordered a review of Prevent’s thresholds in response.
