Terror in Europe mapped

ISIS is back and while it is not the outfit it was a decade ago, it has emerged as a threat right across Europe.

The terrorist group is drawing on online radicalisation, particularly of teenagers – many of whom have a family heritage from the Balkan or Caucasus diaspora – and recruits from Central Asia including battle-hardened veterans who once fought in Syria for ISIS.

Ken McCallum, the head of Britain's MI5 domestic intelligence agency, warned on Tuesday that the terrorist trend that concerned him most was the worsening threats from ISIS, and to a lesser extent from Al Qaeda.

“[ISIS] is not the force it was a decade ago,” he said. “But after a few years of being pinned well back, they’ve resumed efforts to export terrorism.”

Mr McCallum said that after a year of war in the Middle East, MI5 was “powerfully alive to the risk that events in the Middle East directly trigger terrorist action in the UK”.

The focus of attention for security services and law enforcement is the branch of ISIS that originated in Afghanistan, known as ISIS-K, which is named after the historical region of Khorasan that takes in parts of Central and South Asia.

The group has been proscribed as a terrorist organisation by governments around the world and it is feared that it has ambitions to organise attacks in Europe and become an inspiration for young people to plot atrocities in its name.

In March, ISIS-K said it had carried out an attack that killed at least 137 people at a Moscow concert hall, over which four men from Central Asia have been charged. This is not a threat limited to the former Soviet sphere but a wider propaganda war.

Open for business?

The Labour government has invited sovereign wealth funds, businesses and infrastructure funds to attend a 100-day mega summit for international investors with the aim of showing them that the country is “open for business”.

Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds M&G, Octopus Energy and TSL Group are the main backers for the event at Guildhall in London. Former Google boss Eric Schmidt has agreed to appear on stage with Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Other headliners will be Ruth Porat, president of Alphabet and Google; Alex Kendall, chief executive of Wayve; and Bruce Flatt, chief executive of Brookfield Asset Management.

Elon Musk, who was onstage with former prime minister Rishi Sunak at last year's AI summit, is not invited after taking what critics said was a cheerleader role when the UK was hit by race riots in the summer.

The new UK leadership is hoping that its gathering can bring billions of pounds of foreign direct investment (FDI) into the struggling economy. Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, spent the months before the July election wooing business and will want to take a dividend for her efforts in government.

Hundreds of executives and investors from around the world are expected to attend, while British politicians and senior business figures will make overtures to them about how the UK is “open for business”.

They will point to the recent pledge by US private equity firm Blackstone to invest ￡10 billion ($13.3 billion) in building what will be Europe's largest AI data centre in north-east England as proof that the UK is fertile investment territory.

Yet there is another factor at play. Far from being commerce’s pal, just two weeks after the delegates have packed their bags and headed for their private jets, Labour will be clobbering companies with higher taxes in the October 30th budget.

That is not a good look, and one Mr Starmer may struggle with on Monday.

Starmer's reshuffle

Politics practised in London at the highest levels is a rough trade that hounds mercilessly through any apparent cracks.

Getting rid of his chief of staff, Sue Gray, who was recruited as a former civil servant to bring a seamless transition after being out of power for 14 years, is designed to stop a rot of briefings and negative revelations.

Mr Starmer and his new team of lieutenants must urgently show that they can get the government match-fit to tackle the oncoming rush of issues that it must address. The governing political project has unresolved tensions at its heart, and none is greater than how Downing Street is handling British policy towards Palestine and Israel.

A poll conducted last week exposed how little impact Mr Starmer’s position on the Middle East has made on British public opinion. Two thirds of Labour voters say the Israeli operation in Gaza after October 7 was unjustified, while 52 per cent of those voters say that Israel should stop the operation immediately without even a ceasefire deal that secures the release of the many Israelis who remain hostages.

Labour voters are more hostile to Israel’s actions than the public as a whole.