Britain to legislate to tackle threats from hostile state proxies

LONDON – Britain will legislate to strengthen its ability to deal with proxies for malign state actors, taking powers to make it possible to ban them in light of increased activity in Britain and a rise in antisemitic attacks.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said the government has to “deal with malign state actors” in the wake of a series of attacks on Britain’s Jewish community.

In a speech outlining the government’s agenda, King Charles said it would “introduce legislation to tackle the growing threat from foreign state entities and their proxies”, and would also take urgent action to tackle antisemitism.

Several British lawmakers have called for the proscription of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

The IRGC is an elite military force whose purpose is to protect Shi’ite Muslim clerical rule in Iran. It controls large parts ​of Iran’s ​economy.

While Mr Starmer has not publicly named the IRGC as being the target of the legislation, in an introduction to the King’s Speech, he said that Britain would tackle extremism “including where it is sponsored by foreign powers that are hostile to the UK, such as Iran”.

The move comes after a spate of arson attacks on sites in London linked to the Jewish community and the targeting of Iranian dissidents, with police saying they were examining possible Iran links.

Britain’s security chiefs have for years warned about threats from “hostile” states such as Iran, Russia and China, with a number of convictions of people who had been accused of carrying out spying or other offences on their behalf.

The new law would allow the government to specify state-backed organisations that threaten national security through espionage, sabotage, interference or other means. A review in 2025 found that Britain’s existing framework had a legal difficulty in proscribing state entities.

There will be new offences created for belonging to such organisations or raising support for them, and the government said that collectively the measures would create a “tougher operating environment for foreign intelligence services and their proxies”.

The king’s speech also promised a new National Security Bill which would address those who were fixated on violence and planning mass killings, but were not obviously inspired by a particular ideology.

The new law would aim to criminalise the creation and sharing of the most harmful online material.

As part of an approach to align countering state threats with addressing terrorism risks, the bill would add “polygraph testing as an available licence condition for state threat offenders”, the government said. REUTERS