Terrorism arrests rose 1,114% last year - so why aren’t the security services more alarmed? | Zoe Williams

Due to an ongoing judicial review, Home Office data currently leaves out the thousands of people apprehended at Palestine Action protests. But whichever way you cut it, the number of arrests is outrageous On the surface, the Home Office’s latest data on terrorism arrests looks relatively stable. There were 255 terrorism-related arrests in 2025, which is only a 2% increase on the previous year’s figure of 250. Funny thing is, I know three people who were arrested on terrorism-related charges last year. I could even pinpoint the date, because two of their middle-aged children had to leave my middle-aged birthday party to pick them up from a police station. I know, I know, it’s not all about me, even if it was my birthday – but if those numbers are solid, that means more than 50% of the mini-surge came from more or less the same group of people, two of them from the same postcode. Looking closer, it turns out the latest figures are not very solid, because the number of terrorism arrests in 2025 was in fact 3,034, a 1,114% increase on 2024. This striking uptick would be enough to alarm and dismay a country’s security services, except for the fact that almost all of them were