Britain raised its national terrorism threat level to "severe" from "substantial" on Thursday, a day after an antisemitic attack in London was declared a terrorist incident by police.
The attack that unfolded in Golders Green, a predominantly Jewish area in the capital, saw two Jewish men taken to hospital with stab wounds. A 45-year-old man has been charged with attempted murder.
“Britain’s Jewish community suffered yet another vile terrorist attack,” U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said, noting that this is just the latest instance of antisemitism to unfold in recent months.
It comes after an arson attempt in London last month, which police are treating as an antisemitic hate crime, an attack on the Jewish ambulance service, an attempted firebombing at a London synagogue, and the deaths of two Jewish men at a Manchester synagogue in October last year.
“People are scared, scared to show who they are in their community, scared to go to synagogue and practice their religion, scared to go to university as a Jew, to send their children to school as a Jew, to tell their colleagues that they are Jewish, even to use our NHS,” Starmer said in a televised address to the nation.
“Nobody should live like that in Britain, but Jews do,” he continued. “Antisemitism is an old, old hatred. History shows that the roots are deep and if you turn away it grows back. Yet far too many people in this country diminish it.”
At a criminal justice roundtable held in the aftermath of the Golders Green attack, Starmer urged the importance of taking action to combat the rise of antisemitism.
The government has announced an extra £25 million in funding to go towards protecting Jewish communities and there are plans for increased security, but Starmer is facing calls to do more.
U.K.-based charity Community Security Trust (CST), which aims to "protect British Jews from terrorism and antisemitism," recorded 3,700 instances of antisemitic hate reported over the course of 2025, a 4% rise from the 3,556 incidents logged in 2024.
Only in 2023 has CST recorded more, when 4,298 cases of antisemitism were reported following a spike in incidents amid the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7.
“A report [published in October] by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research found that 47% of British Jews today see antisemitism as a very big problem,” Brendan McGeever, co-director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, tells TIME. “In 2012, that figure stood at just 11%, so clearly, there's a pattern here.”
Jonathan Hall KC, the government’s adviser on terrorism, has said attacks on Jewish people in the U.K. are "the biggest national security emergency" in almost a decade.
By contrast, Britain’s Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood stopped short of treating the attacks as a national emergency, but said the issue was an "absolutely pressing priority" for the government.
The government’s plan to stem rise of antisemitism—and how it’s facing calls to do more
The multi-million pound enhancement of funds to protect Jewish communities across the U.K will see more specialist and plain-clothes officers put in place.
Elsewhere, the government announced it will provide a grant for new electric ambulances for Hatzola, a Jewish medical charity whose vehicles were destroyed in an arson attack in March.
Prior to the Golders Green attack, an independent review into antisemitism in schools and colleges in England launched a public call for evidence, in an effort to gather data as part of a wider initiative to tackle antisemitism in places of learning.
The CST recorded 204 school-related antisemitic incidents in 2025—twice more than the levels typically seen before 2023.
Alex Sobel, a lawmaker and member of the Jewish Labour Movement, supports the idea of confronting instances of antisemitism early. Charities that work directly with the youth “can provide a huge part of the solution for the future,” he tells TIME.
Yet Downing Street has still been met with significant criticism from a number of Jewish groups and voices—as well as others in the wider community—who say more needs to be done to truly stamp out the prevalence of antisemitism in the U.K.
“Words of condemnation are no longer sufficient,” said Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis. “This must be a moment that demands meaningful action from every institution, every community, every leader, and every decent person in our country.”
Starmer faced heckles, boos, and chants of “shame on you” from protesters when he visited the site of the Golders Green attack on Thursday.
The Campaign Against Antisemitism charity also led a demonstration outside Downing Street in criticism of the government.
“After we called this rally, the Prime Minister made a statement in Downing Street, delivering strong words but no timeline for action. We are fed up with words—even if, finally, they were the right ones. What we need is action,” said a spokesperson of the charity.
Members of the Jewish community have vocalized feeling less safe in recent years.
Per the Institute for Jewish policy, in 2025, 35% of Jews rated their safety in Britain between 0–4 on a 10-point scale compared to just 9% in 2023 before the Oct. 7 attacks.
Sobel says some members of the community have changed their public appearance as a result of the concerns.
“I know people who’ve worn the Star of David, but have now removed it or put it under their clothes,” he tells TIME. “That's the thing that we need to overcome, so Jewish people, and visibly Jewish people in particular, are safe going about their business on our high streets.”
Sobel himself has been subjected to antisemitic abuse.
In December, a man who repeatedly sent abusive messages, which included references to “killing Jews,” to Sobel’s constituency office was jailed.
In a statement to police at the time, the lawmaker explained how the messages caused him to fear for the safety of himself and his family.
Reflecting on the incident, Sobel tells TIME he wants to see the justice system used “as an opportunity to try and educate and to reform people” such as the man who sent the messages.
When approached for comment regarding the criticisms some are leveling at the government on account of its handling of antisemitism, a Downing Street official pointed TIME to the £25 million boost in funding, alongside Starmer’s televised address and the remarks he delivered at the criminal justice roundtable held on Thursday.
Combatting the spread of antisemitic content on social media
The British government has previously said it is “extremely concerned about the spread of antisemitic content on social media.”
Pointing towards the Online Safety Act, enacted in 2023, the government said such legislation puts “strong duties on social media platforms to protect all users from illegal content, including illegal hate speech and abuse.”
In 2025, CST recorded 1,541 instances of online antisemitism, the highest for any year and 23% higher than the 1,253 online incidents reported in 2024.
Social media has been used, in some cases, “as a tool for coordinated campaigns of antisemitic harassment, threats and abuse directed at Jewish public figures and other individuals,” according to CST.
Jewish charities such as the Antisemitism Policy Trust and Campaign Against Antisemitism cite online hate as a major issue.
Ilan Zvi Baron, a professor in international political theory at Durham University, agrees that “social media definitely plays a part” in the rise of antisemitism.
Remarking on the discourse surrounding the Israel-Hamas war, he says criticism of the Israeli government online can sometimes merge into antisemitism.
“Attacking Jews because of Israel is wrong,” he says. “Jews are not representatives of the State of Israel, and treating them as such can be antisemitic.”
Social media platforms also hold responsibility, he argues.
Ofcom, the British regulatory body for broadcasting and communications, launched a compliance review in late 2025 to see if social media companies had “adequate systems, processes and policies for assessing and swiftly removing illegal hate and terror material.”
This came after U.K. lawmakers raised concerns about antisemitic content and calls for violence against the Jewish community on the social media platform X after the Manchester synagogue attack.
"Antisemitism has no place in our society. Our compliance programme on illegal hate and terror content is proceeding at pace and we will provide an update shortly,” an Ofcom spokesperson told TIME on Friday.
“In light of the recent attacks in Golders Green, we're also making contact with platforms to understand the action they're taking in response,” the statement continued. “Failure to comply with their online safety duties will not be tolerated and companies which fall short can expect firm enforcement action."
Starmer points to “malign threat posed by states like Iran”
In his televised address on Thursday, Starmer said “we need stronger powers to tackle the malign threat posed by states like Iran, because we know for a fact that they want to harm British Jews, which is why we will fast-track the necessary legislation.”
In late February, while confirming that the U.K. was not involved in the U.S.-Israeli strikes against Iran, Starmer had said the Iranian regime “poses a direct threat to dissidents and the Jewish community” in Britain.
“Over the last year alone, they have backed more than 20 potentially lethal attacks on U.K. soil,” he said.
In March, four men were arrested on suspicion of conducting surveillance of locations and individuals linked to the Jewish community in London to assist Iran. Two of the men were later charged with “engaging in conduct that is likely to assist a foreign intelligence service” between July and August last year.
Concerns have been raised over such instances of alleged spying on Jewish communities, prompting some to call on the government to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a terrorist organization.
Sobel, who has long campaigned for the proscription of the IRGC, says that “the government really needs to move” toward doing it.
“Iranians who live here, who oppose the regime, are [also] under significant risk,” he tells TIME. “Proscription is, in my view, a really necessary thing to protect a range of people, the Iranian diaspora, the Jewish community, U.K. service personnel, and police.”
In March, a cross-party motion was tabled in the House of Commons by lawmakers calling for the government to “immediately proscribe the IRGC in its entirety under the Terrorism Act 2000 and to apply a consistent and uncompromising approach to sectarian extremism.” It has so far received a total of 14 signatures.
On Thursday, the Home Office announced that “legislation will be fast-tracked in the coming weeks to clamp down on individuals and groups carrying out hostile activity for foreign states, including those who act as their proxies.”
It's not known exactly what that legislation will be.
Home Secretary Mahmood will be given “new proscription-like powers to ban the activities of state-backed organisations who pose a threat to the U.K.’s national security,” read a statement.
Such powers will give British police and intelligence agencies “stronger tools” under the National Security Act to “disrupt the activities of anyone acting on behalf of state-backed organizations.”
