Wouldn't this be achieved by just giving MI5 the power to carry out arrests?
this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2026
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MI5 don’t have investigatory powers so they wouldn’t know who to arrest for what.
UK are you high?
What made you look at the FBI and think "yeah, we need that"!!?
Let me remind everyone because the haze of chaos has made it easy to forget, January 6th was organized IN PUBLIC ON FACEBOOK and the FBI still completely failed to stop it.
There is no failing bigger than that, and that was before children's book author Kash Patel took over.
yes this is real, I am sorry to say...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/07/trump-fbi-pick-kash-patel-childrens-books
I mean holy shit pick any other entity to compare yourself too, have some damn standards!
Wait, Kash Patel inserted himself into the story as the hero of his MAGA ~~children's book~~ fanfiction? That's pathetic.
Are we sure "failed to stop it" is the correct framing?
No, I would say it is the "minimum evil" framing, as in at minimum they failed to stop it and that is already damning enough to disband the whole thing regardless of how much more evil the reality is.
Fair
The UK has been more of a police state than the US for decades.
I've lived for decades in both countries, and can tell you with great confidence that it's not at all as you claim.
Intrusive, aggressive encounters with pushy, power-mad authorities were orders of magnitude more common in the US than anything I've ever experienced in the UK, and discussions with British friends tell the same story.
Here's the thing. The UK government passes draconian legislation, but they seldom or never actually use it. That's due to a combination of organizational inertia (Can't Be Arsed is a deep-seated cultural value), lack of resources, and a tendency of the judiciary not to tolerate overreach. So on paper, it looks like a totalitarian hellhole, but in practice, you're left alone, and your chances of (for example) a lethal encounter with the police are on the order of one hundredth the odds in the US. In the UK, police have killed 88 people in various encounters: that's the total SINCE 1990. In the US, figures are hard to come by since some states refuse to report on it and the Feds don't force them, but independent numbers are in the 2000-2500 per year range. In 20 years in the UK, I've never been stopped by a police officer for any reason. The standard US cop pretexts (smelling weed, broken taillight, jaywalking, driving while black) are rarely used here, despite the law permitting evidence-free stop and search. And my wife and kids, who are visibly not ethnically English, have had similar experiences.
There are exceptions: the biggest ones right now are pro-Palestinian and environmentalist demonstrations, which are being dealt with in an unjustified and heavy-handed manner, especially in London. But in my city, sizeable pro-Palestinian demos went ahead with no police interference. There was also an anti-immigrant demo in our town center, with a rent-a-crowd of skinheads bused in. A counter-demo was quickly formed, at least five times as big, and the bovver boys left quickly without having caused any damage. The police behaved sensibly. I know, because I was in the counter-demo.
The big concern is what happens if Reform (the local fascist quasi-MAGA party of Putin stooges) gets in and tries to exercise those draconian powers more extensively. There are too few constraints in UK governance to prevent a takeover by totalitarians that gain a parliamentary majority. The US concept of checks and balances isn't a thing here. But at the moment, that's more a risk than a live issue.
Where the fuck do you get that idea? Because there are more cameras? Because that's about the only thing more police state than giving every Tom, Dick, and Harry with a badge, a gun, and minimal oversight.
That, and the whole Palestine Action thing. You don't need guns or lack of oversight to be a police state.
While I agree that the banning of any demonstration in support of Palestine Action is an authoritarian overreach by the UK, I dont think its as bad as masked paramilitary goons dragging people off without explanation and executing them them in broad daylight while members of the government stand up and say that said paramilitary goons have full legal immunity,
which is saying a lot!
Is that actually true? Seems dubious right now.
🤔
A new type of police. When has that backfired before?
what part of the UK is federal ? is that a system UK has adopted anywhere else ?
All of it. The UK is a Unitary State. So if Parliament where to pass a bill to form an FBI like police force then they can have one
This is the bit that makes no sense to me. Wouldn't a UK version of an FBI just be... the police?
Nope because different police are organized for different jurisdictions.
Obvious example is Scotland Yard. Despite their fame and infamy they only police the Greater London area.
A UK FBI would have jurisdiction across the entire nation.
Most of Greater London. The City of London has its own police.
Why do the anglos always have exceptions for exceptions? The sheriff of this, the city of that, the tiny island that isn't part of the country.
Why do the anglos always have exceptions for exceptions?
History and a preference for not reopening awkward compromises until they become really really annoying. Except one.
Nope because different police are organized for different jurisdictions.
The jurisdictions generally correspond to counties, though some counties pool their resources and share a single police authority between them.
Scotland Yard is more commonly known these days as the Metropolitan Police, or the Met, who per the name handle policing in the London metropolitan area, but they do also handle national tasks like counterterrorism and protection of the royals. They're the closest thing to the FBI in the UK right now.
Scotland Yard is a colloquialism. It’s always been the Metropolitan Police.
You are correct about that but they are not the only agency with such responsibilities. This “UK FBI.” Would be taking those responsibilities (at least the counter terrorism aspect.) from the Met and others and be doing it themselves.
So the Met police becomes focused on just London while nation wide matters is the FBI jurisdiction
Thank you for filling in my ignorance on that one. Cheers.
Reading the article, it's really more of a UK 'Australian Federal Police' than the US FBI.
I guess 'FBI' sounds cooler to them?
I thought we already had that, the NCA? We don't generally need "federal" level stuff because we don't have different laws.
There's some difference in trial process and civil laws (someone can correct me if there's a real difference in criminal law, I don't think there is though) between the countries making up the UK. But we don't have the whole entanglement of State law vs Federal law.
So, there's no need for anything more than what we already have which only really need to work to bring the regional forces together on serious cases.
The NCA deals with organised crime, cyber crime, trafficking and weapons, as well as being the UK liason for Interpol and Europol. The NPS will absorb the NCA, and also roll in the Met counter-terrorism unit, motorway policing, the police air service, and other functions which cross territories. It’ll also set the standards and training syllabus for the territorial forces on a national basis.
So not the FBI. All sensible stuff really. Could have avoided all these headlines by extending the NCA really