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Counterterrorism police are investigating a fireplace at Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s north London house within the early hours of Monday morning.
The fireplace on the four-bedroom home, which Starmer has rented out to tenants since transferring to 10 Downing Avenue in July final 12 months, triggered injury to the property’s entrance, the Metropolitan Police stated.
“On Monday, 12 Could at 01:35hrs, police have been alerted by the London Fireplace Brigade to studies of a hearth at a residential handle in [Kentish Town],” the police stated in a press release.
“Officers attended the scene. Harm was triggered to the property’s entrance, no person was harm. The fireplace is being investigated and cordons stay in place whereas enquiries proceed,” the power added.
Starmer’s house has been focused by protesters previously, together with in relation to the Israel-Hamas warfare.
On Monday, Starmer introduced a migration crackdown, warning that Britain risked changing into “an island of strangers” with out additional motion.
A spokesperson for the prime minister on Monday stated he “thanks the emergency providers for his or her work”, however declined to remark additional due to the dwell police investigation.
At about 6pm on Monday, the road on which Starmer’s home is situated was nonetheless sealed off at each ends. Contained in the cordon have been cops and a London Fireplace Brigade car marked “Fireplace investigation, Working Canines”.
The involvement of counterterrorism police, who’re specialists in discerning the character of a attainable assault, is widespread when a high-profile property is the topic of fireside injury.
The truth that the police are investigating suggests there’s motive to imagine the hearth was began deliberately, however it isn’t clear at this stage whether or not it was an newbie protest or one thing way more severe.
The UK faces a number of threats, and the pinnacle of MI5, the home intelligence service, warned in October that Russian spies have been on a “mission to generate mayhem” on Britain’s streets and Iran was fomenting deadly plots at “an unprecedented tempo and scale”.
The London Fireplace Brigade described it as a “small” hearth “outdoors a property”, which was dealt with by two hearth engines. “The brigade was referred to as at 01.11 and the hearth was below management by 01.33,” it added.
Throughout final 12 months’s common election marketing campaign, which culminated in a landslide Labour victory, Starmer moved his household right into a high-end residence owned by celebration donor Lord Waheed Alli, saying he wished his son to have the ability to revise for his GCSE exams with out distraction.
In June final 12 months, three pro-Palestinian protesters have been discovered responsible of public order offences after protesting outdoors the Starmer house two months earlier.
Rows of kids’s sneakers had been laid outdoors the Kentish City property and a banner hung calling on Starmer to “cease the killing”, surrounded by pink hand prints.
Starmer’s spouse instructed the magistrates’ courtroom that the protest in April 2024, when her husband was nonetheless chief of the opposition, had left her feeling “a bit sick”.
Woman Victoria Starmer stated on the time that it might have appeared “like a peaceable protest if it hadn’t been outdoors my house”.
Extra reporting by Michael O’Dwyer in London
