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Counterterrorism police are investigating whether a fire at Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s north London home in the early hours of Monday is linked to two other blazes.
The fire at the Starmer family’s four-bedroom house in Kentish Town, which the prime minister rented out to tenants after moving to 10 Downing Street in July last year, caused damage to the property’s entrance, the Metropolitan Police said.
A Met spokesperson said later on Monday that a car caught fire in recent days on the same street in Kentish Town as Starmer’s home. And an office building that has a connection to Starmer in the N7 postcode, which includes parts of Islington in north London, also suffered a blaze, the spokesperson added.
It is not yet clear whether the three fires are connected but counterterrorism police are pursuing that as a line of inquiry, one person familiar with the matter said.
Police do not believe the fire at Starmer’s Kentish Town home was started by an explosive device, but are continuing to investigate the source of the blaze, this person added.
The three fires with potential links to Starmer are likely to heighten concerns inside the government about a co-ordinated campaign against the prime minister.
The involvement of counterterrorism officers, who are specialists in discerning the nature of a possible attack, is common when a high-profile property is the subject of fire damage.
The Met said in a statement: “On Monday, 12 May at 01:35am, police were alerted by the London Fire Brigade to reports of a fire at a residential address in [Kentish Town].
“Officers attended the scene. Damage was caused to the property’s entrance, nobody was hurt. The fire is being investigated and cordons remain in place while enquiries continue.”
The London Fire Brigade described the incident at Starmer’s home as a “small” blaze “outside a property” which was dealt with by two fire engines. “The brigade was called at 01.11am and the fire was under control by 01.33am,” it added.
A spokesperson for the prime minister said he “thanks the emergency services for their work”, but declined to comment further because of the police investigation.
Starmer’s home has been targeted by protesters in the past, including in relation to the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
On Monday, Starmer announced a crackdown on net migration, warning that Britain risked becoming “an island of strangers” without further action.
The UK faces several threats, and Ken McCallum, head of MI5, warned in October that Russian spies were on a “mission to generate mayhem” on Britain’s streets and that Iran was fomenting lethal plots at “an unprecedented pace and scale”.
In June last year, three pro-Palestinian protesters were found guilty of public order offences after demonstrating outside Starmer’s Kentish Town home.
Rows of children’s shoes were laid outside the property and a banner hung calling on Starmer to “stop the killing”, surrounded by red handprints.
Lady Victoria Starmer, his wife, told magistrates that the protest in April last year, when her husband was leader of the opposition, had left her feeling “a bit sick”.
During the general election campaign last year, Starmer moved his family into a high-end apartment owned by Labour donor Lord Waheed Alli, saying he wanted his son to be able to revise for his GCSE exams without distraction.
Additional reporting by Michael O’Dwyer in London
