ONLY four weeks ago, the security agencies warned of the possibility of a new wave of ‘lone wolf’ attacks by those radicalised online.
Once turned, months of lockdown have given these potential ‘bedroom radicals’ time to prepare and plan the next outrage.
So, tragically, it has proved, with the murder of my colleague Sir David Amess and, now, the bomb blast in Liverpool, raising the terrorist threat to severe.
Neither young man was on MI5’s watch list, already at 43,000 at the last count in 2020, when Home Secretary Priti Patel confirmed that 90 per cent were Islamic extremists.
Speculation continues over the motives of Sir David’s killer, while the good people who housed the Liverpool attacker as a young asylum seeker in 2014 believed he’d converted to Christianity.
Instead, it appears likely that the Cathedral where he was confirmed was his original target on Remembrance Sunday.
Only a miracle prevented carnage.
Meanwhile, ISIS is not extinct, nor is Al Qaeda.
MI5’s Director General, Ken McCallum, told the BBC in September that 31, late-stage terror plots had been foiled in the UK in the last four years, six of them during the pandemic.
He said the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban would only have ‘heartened and emboldened’ others.
The problem now is to identify these terrorists.
And, of course, that’s not easy, with some already here and concern that others could be among more than 20,000 migrants who’ve crossed the Channel this year alone.
With the EU sticking to their open borders’ policy, there is little or no deterrent to prevent migrants heading for our shores.
However, we left the EU to regain control of our borders and that we must do, and fast.