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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Well Friday’s terror attack in Tunisia has seen the worst loss of British life since the 7/7 bombings nearly ten years ago.  It has been blamed on a lone wolf gunman, so-called, with responsibility claimed ultimately by Islamic State.  Well despite ten months of bombing attacks by US led coalition in Iraq and Syria, the militant group has survived and indeed seems to continue to grow.  I’m joined now by the former Security Minister and First Sea Lord, Lord West, Peter Clarke who was the head of the Metropolitan Police’s counter terror command and the extremism expert, Ed Husain who is author of The Islamist  and is a senior advisor to the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, a very good morning to you gentlemen.  Ed Husain, I suppose the same question to you all but first of all on the Tunisia attack, this was terror almost in its purest form, an attack on one of the softest targets you could choose but with devastating effect.

ED HUSAIN: Absolutely right and it wasn’t an accident, the choice was strategic, the choice was deliberate and we have seen similar kinds of terrorist attacks happen before at tourist destinations before in Egypt.  At the core of all this are three crucial things, Dermot.  The first is that there is a battle of ideas going on inside Islam and between Muslims and in that battle of ideas we in the West, and I speak as a Muslim and a Westerner, we have allies.  Secondly, the Prime Minister continues to speak about a cult of death or a death cult.  This is not a death cult, this is religious ideology at its best and unless we understand that ideology we can’t do the third thing and that is we are currently losing all across the globe.  Yes, it’s Tunisia today and rightly we should mourn the British people who have been killed but don’t forget the Afghan parliament was attacked, so far we’ve had more than 40,000 Pakistanis killed, we’ve had nearly 30 Kuwaitis killed so this is happening almost on a daily basis across the world.  Currently, unless we understand the religious ideology and the politicisation of it underscoring this terror threat, we’ll continue to lose.  

DM: Okay, let’s discuss the response, that third element you touched on, and Lord West, clearly there has to be some kind of military response.  There is one but it doesn’t seem to be working.   

LORD WEST: No, because it’s much more than just a military response, there has got to be a very comprehensive strategy and I haven’t seen myself, and I hope there is one but I haven’t see it, a comprehensive strategy pulling in all aspects of diplomatic, political, the word propaganda – I believe we haven’t done nearly enough on that, we ought to take the lead in completely wiping out their propaganda by taking over all the airways.  I mean we have got probably some of the best people at that in the media world in the West that they are and yet somehow they seem to be running the agenda.  We need to talk with the CSPs to make sure things are taken down, if we don’t take them down we ought to be using them, the ones that we don’t take down, so that we can make the people doing it look stupid and also make them vulnerable because their own people will say, well hang on, whose side is that one on?  We can do an awful lot and we don’t seem to have taken that sort of thing as seriously as we should.  I think we do need to think of actually working with someone as loathsome as Assad because they have safe bases within Syria.  

DM: So give up the idea that he needs to be toppled then?

LORD WEST: Well I don’t say that but let’s shoot the wolves closes to the sledge and the wolf closest to the sledge is ISIL at the moment.  There is the bigger fundamental issue that’s just been raised but the wolf closest to the sledge is ISIL, let’s have ISIL – and there will be other aspects of extremist Islam ideology and we can talk about that – but that’s what we should do.  

DM: Peter Clarke, people are worried, people are worried about going on holiday, people are worried about going to mass events within the UK, the British government has one of its main duties as trying to protect its citizens but it can’t possibly though protect against a lone wolf like this can it?  

PETER CLARKE: No, it can’t, not in every part of the world and of course with mass tourism now there are many parts of the world where people want to travel and have their holidays and enjoy them where security is perhaps not of a standard that we might expect here and this attack in Tunisia is for me horribly reminiscent of what happened in Bali in 2002 when 27 British people were killed there and many more injured and I saw for myself that in the face of mass casualties and huge numbers of very serious injuries, the infrastructure was simply overwhelmed.  These places are designed for people to go and enjoy and relax and not to deal with the kind of enormous catastrophe that we’ve seen in Tunisia.  

DM: But just how hard are the security services and agencies working in this country?  We know about the estimates of the numbers of people who have been to fight already with Islamic State who are back in this country, others who would come here or even those that necessarily don’t want to go but want to carry out its work on these shores?

PETER CLARKE: The way it is described to me is that they are at full stretch.  The figures suggest that perhaps 350 people have returned here from Syria, it’s assessed that perhaps one in five of them present a high risk to this country, the level of arrests of people in connection with terrorism is at its highest ever level, it is about one per day.  There are about 120 people awaiting trial on terrorist related charges so the tempo in charge of counter terrorist law enforcement and intelligence work is as high as it’s ever been.

LORD WEST: But we mustn’t live in fear, we must not live in fear. Peter describes the situation exactly as it is but one of the things I would say in this country is, lone gunmen, yes, it was a great threat and we looked at this closely.  In fact when Peter was there and I was there, we both looked at this issue but it is much more difficult particularly to get ammunition in this country.  You can get hold of a gun but getting hold of ammunition is difficult, I think our tight gun laws are very important, we need to make sure that they are applied properly and therefore  people shouldn’t live in fear because that’s what these people want to do.  

DM: You have both touched on it as well as dealing with that point, the ideology, the argument basically, we need to counter that, that’s how you get to the core of it, that’s how you deal with the motivation that’s involved.  

ED HUSAIN: Absolutely, the terrorism, the violence is a direct result of the conviction in the head of someone that they are not killing and going to hell but they are actually becoming a martyr and going to heaven and that …  

DM: Britain’s foreign policy in some way is built around oppressing Muslims, that is part of the ideology isn’t it?  That’s the narrative isn’t it?

ED HUSAIN: That’s the narrative that’s being pushed out on the other side, what it doesn’t account for is the fact that Britain is also home to two million Muslims, Britain is the greatest contributor to the Syrian refugee crisis, the Britain … I can go on and on about this.  

DM: And Britain intervened in Bosnia and Kosovo to protect Muslims.  

ED HUSAIN: Precisely right but we don’t have the conviction, the courage of our convictions to go out and fight this fight where it matters most, on the websites, on Twitter, in some mosques, changing curriculums in schools both here and abroad and unless we do a raft of things to win the propaganda war that Lord West correctly identifies, then we are constantly on the back foot and hostage to events and the good news is that we can win this war because we do have the better arguments on our side, we have the vast majority of the world’s Muslims on our side because they are the first victims of terrorism and what’s required is political will and leadership to deliver rather than to constantly pander to that narrative.  

PETER CLARKE: I entirely agree with what Ed’s saying there.  I don’t like the expression lone wolf very much because that suggests individuals.  Well there are individuals but all these individuals are joined by one thing which is adherence to the ideology that supports terrorism or which leads people to be at more risk of radicalisation.  I think what the Prime Minister said the other day about silently condoning …

DM: Quietly condoning.  

PETER CLARKE: Quietly condoning, is hugely important.  Last year I was asked by the government to conduct an inquiry into allegations of Islamist infiltration into the governance and the leadership of schools in Birmingham.  I and not only me but other inquiries as well, found very clear irrefutable evidence that there was some extremist influence in those schools.  For some unknown reason the Education Select Committee a few months ago published a report saying that there was no such extremism except for one isolated incident.  That’s simply not right and I fear, and I’m pleased now that the government has rebuffed that and said that is simply not right …   

DM: So you referred them to that again, don’t turn a blind eye.  

PETER CLARKE: Absolutely, don’t turn a blind because actually all that does is render young people potentially vulnerable.  

DM: I’m sorry we’re out of time, Lord West, Peter Clarke and Ed Husain, thank you all very much indeed for your thoughts there.