Patrick Christys: It would be nice if our government and border security was as vigilant as we’re going to have to be over the festive period

Christmas is nearly upon us, a time for togetherness, for celebration…but we’re being warned that it’s also a time to remain very, very vigilant.

Our terror threat is now severe, but for the first time ever we’re being actively told something very serious: It is us on the frontline of this.

The terror problem is now so serious and widespread that police are warning us that it may well be us, the public, who are called into action to prevent a mass casualty situation.

Counter Terror Police’s Protect and Prepare officer, Matt Twist, spoke exclusively to our Home and Security Editor Mark White to say that we all need to be on our toes.

It’s sad, isn’t it, that when you go to Winter Wonderland or another Christmas market, gone are the days of simply taking your child by the hand, getting some roasted chestnuts, some mulled wine, going to have a look at Santa’s grotto…

Now, we’re in a situation where we have to make a mental note of where the nearest exits are, where security is, is that bag unattended, is that person behaving suspiciously and consider whether or not you would fight or flight if a terror attack takes place. I’m not saying this stuff to scaremonger, or to try to ruin Christmas…

This is what we’re being told by the people in charge of out counter terror operation. There are a few reasons for this. It’s now easier than ever to become radicalised, especially online.

We locked down for months and basically that meant that some vulnerable people, or disgusting radical lunatics depending on which side of that coin you’re on…have been trapped in their bedrooms watching material online.

Whilst the physical fighting force of ISIS may have slightly diminished, but their online radicalisation wing hasn’t.

This isn’t helped by our pretty poor showing in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, and other parts of the Middle East.

But there are certainly other ways in which we’re not helping ourselves, or rather, we’re not being helped by our government and parts of the media.

Many elements of our media are at pains to go out of their way to tell us that far-right terror is on the march and it’s the fastest growing threat in the UK.

Yes, that’s true, but it’s starting from a very low base – the reality is that MI5’s broader terror-related watchlist contains 43,000 individuals.

In 2020, it was reported that the vast majority of these suspects – as many as 39,000 – are Islamist extremists.

A few thousand were classified as far-right extremists. Research also shows that 75% of those in prison for terror offences are radical Islamists.

So the main threat, unequivocally, is from Islamism. And then there’s the notion, pumped out again by a lot of our political community and vast swathes of the media that what’s happening in the Channel, or frankly our asylum policy as a whole, poses no threat to us whatsoever.

The bomb blast outside Liverpool Women’s Hospital was committed by 32-year-old Emad al-Swealmeen – who had first failed in his application for asylum in 2014.

During his stay in the UK, he was sectioned under the Mental Health Act for six months over a knife-related incident.

That highlighted that the Anglian church may, just may, have been, at best, lax when it comes to helping asylum seekers scam the system by ‘converting to Christianity’.

Iraqi teenage asylum seeker Ahmed Hassan was sentenced to life, with a minimum prison term of 34 years, for planting a homemade bomb on a London Underground train and injuring 51 people in 2017.

Recent research by the Henry Jackson Society found that, since 1998, around a quarter of foreign nationals convicted of Islamist-related terror offences had an asylum background.

Libyan refugee Khairi Saadallah, who was convicted of a string of criminal offences before stabbing three park-goers to death in Reading in 2020.

So, there is previous when it comes to asylum seekers committing terror attacks in this country. I’m not demonising them, I’m not tarring them all with the same brush, but facts are facts.

If you look at the fact that we’ve had more than 25,000 of them come over the Channel, many of them from countries with a strong radical Islamist presence, dumping their documents en route, well…is it any wonder we’re being told that we have to remain vigilant and that it may be down to us now to stop attacks because our officers are so overstretched.

I think it would be nice if our government and border security was as vigilant as we’re going to have to be over the festive period.