Are British spooks complacent about the next terror threat?

Unless you’re a dog lover the news from Afghanistan has been unceasingly bleak over the course of the last month. But one story this week should give Britons particular cause for concern.

The Daily Telegraph reports that senior British intelligence officials have ‘held secret talks’ with the Taliban in Kabul. Apparently the spooks have sought assurances from the new rulers of Afghanistan that the country won’t be used to launch terrorist attacks on Britain.

Assuming that this time MI6 were talking to genuine Taliban – and not an imposter, as was the case in 2010 when they were duped by a Pakistani shopkeeper pretending to be a senior figure in the organisation – one fears that British intelligence will again under-estimate their enemy.

For in the last 30 years ineptitude and complacency has characterised much of British intelligence’s battle against Islamic extremists. It began in the 1990s, the decade in which the French intelligence services rechristened the British capital ‘Londonistan’.