Amber Rudd has a headache that is going to last 20 or 30 years more according to an ex-head of MI5. The phantom of Home Grown terrorism either inspired or planned in coordination with terrorists abroad is a clear and present danger.
Lord Evans who retired from MI5 in 2013 said terror attacks like the 7/7 bombings in 2005 or the recent plethora of attacks in the UK and Europe have galvanised Jihadis here. It makes no difference whether the would-be terrorists are operatives on their own or with help from outside the result is the same - carnage.
Their goal is to strike at anything they consider outside their idea of their flawed Islamist beliefs and agenda.
The attacks are getting less sophisticated having gone from assaults with guns to truck attacks or knives. Why this has happened is unclear, however, it appears the Jihadis are happy to use anything that comes to hand as a weapon to strike at the infidel.
It could be many of the attacks using trucks or knives are attacks inspired by IS or AQ rather than planned. It seems those using guns and explosives are probably attacks that have been planned with IS or AQ. As Islamic State weakens in Iraq and Syria we may well see less and less of well planned and well-funded attacks. That doesn't mean the power of IS is broken, it may take some time for the organisation to recover and re-establish itself elsewhere.
Isolated Youth
Why so many young Muslims are turning to extremism is a question with many answers. Certainly, the Prevent scheme so beloved of the government is having mixed results. The scheme was set up to educate and prevent young Muslims from going to the dark side as it were. For every success, there will be those that fall through the net.
Muslim Youth have grown up in this country and gone to school with native Brits yet many of them feel alienated. No doubt racism does play a part but many in the inner cities live in ghettos away from the host communities. Unemployment and poverty lead many to crime and ultimately to extremism.
Of course, it could be argued that non-Muslim youth facing the same things because of austerity are also drawn into far-right or Christian extremist groups.
The difference is they have not carried out any terrorist outrages as yet. Yes, there was the van attack on Muslims in London but that appears so far to be a one-off.
The future
If Lord Evans' assessment is correct and we are facing an Islamist menace for years to come, our security services will be locked in this battle for decades. The Quilliam Foundation an anti-extremist organisation does what it can to prevent young Muslims from going towards extremism but like Prevent it will be mixed results.
Future Home Secretaries after Amber Rudd will have this Jihadist headache for a long time and will have to allocate money and resources to fight this. The IRA was a danger for many years but the Good Friday Peace Agreement brought peace to the UK and Northern Ireland. Will we ever see such a thing with Islamist terrorists and if we did who would you negotiate with?
