Britain is facing a far more dangerous and complex terror threat a decade on from 7/7

By Rohit Kachroo: UK Editor

It is a decade since the 7/7 attacks, and thankfully we have seen nothing like it since.

But that doesn’t mean we are safer from terrorism, according to our security services. In fact, the threat that Britain faces today is far more complex, and perhaps far more dangerous.

Andrew Parker, the Director General of MI5 spelt that out at a speech in London tonight – a rare public address from one of the UK’s top spies.

“Strikingly, working with our partners, we have stopped three UK terrorist plots in recent months alone. Deaths would certainly have resulted otherwise,” he said.

We don’t know the details of the thwarted plots, but it’s clear which group Mr Parker is most concerned about.

Perhaps predictably, the so-called Islamic State remains the most significant threat.

The group has absorbed a significant proportion of the 600 British extremists who have travelled to Syria and Iraq.

Police stepped up armed patrols at St Pancras station today after the Paris shootings. Credit: ITV News
Andrew Parker said Islamic State posed a significant threat to the UK. Credit: ITV News

“ISIL has large numbers of fighters and substantial resources in parts of Syria and Iraq. Its propaganda repeatedly names Britain as an enemy…” he says.

Even in the 15 months since Parker’s last public speech, the threat is said to have evolved significantly.

Extremists have embraced social media to remotely radicalise people on the other side of the world.

And increasingly, officials speak of ‘have a go terrorists’ - marauding attacks, like that seen in Mumbai in 2008, or ‘lone wolf’ terrorists like the men responsible for the killings in Ottawa and in Woolwich.

But that’s not all.

Al-Qaida, apparently silenced in the western world, continues to want to kill Westerners too.

He reveals, for the first time that “we know, for example, that a group of core al-Qaida terrorists in Syria is planning mass casualty attacks against the West”.

Assessments of the threat we face from the head of MI5 are incredibly rare. This one was bleak too. Ambitious old methods combined with the less preventable new ones, with the killings in Paris providing a bloody backdrop to Mr Parker’s warning.