What have we learned?

A thought experiment twenty years after London's 7/7 Islamist attacks

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Yesterday, I watched Britain’s leaders mark the twentieth anniversary of the London bombings, when Islamist extremists blew up 52 people on trains and buses.

“London’s determination to stand together is stronger than ever”, said London Mayor Sadiq Khan, yesterday. “We will always choose hope over fear and unity over division as we continue building a safer London for everyone.”

“Those who tried to divide us failed”, said Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer. “We stood together then, and we stand together now—against hate and for the values that define us of freedom, democracy and the rule of law”.

And then Labour Home Secretary Yvette Cooper: “We will always confront the threats facing this country to keep the public safe and preserve our way of life”.

Really, I thought, as I read one statement after another.

Really?

Because what I see around me today is a very different country from the one described by the likes of Khan, Starmer, and Cooper.

A country that has clearly failed to learn the lessons of that horrible day. A country that is led by people who are visibly failing to confront the threats we face. And a country that, thanks to the decisions of its hapless ruling class, is now more at risk of Islamist terror today than it was twenty years ago.

Here’s a thought experiment, to illustrate my point.

Imagine in the aftermath of the 7/7 terror attacks, in 2005, somebody came up to you and told you what Britain would look like in twenty years time, in the year 2025.

The country, you are told, now has absolutely no control of its own borders.

Despite ongoing chaos and conflicts in the likes of Syria, Afghanistan, Gaza, Iran, Iraq, Eritrea, Nigeria, Mali, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, Yemen, and elsewhere, the UK government is now essentially running an open borders policy.

There is a steady stream of mainly young, fighting-age men from Islamic nations streaming into the United Kingdom illegally, and at free will.

More than 170,000 in fact —more than the number of people in the British army.

The state is seemingly powerless to stop them, while human rights lawyers use legal aid, paid for by British taxpayers, to help keep them in the country.

Nobody knows what they believe.

Nobody knows who they are.

And nobody knows why they are here.

What we do know, you are told, is that whilst some of them may be genuine refugees, they have included murderers, rapists, ISIS-sympathisers, and alleged terrorists.

And despite knowing all this, our very own leaders, the people who are meant to keep us safe, have decided to put these men into the heart of our own communities, alongside the British people and their children.

And that’s not all.

You are also told that while losing control of its borders, Britain is now running a policy of mass legal immigration, the likes of which it has never seen before.

The policy has sent the annual rate of net migration into Britain soaring, from 248,000 at the time of the 7/7 attacks, to close to one million people in the early 2020s.

But unlike the time of 7/7, when much of this migration was from culturally similar and compatible nations in Europe, now you learn that more than 80 per cent of all migration into Britain is coming from radically different nations outside of Europe.

While many of the migrants flooding into Britain are poorly-educated with few skills, some of the largest inflows, you learn, are now coming from the likes of Pakistan and Afghanistan —where several of the 7/7 terrorists were trained.

Nor does Britain have any serious strategy for integrating these newcomers.

Twenty years on from policymakers warning at the time of 7/7 that some of Britain’s communities were “leading parallel lives” and “sleepwalking into segregation”, and more than a decade on from the likes of David Cameron declaring multiculturalism has “failed”, nobody in power has come up with a serious strategy or alternative.

Britain, to all intents and purposes, has no integration strategy, a point that is perhaps best reflected by the fact there are now more than 1 million people in the country who do not even speak English.

Even worse, those who have similarly suggested multiculturalism is failing, such as Suella Braverman, have been promptly shouted down by a political class, a media class, a cultural class that can no longer even tolerate any criticism of ‘diversity’.

Britain, you learn, has now become a country where pro-Hamas, pro-Hezbollah, pro-Iran, and hence pro-Islamist marches are allowed to take place in our capital city on a regular basis, while at local and national elections Muslim campaign groups now openly work to organise Muslim votes along religious lines.

Yet nobody in public office, nobody in government, calls this out.

Islamic sectarianism, you are told, is now also on full display in the House of Commons, enabled by the radical woke left.

Islamist gangs now run many of Britain’s prisons. There are roughly 80 Sharia courts in the country, reflecting the arrival of a parallel legal system. And some Muslim MPs appear more interested in fighting for an airport in Pakistan or calling openly for blasphemy laws than working in ways that are consistent with our political traditions.

And if all this hasn’t shocked you enough, at the same time you are told the UK state has even been using the British people’s own money to not only prioritise illegal migrants over British people in the housing market but subsidise actual terrorists.

Hamas members such as Muhammad Qassem Sawalha, you learn, as well as Islamist terrorists such as Khuram Butt and Salman Abedi have been housed at the expense of British taxpayers while the likes of Shahan Choudhury returned the generosity of the British people by using these welfare benefits to send his family to join … ISIS.

You also learn that only a few years after the 7/7 attacks more British Muslims left Britain to fight for extremist Islamists in Syria and Afghanistan than have joined the British armed forces. And only an estimated one in every eight who returned to Britain were ever prosecuted by the state.

Despite the fact that, by 2025, there are an estimated 43,000 Islamist extremists in Britain who are “of concern” to the security services, and that Islamists have accounted for between two-thirds to three-quarters of all terror attacks in the UK since 7/7, you are also told that many politicians, especially on the Left, still insist on talking about Islamism and the “far right” as though they are comparable.

Somebody also shows you bizarre and frankly absurd coverage of what happened in the aftermath of other major Islamist atrocities that followed the 7/7 attacks.

After Islamists targeted children and killed 22 people at an Ariana Grande concert, in 2017, politicians urged the British people to “not look back in anger”.

And after an Islamist brutally murdered Member of Parliament Sir David Amess, much of the national debate urged the British people to be “nicer to people online”.

And while you are wondering what on earth has become of Britain’s ruling class and prevailing culture, somebody also tells you how the ruling class has been deliberately trying to suppress free speech and free expression about these very issues.

Ever since the War on Terror, you learn how the ruling class has been expanding ‘hate laws’, ‘non-crime hate incidents’, speech codes, and other forms of censorship that are clearly designed to warn people off from asking tough questions about the direction of British society, while those who do are quickly branded “far-right”.

And whereas at the time of 7/7 an assortment of brave writers, thinkers, satirists, and politicians called for a widespread debate about the roots of extremist Islamism, including its relationship with Islamic theology, civil society groups, foreign regimes, and even the much broader question of whether Islam itself is compatible with Western, liberal ways of life, twenty years later you learn that the establishment is now pushing ahead with plans to usher in a dodgy new definition of “Islamophobia” that will further restrict free speech about these crucial questions and issues.

What would you think after being told all this?

What on earth happened to my country, you might ask?

What kind of response to Islamist terror is this, you might ask?

And what the hell happened to our so-called leaders who are supposed to look after our nation, its people and children?

Indeed. These are all good questions.

And you would be entirely right to ask them.

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