How much longer will MI5 cloak its incompetence in secrecy?

The incompetence of MI5 in failing to prevent Salman Abedi detonating his bomb at the Manchester Arena in 2017 beggars belief. According to Sir John Saunders, who chaired the inquiry into the Islamist atrocity which killed 22 people, a better response from MI5 ‘might have prevented the attack’. 

In publishing his 226-page report, Sir John did not spare the intelligence service for missing several opportunities to thwart Abedi, who made little attempt to conceal his extremist ideology. MI5’s most calamitous mistake was to sit on a piece of intelligence that they received, information which has not been disclosed for national security reasons. 

The first MI5 officer to assess the intelligence failed to discuss it with colleagues and did not write a report on the same day as was standard procedure. When the MI5 officer did eventually write the report, noted Sir John, it ‘did not contain sufficient context’.