In the digital age, terrorists have far more places to hide

We learn this morning that MI5 has launched an internal inquiry into how they didn’t catch Salman Abedi, the Manchester bomber. He was reported to them five times, apparently, even by his imam – the spooks looked into him, but after a while discontinued their investigation. Perhaps we will learn that there has been an egregious intelligence failure but I doubt it. I suspect that in time, we’ll learn every detail about the case of Salman Abedi and it will likely expose the grim realities of counter-terrorism. And also that, as I argued in my most recent Daily Telegraph column, we’re about as safe as we’re ever likely to get. 

Yes, you can say that the signs were all there: the trips to Libya, links to jihadis, the glorifying of suicide attacks and strange behaviour: one of his neighbours said he was flying what looked like the Islamic State flag at his house.