Europe’s leaders are failing in their duty to keep people safe

Life in Europe is becoming increasingly precarious; a case of hoping it’s not your turn to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. In a Salisbury court on Monday a 21-year-old Afghan with a long history of violence was convicted of the brutal murder of Thomas Roberts; on Wednesday, a Palestinian allegedly stabbed two people to death on a German train.

That same day in Spain a Moroccan under a deportation order was arrested after a verger was killed with a machete and a priest badly wounded in two related attacks in the city of Algeciras. Meanwhile in France an Algerian and a Kosovan are in custody after two incidents earlier in the month, one in Paris and the other in Strasbourg, where knives were used to inflict terrible injuries on bystanders.

Europeans have been suffering these types of attacks since at least 2014. In that time hundreds of hands have been wrung by politicians, and thousands of words spoken, including many meaningless cliches about ‘learning lessons’.