What a breathtakingly dumb article Andrew Gilligan wrote in the Evening Standard recently. This cannot pass without comment. It might seem strange to take Gilligan seriously. He’s a deluded, treacherous arse, after all. The trouble is that he is an influential, deluded treacherous arse. Here, he cheers the financial crisis because it will allow the “police state” fewer resources to combat terrorism. Blimey O’Reilly!

Gilligan trots out that silly claim that the terror threat isn’t really all that “dastardly”, and that it’s exaggerated by the authorities. Never mind the numerous attacks that have been thwarted by the, ahem, police state including the London nightclubs the terrorists planned to attack on ladies’ night so they could wipe out the “dancing slags”. And let’s put to one side the fertilizer bomb gang and the mammoth liquid bomb plot which was going slaughter many thousands. A similar death toll was planned by the gang that were conspiring to detonate a bomb inside a Tube tunnel beneath the Thames.

Gilligan not only ignores these and other proven threats, he actually wants less resources to be given to the brave, hardworking men and women whose job it is to stop these sort of catastrophes.

His terror-denial is part of a growing trend of wishful thinking among the modern liberal/left. Hamas don’t really want to destroy Israel, they just say they do. Iran doesn’t really want to wipe Israel off the map, it just says it does. Islamist terrorists don’t really want a worldwide medieval Islamic caliphate, they’re just pretending. I’m reminded of those High Court judges who cannot believe that when a woman says no, she means no.

And now the terror-denial movement has a global ringleader in Barack Obama, who looks set to lead it in its suicidal sleepwalk. The Islamists have set out their agenda clearly for all to see. Pretending the threat isn’t there will do nothing to stop it.