 So after the events in Manchester, these horrific attacks earlier in the week, I thought it was worth talking a bit about British foreign policy in the Middle East and the relationship between that and the terrorist threat that we face. So in the next few days, weeks, we're going to hear from a lot of very serious people, very serious MPs, very serious newspaper columnists, very serious think tank people and all these very serious people have a very bad record when it comes to analysing the effect of foreign policy, analysing the terrorist threat. So I'd encourage you to ignore these people because I broadly don't have any credibility. And we don't know enough about what happens a few days ago, so I don't want to talk too directly about that in particular, but we do know who the big threats are at the moment in terms of international terrorism. It's ISIS and it's al-Qaeda, so let's talk a little bit about that. Specifically with regard to ISIS, where did ISIS come from? Well ISIS grew out of a group called al-Qaeda in Iraq. That's a distinct separate branch of al-Qaeda that really emerged, grew out of and flourished in the chaos created by the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the British and American invasion of Iraq. ISIS grew out of that group and then exploited the civil war in Syria to gain territory, etc, etc. So we have to recognise the role that our invasion of Iraq played in the growth of ISIS and understand the fact that this shows that this war on terror that we've been pursuing is not making us safe. Let's give another example of how British foreign policy isn't helping in the fight against terrorism. The Saudi-led intervention in Yemen at the moment, which the British and the Americans are giving a huge amount of material support to sending bombs and missiles for the Saudis to drop on Yemen, that's created a chaotic situation in which the local branches of ISIS and al-Qaeda have flourished and the Yemen branch of al-Qaeda is probably the most dangerous in terms of international terrorism, so that's not helping either. Another situation is Egypt. In Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood government was overthrown in 2013 by the military. There was then this vicious crackdown which amounts to state terrorism, the liquidation of the Muslim Brotherhood, the killing of its civilian supporters by the hundreds in the Tiananmen Square style massacre in Cairo, imprisonment of their supporters. All of this has been a great big gift to jihadi fundamentalist groups in Egypt. It's been a message to Muslim fundamentalists of a more Muslim Brotherhood kind, the kind that participate in elections and that don't embrace jihadism. It's been a message to them, forget about electoral politics, al-Qaeda and ISIS are the people you should you should join. So Britain and America's support for that coup regime is not making a safe either and then take Libya. Well with Libya it's hard to argue that the situation would have been much different whether or not NATO would intervene, I mean either way there would have been chaos in that country when the regime fell apart, but what we can say is that the NATO intervention in 2011 didn't help matters either way, we're not better off as a result of it. Again none of this is making us safer. Cracking down on Muslim communities, alienating those communities in the West, that's exactly what the jihadists want, that's exactly what they're looking for, that's what their recruitment sergeants are wanting us to do. That creates Western recruits for ISIS, people who go over to ISIS in Syria and Iraq and volunteered with them, that's what they're hoping happens when they bomb targets in the West. So cracking down on Muslim communities that doesn't make us safe either. Generally our ongoing long-term material support over decades for all these corrupt authoritarian regimes in the Middle East, regimes are prone to collapse and the collapse then creates a space for groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda to flourish, again none of this is making us safe, these are all key parts of British foreign policy that don't make us safe. It's difficult to talk about solutions because these are very complex issues and it's not as though British foreign policy or Western foreign policy just created the terrorist threat out of nothing, but there are some things that we can do or should do differently which might at least produce the terrorist threat or at least not make it worse. So let's talk a little bit about those. Number one, leave the fight against ISIS and Al Qaeda on the ground in the Middle East to local forces that have popular legitimacy in those areas. That's absolutely key that second part, make sure that the people who are fighting against those groups have legitimacy within the communities that ISIS and Al Qaeda are working within. The second thing is to de-escalate conflicts, don't escalate them. ISIS and Al Qaeda, they love the chaos created by conflict, that's where they thrive, that's where they operate, that's where they exploit people's grievances. So don't escalate conflicts, de-escalate them, don't start wars, that should be clear by now after the last 15, 16 years. In terms of those communities in Syria, in Iraq, which ISIS have exploited, they've exploited people's grievances, their alienation, they desperately need to be a settlement, especially in Iraq for that Sunni community which was alienated, marginalised after the intervention. So there needs to be a deal broken between the central government and people in Anbar province and places like Fallujah and Ramadi, etc, etc. And finally in terms of what we can do in this country, show love to Muslim communities, not just because they're our friends and allies in the struggle against terrorism, against domestic extremists, but also because they're our friends full stop. I've taught many young British Muslims over the last few years in my world teaching at SOAS and I have this stunning revelation to bring to you, they're normal human beings and we need to treat them as such and give hell to anyone who says that we should do anything else.