UK facing ‘intense’ terror threat, MI5 chief warns

Britain is facing its most severe terrorist threat yet, the MI5 chief has warned in a rare public speech. Andrew Parker, the director general of MI5, said the UK had seen a ‘dramatic upshift’ in the threat from Islamist terrorism this year. In Parker’s speech to specialist security journalists on Tuesday he said that MI5 had stopped far more terror plots than those that caused mass casualties this year, and that 20 plots had been thwarted in the last four years. Parker also said that military defeat in Syria and Iraq for Islamic State did not mean its threat would dissolve, and that 100 Britons were believed to have died fighting for ISIS and fresh danger was posed by the potential return of 850 more who had travelled to its territory. Parker said: “[The threat from Islamist terrorism] is multi-dimensional, evolving rapidly and operating at a scale and pace we’ve not seen before. “It’s at the highest tempo I have seen in my 34-year career. Today there is more terrorist activity, coming at us more quickly, and it can be harder to detect. “The threat is more diverse than I’ve ever known. Plots developed here in the UK, but plots directed from overseas as well. Plots online. Complex scheming and also crude stabbings; lengthy planning but also spontaneous attacks. Extremists of all ages, gender and backgrounds, united only by the toxic ideology of violent victory that drives them.”