After a lower threat level for most of the past two years, now it is less certain what lies ahead
It is hardly surprising that intelligence chiefs raised the terrorist threat to severe on Monday. The failed attack outside Liverpool Women’s hospital came within a month of the killing of Sir David Amess MP at his constituency surgery in Essex.
Yet it had been hoped, cautiously, that the climate was changing. Two years ago the terrorism threat was downgraded to substantial, for the first time in five years, a month after the Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had been killed.
