The question the Labour Party is posing is did our recent foreign policy, wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, lead to the terrorist attacks we have seen across Europe?
The Government, who voted for all the above wars, doesn't agree but then they have an election to win and in an attempt to deflect any sniff of controversy they could be in anyway complicit, have set out to vilify Jeremy Corbyn for even suggesting that our actions abroad have had such awful consequences at home such as we saw in Manchester.
Leading the charge is Foreign Secretary Boris
Johnson who said that it was monstrous that anybody should subtract from the fundamental responsibility of those individuals who committed this atrocity'.
Mr Johnson is now being reminded that he wrote in the Spectator one week after the London bombings in 2007 that the Iraq war sharpened the resentments felt by such people in this country and the Iraq war helped to potentiate that poison.
In 2015, as home secretary, Theresa May, was openly criticised at the Police Federation conference by a former Manchester police officer, Inspector Damian O’Reilly, who said that police cuts was risking national security, an accusation May dismissed as 'scaremongering'.
If the Government are desperately twisting to avoid any link between what they voted for and what has happened since, we have the unclassified reports to look back on to see what was being said at the time by people who analyse these things.
The intelligence and security committee, in its 2003 report, International terrorism: War With Iraq, assessed that: 'The threat from Al Qaida will increase at the onset of any military action against Iraq. The worldwide threat from other Islamist terrorist groups and individuals will increase significantly, reflecting intensified anti-US/anti-Western sentiment in the Muslim world, including among Muslim communities in the West.
The Defence Academy for the Ministry of Defence concluded that: 'The war in Iraq has acted as a recruiting sergeant for extremists across the Muslim world. Iraq has served to radicalise an already disillusioned youth and al-Qaeda has given them the will, intent, purpose and ideology to act.
Ex-MI5 boss, Eliza Manningham-Buller told the Iraq Enquiry that MI5 had asked for a doubling of the MI5 budget in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion to counter the increase in UK terrorism: 'It increased the terrorist threat by convincing more people that Osama Bin Laden's claim that Islam was under attack was correct. Our involvement in Iraq spurred some young British Muslims to turn to terror.
Another former MI5 chief, Stella Rimmington said: 'If what we're looking at is groups of disaffected young men born in this country who turn to terrorism, then I think to ignore the effect of the war in Iraq is misleading'.
Australia's Office of National Assessments said: 'A key judgement is that Iraq has been clearly used as a recruiting tool for terrorist groups around the globe with the number of jihadis steadily increasing'.
Reporting on the 7/7 terror attacks in London, foreign-affairs think tank, Chatham House, reported: 'There is no doubt that the situation over Iraq gave a boost to the al-Qaeda network's propaganda, recruitment and fundraising'.
Peter Bergen, a US national security analyst, said: 'Our study shows that the Iraq conflict has greatly increased the spread of the al-Qaeda ideological virus, as shown by a rising number of terrorist attacks in the past three years from London to Kabul, and from Madrid to the Red Sea
Tony Blair, the junior member in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, admitted in 2015 of the terror attacks sweeping Europe that: 'Of course, you can’t say those of us who removed Saddam in 2003 bear no responsibility for the situation in 2015'.
It would appear that most of Britain's security, defence and diplomatic community readily accept that an increased terror threat inside the UK followed our military intervention in Muslim countries, a fact borne out by the terrorist themselves.
Isis propaganda channels frequently publish graphic images claiming to show dead and injured civilians, particularly children, after alleged air strikes by the US-led coalition and call on followers around the world to avenge their deaths with terror attacks.
One of the 7/7 killers taped himself stating that they were killing their fellow citizens because Western governments 'continuously perpetuate atrocities against my people all over the world'.
Two months ago, a British-born Muslim convert murdered four people with a car on Westminster Bridge, then got out and stabbed a policeman to death. Just minutes before his killing spree he declared via WhatsApp that he was acting in revenge against Western wars in the Mideast with Isis claiming responsibility for the attack in a statement claiming it aimed to terrorise: 'infidels in
response to their transgressions against the lands of the Muslims'.
So to answer the original question: Has our foreign policy heightened the threat of UK terrorism?
If you listen to the Government desperate to avoid an iota of blame in an election battle, then no but if you listen to the intelligence community of the major nations of the World, it's a resounding yes.
Jeremy Corbyn's question is therefore perfectly legitimate to be asked.
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