The former head of MI5 said that a “war on terror” gave the false impression that aspirations could be achieved by military action. In fact, she said, a combination of policing, intelligence gathering and diplomacy was far more likely to succeed than force of arms. Terrorism should be treated as a crime, she said, as it was in the UK. “With the ‘war on terror’, the United States has gone down the wrong line,” she added.

Asked about the introduction of ID cards, another key element of the government’s security strategy, she said that “they [ID cards] won’t make us safer.”