PB: We may diverge a bit on this partly because my book is really not about al-Qaeda and the current threat. I perhaps tend to over-­emphasise this fact because we are so mesmerised by al-Qaeda. It’s a current and pointed threat, but if all jihadists became Presbyterians tomorrow, the kind of threat I describe would still exist. It would come from other quarters – anti-­globalisation terrorists, eco-­terrorists, even from groups whose ideologies object to nothing of the present. I think that Michael is really presenting not so much an alternative view as an alternative overlay – that is, he’s addressing a slightly different problem to the one I address. Michael is one of the people who gets it. I’ve felt this way from the very first time I met him and I’m glad to see him prosper in his political career. Usually I have to be extremely tactful with politicians because they’re not really up to speed on this problem. Michael Gove is somebody who really is.

MG: Well, that is very flattering. Philip’s book and his broader analysis is an attempt to say, quite rightly, that even if the current threat were to disappear then there would be vulnerabilities in the way in which our states are organised. That’s not to say that some of the developments we’ve had over the past 30 or 40 years – the way in which states have developed – are bad. It’s simply that you’ve got to be realistic, that with the move towards a certain type of society, more liberal, more open in lots of ways, so new vulnerabilities are exposed.

Philip runs through a sort of an analysis of how you minimise the risk to society and he makes some very powerful points about the need to align grand strategy with law, which forces those of us who are practising politicians to ask ourselves some pretty tough questions. And I, apart from having been a journalist who wrote every day about the now, am now a politician who has to deal with immediate problems. So in that respect I think I am in the position that lots of politicians, policymakers and journalists are in, allowing ourselves to focus on the immediate threat. Philip provides a necessary corrective to that by saying “OK, that’s understandable but let’s look at the bigger issues that you’re going to have to address because whatever happens in the specific campaign that al-Qaeda is waging at the moment, these structural vulnerabilities will remain.”