It's foolish to think Assad's fall will make Europe safer

Four hundred years ago, Sir John Harington explained: Treason doth never prosper. What’s the reason? If treason prosper, none dare call it treason.” Maybe, terrorism is never successful as Western governments insist for much the same reason.

- MARK ALMOND

The rebranding of Syria’s new strongman, Abu Mohammed alGolani, from internationally outlawed terrorist to international partner, is well underway.

On Sunday, Sir John Sawers – Tony Blair’s guru in the run-up to the Iraq War, as well as MI6’s boss – led the choir of Whitehall’s most far-sighted mandarins singing the praises of al-Golani as “the leader of a liberation movement, not a terrorist organisation”; and calling for his HTS group’s designation as a terrorist group to be reviewed.

Pat McFadden, the Cabinet Office minister, told Sky News that a review was in order in “the new situation”. Now, No 10 says the review is “proceeding quickly”.

Let’s imagine that the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir alSham (HTS) and its emir have had a genuine change of heart, more than just a rebranding – and leave it to the cynics to sneer. But even if HTS is born-again, what about Syria’s tens of thousands of jihadis who see its stunning victory over the infidel Assad as proof that their cause and methods are just what is needed to liberate the Middle East, even the wider world?

Don’t forget, the dramatic expansion of the Islamic State across Syria and to the gates of Baghdad in 2014-15 also stimulated radicalised Muslims in western Europe to join Isis cells here. The attack on the Bataclan concert hall in Paris in 2015 was just their bloodiest outrage. London suffered smaller, but still deadly, rampages.