One of the most self-defeating features of western policy in the post-9/11 world has been the way in which it has lumped together all forms of Islamic revivalism and nationalism as worthy targets of the misconceived global war on terror, egged on by the purblind and Islamophobe solipsists of the “they-hate-us-for-our-freedoms” industry.

Speaking on Thursday to the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, David Miliband went an important part of the way to recognising this. The UK foreign secretary rightly underlines the way the west promiscuously mixed up groups engaged in “national territorial struggles” with pan-Islamist jihadis, the potentially soluble with the unreconcilable.