Britain has become a soft touch for terrorists, leading defence experts warn today. The world-renowned Royal United Services Institute has delivered an unprecedented attack on the Government's security policy.
It warns that a failure to "lay down the line" to immigrant populations is undermining the fight against domestic extremism.
It condemns the country's "fragmented" national identity and obsession with multiculturalism.
And it accuses ministers of a "piecemeal and erratic response" to urgent threats to the nation and of starving the armed forces of cash to the point of "chronic disrepair".
The security think tank, which has unrivalled contact with senior political and military figures, urges ministers to abandon "flabby and bogus strategic thinking" and to make the defence of the realm the "first duty of Government".
The bleak assessment comes as top security officials warn that planned job cuts could undermine the UK's intelligence performance.
The Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS), which analyses information with GCHQ, MI6 and the Ministry of Defence, is facing the loss of 121 posts.
DIS staff are central to the intelligence community and provide expertise on the development of weapons systems and arms proliferation, as well as support to UK operations overseas.
John Morrison, the former Deputy Chief of Defence Intelligence, claims such losses - amounting to a staff cut of more than 20 per cent - would be "ludicrous" and seriously compromise large areas of its work.
The study also follows two blows this week to Labour's anti-terror strategy.
Appeal judges have given an Algerian pilot the go-ahead to claim compensation which could run into millions for being wrongly accused of training the September 11 hijackers.
And five young Muslim men had their convictions for terrorist offences quashed by the Appeal Court.
Laws making it a crime to possess extremist jihadi propaganda and literature could now have to be re-written and dozens more prosecutions could collapse after senior judges ruled that police and prosecutors must prove to juries that terror suspects not only possessed potentially dangerous material but were intent on using it in an attack.
In Wednesday's ruling the Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips stated that unless there was clear evidence of "terrorist intent", merely possessing or sharing extremist material did not amount to a crime.
The law was designed to help police catch so-called "clean-skins" - would-be terrorists who have yet to carry out an atrocity but are in the early stages of planning one.
But the effect of the ruling is that the police will struggle to build a watertight case against suspects based on such early planning or research for an attack, and will instead be forced to wait until plans are far more advanced - increasing the risk of a successful atrocity.
The Appeal Court ruling was the latest instance of counter-terrorist laws being defeated or watered down by senior judges, but RUSI's damning report raises fundamental questions over the Government's ability to protect Britain from the gravest threats.
The work of a panel of senior military commanders, diplomats, politicians and academics, it contrasts the erosion of national confidence with the "implacability" of Islamist terrorists.
The study calls for a radical shake-up of government to take away oversight of security and defence from "the arena of short-term party politics" - in the same way that interest rates are now set independently of politicians.
"The United Kingdom presents itself as a target, as a fragmenting, post-Christian society, increasingly divided about interpretations of its history, about its national aims, its values and in its political identity," it states.
By contrast those who refuse to integrate into British society have a "firm self-image".
"This is a problem worsened by the lack of leadership from the majority which in misplaced deference to "multiculturalism" failed to lay down the line to immigrant communities, thus undercutting those within them trying to fight extremism.
"We look like a soft touch. We are indeed a soft touch, from within and without."
The authors suggest the world is living through a "time of remission" between the September 11 attacks six years ago and a yet-worse future atrocity which will deliver "an even greater psychological blow".
The British people are "uncertain" about wars abroad, fearful over security at home and doubtful over the "muddling" of responsibility for protecting them between Westminster and Brussels.
"Repeated assertions by ministers that all is well, that the matter is well in hand and can be safely left to them to manage in-house, no longer carry conviction," the report warns.
Against this backdrop a serious decline in the armed forces has left Britain "open to ambush", with the military engulfed in an "atmosphere of chronic disrepair".
The RUSI study echoes concerns raised by five former heads of the armed forces who spoke out against military underfunding in the House of Lords last year.
It likens the lack of adequate spending on defence over the past ten years to "a breach made by the defenders themselves in the walls of their own city".
The report particularly condemns the savage cuts to the Royal Navy in recent years, accusing politicians of suffering from "sea blindness".
The Navy has seen its fleet of warships and submarines as well as its manpower drastically reduced in recent years, and is struggling to maintain training in the face of crippling budget pressures.
Britain now has a "bare-bones defence and security establishment", according to the report's authors, yet we lack the knowledge of future threats which would justify such a risk.
New threats are emerging besides Islamist terrorism - "ferocious" Russian nationalism, climate change and competition for resources - while international bodies which Britain relies on such as the United Nations, Nato and the EU are "weakening".
The report urges a return to "traditional alliances with the English-speaking world" - particularly the U.S., Australia, New Zealand and Canada - adding: "Foul-weather friends are to be preferred to fair- weather friends; and the British people know precisely which are which."
It calls for oversight of security and defence to be handed to two new committees - one joint Lords and Commons group, chaired by a senior opposition MP, tasked with identifying gaps in security, and another within the Cabinet to coordinate activity across the whole of Government.
Tory security spokesman Baroness Neville-Jones said: "This report sends a powerful message to Government that leadership is badly lacking at a time of significant threat to our country. Conservatives agree that multiculturalism has been a disaster for national cohesion and has increased our vulnerability to the terrorist threat."
With the Government's long-awaited National Security Strategy due to be published within days, the damning attack by such respected experts will add to the intense scrutiny of policies on terrorism and defence.
The Ministry of Defence rejected RUSI's warnings of military decline, saying: "The UK's Armed Forces have the ability to meet the broad range of tasks they may be required to undertake, often at short notice.
"They have a battle-winning capability that is second to none. The broad range of capability gives us insurance against the inherent uncertainty of the future."
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