Last week Foreign Secretary David Miliband belatedly jumped on the bandwagon of deprecating the idea of a global Islamist terrorist insurgency. He claimed that ETa, Sinn-Fein IRA, the Baader-Meinhof and Red Brigades were all distinct, regardless of superficial examples of cooperation (which also included the PFLP/PLO which he forgot to mention). This was supposed to justify talking to terrorist groups with local grievances so as to separate them from the global anti-western jihadists, which means Hamas or Laskar-i-Toiba.

Leaving aside the former's general subscription to Marxist-Leninism, Miliband would appear to have jumped on the wrong bus.

A line that caught my eye in President Obama's speech earlier today was:

'Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred'.

What's the betting Miliband gets back on message before Brown and his team have their first encounter with the new president, to whom I wish all the luck he is going to need.