Professor Louise Richardson

You argue that the global war on terror was always doomed to fail. Why is that?

Because ultimately I see terrorism as a political, not a military, issue. Terrorists are invariably outmanned and outgunned by their opponents. And what they're deliberately trying to do is to provoke governments into an overreaction. So by declaring war on terrorism, we're elevating their stature. We're playing into their hands because they are, after all, in the case of, say, al-Qaeda, motley group of extremists living under the sponsorship of one of the poorest governments on the planet, and then the Western world, the most powerful countries in the world, declare war on them. That elevates their stature to a degree to which they could have only dreamt. If terrorism could be solved militarily, it would have been solved. It's precisely because it's ultimately a political issue rather than a military one. Which is not to say that there's no role for military force in countering terrorism. Of course, so long as the force is exclusively used against the perpetrators of the violence and not the broader communities from which they come, how would one know when one had won a war against terrorism? Is victory when there is no terrorist attack ever? We're never going to achieve that, not in a free society. So we can never declare ourselves to have won. So why cede that kind of initiative to our opponents?

What should governments in the West be doing right now that they're not?

I think governments in the West need to ensure that the communities within their countries from which these groups are recruiting do not feel alienated. The best source of intelligence on the bad guys operating in our societies are the communities in which they operate. We need to ensure that we have the loyalty of those communities so that they will turn in the extremists. Now, we should, of course, be investing in intelligence. I'm no pacifist. Intelligence is the best possible weapon in our arsenal against terrorism. We need to be engaging them in cyberspace. We need to be engaging them in the battle of ideas, because I think the ideas that they're touting are completely unpalatable to most people in the West, but we need to be engaging.

How certain do you think it is that a girl like you, from your background, could make it to Oxford now? What would the chances be?

Not great. Well, I think it shows the power of education to transform lives. I am so committed to education. And it also shows the importance of ensuring that people have support in going through education. Most of my education was funded by winning scholarships. So I think it's so important that people who can afford to do help support students who need that help. I mean the real gulf that needs to be bridged, it seems to me, is the attainment gap between rich and poor children long before they ever come to university. This is the real problem, that so few poor kids have the qualifications necessary to compete successfully for the most competitive institutions. That's the real gulf we as a society, I think, need to worry about.