IS fanatics are feeling battered

THEY say that a wild animal is never more dangerous than when it lashes out in its death throes. Could that be the case of Islamic State, the sadistic death-cult that controls a chunk of what was Iraq and Syria? I know that may be optimistic but there are signs.

On the ground IS seems to be losing on several fronts. The defectors are multiplying, leading to hideous reprisals when they are caught trying to slip out, after making a dreadful mistake in volunteering in the first place.

Those who live inside their embrace are increasingly spying against them, using the internet to pass information to the Western/Arab coalition fighting them. On the ground their fanatics are taking defeat after defeat. Their oil income is shrivelling under aerial attacks on their wells, refineries and trucks.

But IS is now sending teams throughout the Middle East and Europe to kill as many innocents as they can before dying by their own hand, being shot down or captured alive. From the last category our special forces are learning a lot. IS’s security is now penetrated at many points – but so are Europe’s useless borders.

There are blazing headlines when the madmen succeed – Madrid’s railway station, London’s Tube, Charlie Hebdo magazine, Sousse beach, the Bataclan concert hall, Brussels airport. But we hear little of the scores of plots discovered and culprits arrested just in time. That is why I dare to hope the tide is slowly turning.