We can only defeat it if we have people in the community who are going to stand up and not merely say ‘you are wrong to kill people through terrorism… you’re wrong in your view of the West, the whole sense of grievance, the ideology is wrong, is profoundly wrong’.

That was Blair at the Commons liaison committee this morning, telling it like he sees it. To which, I’d argue the only response is: bloody let them then.

After the bombings in July last year, Blair drew together Muslim leaders and other advisers to form seven task forces to investigate Islamic extremism and suggest ways to tackle it. They were given just six weeks to conduct the investigation. Of the 64 recommendations they made in their final report (PDF), only one was implemented.

This lone initiative was for a travelling roadshow of Muslim scholars who would talk with young Muslims and denounce extremism. Foreign Office documents leaked to the New Statesman last week showed that this idea was actually drawn up by the Foreign Office and then presented as a “grass roots initiative” coming out of the task forces.

Muslims told Blair how they could go about tackling extremism but it seems those ideas were deemed not up to snuff. If they were, and the task forces weren’t just yet more pink confetti strewn to amuse the simple-minded and fend off Rebekah Wade for another week, then where are they? For Blair to sit in his shirt sleeves and blithely say it’s for Muslims to get out there and take on the Islamists is, at a generous best, a bloody cheek. They requested the tools for the task asked of them and he said no. What was this exercise for if none of the ideas are going to be used? Sure Blair’s belief, conviction, faith, whatever you want to cal it, it is undeniably impressive (it carried a whole country to war all by itself for a start) but what next? “England could win the World Cup if they only played in bare feet, says Blair”? “Guns? What do you need guns for, says sceptical Blair to army generals”?

With Son of Trident and Blair Force One in the pipe, the money evidently isn’t swilling about like it used to be. But many of the recommendations are eminently sensible and easily put in place at a minimal cost. Schemes allowing Muslim young people to shadow MPs, councillors and community leaders are costed at £125,000 a year. A Muslim Youth Handbook (”containing accessible information on basic Islamic concepts - including the meaning of ‘Jihad’”) to be distributed to mosques, universities and elsewhere is priced at £50,000. These are piffling amount of money compared to the sums this government, with its hard-on for computerising every element of our lives, is spraying over incompetent and rapacious IT companies in return for late and limp lemons.

Like most Government-sponsored initiatives, there’s no guarantee that any of the 64 ideas would have worked. But it doesn’t take Martine Wright, selling her first-floor flat because the loss of her legs means she can no longer use the stairs, or Rachel North, taking taxis to work because the thought of the tube is too much, or Germaine Lindsay’s wife, now raising two young kids on her own, to know that surely anything, anything is worth trying. Especially at these prices - the two ideas mentioned here would cost you just one milli-enquiry (Update: Or less than the idiot-instigated changing of locks at a prison).

“I am probably not the person to go into the Muslim community,” said Blair today. How does he know? If walking into Leeds, Dewsbury, Beeston or Rawthorpe nude but for a sandwich board with “I’M SORRY” painted on it dissuaded just one potential bomber, wouldn’t it be worth it? He’s got nothing to be ashamed of in that department. He can have his bullet and bomb proof car with the engine running nearby, ready to whisk him off back to his bullet and bomb proof life and wife, if the effort and terror of making a difference, saving lives, setting an example, defeating the evil ideology proves too much for him. I mean, can only be provided at a disproportionate cost to whichever group of taxpayers he’s decided are calling the shots this week.

The redoubtable Messrs. Hamster, Kenny and Whitaker have more.

Update: Independent: Blair lays down law to Muslims on extremists in their midst

What Muslims proposed… and what the Government did

* Recommendation: Hold a public inquiry into the “what, how and why of 7/7 and 21/7, “including an inquiry into the root causes”.

Response: Ministers have repeatedly ruled out a public inquiry into the attacks. An internal Home Office narrative of events leading up to the attacks was published earlier this year.

* Recommendation: Establish a rebuttal unit at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to “encourage a more balanced representation of Islam and Muslims in the British media, popular culture and creative industries”.

Response: No unit has so far been established.

* Recommendation: Establish a steering group at the Department for Education and Skills chaired by a minister and including participation from the Muslim community and other experts to “draw up a strategy on combating Islamophobia in education”.

Response: The Education Department said it had work in hand on combating Islamophobia and said concerns about the national curriculum would be addressed in a review to be published in December.

* Recommendation: Establish a British Muslim “citizenship toolkit” to help student societies, mosques, imams and parents combat “violent fanatic tendencies”.

Response: The Labour MP Sadiq Khan said yesterday there had been no progress.

* Recommendation: Set up an “Islam Online” website as a one-stop shop for young British Muslims.

Response: The Muslim Council of Britain’s Inayat Bunglawala, convenor of a working group to combat extremism and radicalisation, said he was still waiting for a response to a formal proposal two months after it was submitted to the Home Office.

Update update: Coffee and PC recalls Jamie’s excellent and depressingly apposite Sinister Platitudes.