Phillips commissioned a report into Britain and Islamophobia in 1997 which, according to both Phillips himself and academics across the country, popularised the phrase which has now become synonymous with any criticism of Islam or Muslims.

“It’s not as though we couldn’t have seen this coming. But we’ve repeatedly failed to spot the warning signs,” he now writes in The Times , in response to new data collected.

“Twenty years ago… I published the report titled Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All, we thought that the real risk of the arrival of new communities was discrimination against Muslims.

“Our 1996 survey of recent incidents showed that there was plenty of it around. But we got almost everything else wrong.”