The government's report today claiming that British universities are "complacent" in tolerating Islamic extremism on campus will come as no surprise to anyone who has attended a British university in the last few years, yet despite this, nothing is likely to change.

When I first arrived at the London School of Economics in the mid-2000's I was surprised at how many open communists were at what is meant to be one of the top universities in the country. Hadn't all that nonsense come to an end with the fall of the Berlin Wall, I thought. Apparently not.

I distinctly remember one elected student union official who went around with Lenin-style facial hair describing himself as "progressive" (just like David Cameron you might say) in response to rumours he was part of a far-left group called Socialist Action and when asked if he were a communist. He's now writing articles defending the regime in Venezuela while his girlfriend (also an elected officer in the student union) now works for the trade union Unite I believe.

During my time there, a report by Professor Anthony Glees of Brunel University, claimed that Islamic extremists were infiltrating and actively recruiting in British universities. One of those named in his report was the LSE.

The reaction from the "progressive" leadership of the LSE Student Union was to rubbish the report and deny that there was any extremism of that kind going on at all thank you very much. To describe this as ostrich-like would be an understatement.

One man who attended the LSE (before me luckily) was Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who rather than going into trade unionism or investment banking as most LSE graduates do, had a brief career in waging Jihad, and achieved a small measure of fame through his involvement in the 2002 murder of Daniel Pearl, a journalist with the Wall Street Journal.

Of course Mr Sheikh could have been an anomaly, but he is not the only item of evidence suggesting the presence of Islamic fanaticism at the LSE.

It was for example quite common for protestors or campaigners to walk through the main street of the campus bearing a banner proclaiming "Victory to the Intifada!" A two minute silence was also held in response to the death of Yasser Arafat, much to the disgust of those who viewed the man as terrorist.

A good friend of mine at university, who at the time was a supporter of the United Kingdom Independence Party, also discovered the presence of extremism when he joined a group called the "Comparative Ideologies Society".

He assumed that a group bearing that name would be a kind of debating society in which different ideologies would be discussed in a way common to centres of learning. Upon attending a few meetings it quickly became clear that the society was essentially a front for Islamist extremists and that he was almost the only non-Muslim member of this society.

But according to the student union there was no problem with Islamic extremism at the LSE.

Sadly Islamic extremism is not confined to only the LSE, other universities now have among their alumni failed Islamist terrorists.

University College London, as well as producing Mohandas Gandhi also produced Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the failed "underpants bomber" of 2009, while, Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly who attempted to bomb Stockholm last year came from the University of Bedfordshire.

Even those universities which have yet to produce a terrorist have atmospheres where Islamic extremism seems to flourish.

Another of the acquaintances I made at LSE was a King's College London student from Bahrain who swore to me that he'd never met such fanatics in Bahrain as those he'd met at the KCL Islamic society.

Thankfully there are signs that at least the problem is beginning to be recognised if not tackled.

The outgoing head of the National Union of Students, Aaron Porter, responded to the report from the government today saying, "Given that the law requires universities to provide freedom of speech and the Government refuses to ban the hardline group Hizb Ut Tahrir despite promises to do so, it appears irresponsible of Theresa May to try to shift the blame for non-violent extremism onto universities or students."

"Facing up to the challenges that non-violent extremism brings to campus life requires careful support and guidance from Government, not wild sensationalism that only serves to unfairly demonise Muslim students. In our experience, groups like FOSIS are part of the solution, not the problem."

So while it was pleasant to see the head of the NUS and the government admit there might actually be a problem, it seems that neither of them have any serious proposals to deal with it. Progress of a kind I suppose.

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