After the bombs

When I heard of the London explosions last Thursday — I was rung shortly before leaving to catch a train to London, which I had to abandon — my first thought was, why did it take them so long? We knew the manpower was here, either coming in as bogus asylum-seekers or by using false passports, easily accomplished since the government gave up preventing entry. Whether the bombers came from their ranks or are brainwashed, resentful Muslim youths born here — and at the time of writing it appears they were born here — only the investigation will reveal. I assumed the reason bombs hadn’t been used before was not the lack of people who were willing to do it but the difficulty of finding or bringing in explosives, a problem they’ve now clearly solved.

Frank Gardner, the BBC’s security correspondent, who was himself paralysed from the waist down after being shot by Muslim fanatics in Saudi Arabia, told a subdued Start the Week on Radio Four on Monday that he knew of four major attacks on Britain that had been foiled; he’s seen some of the evidence.