If the Tories want to win the asylum debate, they must trust their own instincts

In the aftermath of September 11 we all instinctively felt that the world had utterly changed. In Britain at any rate that turned out not to be the case. After the initial shock, things carried on to some extent as before.

But the return to normality was illusory and short-lived. September 11 indeed created new and frightening structures. In America they locked into place at once. But the new order took a long time indeed to cross the Atlantic. It finally did so in the first three or four weeks of this year.

The Prime Minister set the tone, in his bleak New Year address. The wrapping-up of terror networks throughout Europe and in Britain has added to a sense of impending calamity. So has the steady build-up of troops in the Middle East. Crashing stock markets, artificially strong for months after 9/11 because central banks printed billions of dollars, now warn of urgent economic dangers.

All this has brought a sharp change to the temper of public debate. Hope has turned to fear, optimism to paranoia, confidence to unease. The parameters of public policy have altered. Tony Blair made a speech last week in which he reasserted the importance of public-service reform. It was a bold effort, but public services are no longer the priority. National security has become the dominant issue, and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

It is a measure of New Labour’s still sharp political sensitivity that the government, not the Conservative party, was the quicker to adapt to the new environment. Tony Blair, alerted to the scale of voter concern by his ever-vigilant political consultant Philip Gould, has been engaged with the asylum issue for months. The Prime Minister gave ministers a long analysis of the problem in Cabinet on 23 January; he asserted that it was the one domestic issue that has the potential to blow the government completely off course; possibly cost it the next general election.