After Woolwich, what will change?

The decapitation of a British soldier on a street in London is the latest disgusting new low in this country’s experience of Islamist terror. But everything else in the aftermath of the killing of Drummer Lee Rigby is hideously familiar. What the country has gone through since last Wednesday is the same endless turning over of clichés about terror which we have now heard for years. But one thing is clear. Nothing will be done. This country simply will not deal with the extremists. Not just because part of our political leadership does not want us to, but because those who do want to do something cannot.

As on each occasion before and since 7/7, the debate in recent days has covered the usual familiar terrain. The Prime Minister and all leading politicians have given grandstanding speeches about how ‘we will never give in to terrorism’. As though there were any imminent likelihood of getting the Queen to step down and then instituting a system of -sharia law.