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.