Jet-set jihadi

A Nigerian Islamic fanatic flies to the Netherlands and tries to blow up a plane bound for Detroit in Michigan — and yet there was something grimly inevitable about the fact that it was Britain where police were scrambled and London where the fanatic’s accommodation was searched.

A Nigerian Islamic fanatic flies to the Netherlands and tries to blow up a plane bound for Detroit in Michigan — and yet there was something grimly inevitable about the fact that it was Britain where police were scrambled and London where the fanatic’s accommodation was searched. As Gordon Brown’s Cabinet plodded into the underground bunker after being summoned for an emergency meeting on Boxing Day, they might well have asked: why is it always us? How did Britain become the Petri dish of global terrorism? Why does every major attack seem to lead back here?

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab succeeded only in burning his balls, as Rod Liddle put it in his Spectator blog.