To catch a jihadi

My taxi was about 90 seconds behind the murderers who struck on London Bridge last week. My wife and I saw their victims on the road. It made no sense until we stopped and got out. Then with horror we realised what we were witnessing.

As everyone has already said, the emergency services’ response was flawless. A police 4×4 screeched up behind and two officers jumped out with submachine-guns. Within minutes, we learnt afterwards, the jihadis had been shot dead — but only after they had killed eight people, and injured scores more.

Hundreds of others will have been on that bridge or in Borough Market. I suspect all of us will be thanking the police, but also wondering how it came to this. Britain has been hit three times in three months: a sign, surely, of a lapse in our defences. And not by mystery killers either. One, Khuram Butt, had featured in a Channel 4 documentary called The Jihadis Next Door, and another was on a European terror watch-list.