Tony Blair and George Bush have made Osama bin Laden’s task a lot easier

Spring has come late this year, punctuated by news of three horrible, doom-laden terrorist atrocities: the bombing of Shia worshippers in Iraq and Pakistan, the slaughter in Madrid, and the Israeli assassination of the Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.

In Westminster there is an air of grim expectation. People’s habits are starting to change. I know one media couple who no longer travel together by Tube, a precaution in case they leave their children orphaned. A well-known political correspondent has taken to driving to work, rather than going by train. Bomb scares now routinely delay commuter traffic into town. The looming Easter recess will see the erection of a bullet-proof glass barrier between the Strangers’ Gallery and the Chamber. A 15-foot prison wall is reportedly set to go up around the Commons, replacing the familiar iron railings. Inside, MPs bleakly speculate on where the terrorists might strike. A pub? A football match? A high-street store? Machinegun-toting police patrol the streets of Westminster, braced for carnage.

Curiously, Downing Street feels vindicated by this new air of menace. Tony Blair made this sentiment explicitly clear after Madrid. He insisted that the bombing showed why he has been right to fight what he likes to term his ‘war against terror’. He is polite but witheringly contemptuous about the anti-war party. He likes to accuse it of failing to understand the problem posed by modern terrorism. From time to time Tony Blair makes the derisive claim that opponents of the war deserve comparison with the appeasers of Munich in 1938; that they are well-meaning but naive. By extension he becomes Winston Churchill, the brave war leader, the only man courageous enough to voice the truth.