The breakfast tables of Middle England were rudely interrupted this morning by the news that a manhunt has been launched on British soil for the perpetrators of a massacre at an airport in Niger. Thirty-five souls snuffed out, a jihadist calling card left in the blood, and now the scent of terror wafts through the customs hall of every airport from Heathrow to Luton.
Let us take a moment to appreciate the sheer, unadulterated absurdity of this. The very same government that couldn't secure a lorry park in Calais now tells us that the tentacles of extremism have slithered into the green and pleasant land. But of course, the Home Secretary is on the case, her face a mask of grave concern, her voice trembling with the gravity of it all. She will make a statement, probably from a podium flanked by flags, apologising for the inconvenience and reminding us to stay vigilant. Vigilant! As if we haven't been chewing our nails to the quick since 2005.
And what of the suspects? They are, we are told, 'British-linked', a phrase designed to make every tea drinker in Surrey choke on their Earl Grey. They could be the man next door, the one who never cuts his hedge. They could be the barista at the Costa who always gets your name wrong. They are, in short, anyone. But let us not forget the real culprits here: the policy of bombing countries to smithereens and then acting shocked when the shrapnel turns up on our doorsteps. But no, we must not say that. We must focus on the hunt, the heroism of our security services, and the eternal vigilance that is the price of liberty.
The airports, meanwhile, are a theatre of panic. Gone is the airy nonchalance of the business traveller. Now every man with a beard is a suspect, every woman in a headscarf a bomb-maker. The security queue shuffles forward, a procession of the damned, each of us silently praying that the person behind us isn't about to turn the terminal into a scene from a video game. And if they do? The government has a plan. They always have a plan. A plan that involves more surveillance, more drones, more soldiers on the streets. Another brick in the wall. Another liberty traded for the illusion of safety.
But let us raise a glass to the real victim of this tragedy: the truth. The truth that we are not safe, that we can never be safe, not because the enemy is strong but because our own ineptitude has sown the wind and we are now reaping the whirlwind. The truth that the manhunt is a performance, a weekly drama designed to distract us from the fact that the wreckage of our foreign policy has washed up on the shores of East Sussex.
So here is your headline: 'Massacre in Niger, Manhunt in Britain, and the Ongoing Farce of a Government Pretending to Be Surprised.' But that doesn't fit on a BBC alert, does it? It doesn't sell papers. It doesn't make us feel better. So we will content ourselves with the news that the search continues, that our boys in blue are on the case, and that we must all do our bit. For queen and country. For the love of God. For the end of the world as we know it.
