I was walking my five-year-old daughter to school in West London on Friday morning when a series of police cars and trucks flew past at very high speed.
‘Where are they all going?’ she asked, innocently.
I pulled out my phone, checked my Twitter feed, and saw multiple reports of an ‘explosion’ on a tube train less than a mile away.
A jihadi terrorist, it would later emerge, had tried to murder hundreds of people on their morning commute.
A jihadi terrorist tried to murder hundreds of people on their morning commute Friday in London with this flaming white bucket bomb – which thankfully malfunctioned
Only through the good fortune of a malfunctioning bomb did the intended targets escape with their lives, though 25 needed hospital treatment.
How do you even try to explain this kind of thing to a five-year-old kid as she cheerfully skips her way to school?
It would be hard enough under normal circumstances, but this was the third such Islamist terror attack in London, and the fourth in Britain, in the past six months alone.
On March 22, jihadi Khalid Masood drove a car into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, before stabbing a policeman to death at the entrance to Parliament. Four other people died, 50 were wounded.
On May 22, jihadi Salman Abedi blew up a bomb outside the Manchester Arena as thousands left an Ariana Grande concert. Twenty-two people were killed, including many children. Another 250 were injured, many seriously.
On June 3, three jihadis – Khuram Butt, Rachid Redouane and Youssef Zaghba – drove into pedestrians on London Bridge, before going on a stabbing rampage at nearby Borough Market. They killed eight people and wounded 40 others.
Parsons Green is the fourth attack in just four months. First there was Westminster. Then May 22, jihadi Salman Abedi, left, blew up a bomb outside the Manchester Arena after an Ariana Grande concert. On June 3 three jihadis, including Khuram Butt, right, mowed down pedestrians on London Bridge and went on a stabbing rampage
Now we have the Parsons Green train attack, for which two young suspected jihadis are currently in police custody.
In each case, ISIS claimed responsibility, proud of the senseless slaughter wrought in their name.
My country, my little daughter’s country, is under siege from terrorists in a way we have never experienced before, even in the very darkest days of the IRA.
We’re not facing an enemy with any kind of political objective that can be negotiated, we’re dealing with a nihilistic group of despicable thugs twisting and perverting their Islamic faith to justify mass murder.
Many are living in our midst, having their brains warped by internet hate preachers who want an end to Western civilisation as we know it.
And let’s be brutally honest: it is beginning to feel seriously unnerving.
Oh, we can all talk a big, bold game about ‘never surrendering’, ‘staying strong’ and ‘being resilient’.
I applaud such a response to these gutless, barbaric cowards.
Just as I applauded when this morning I interviewed carpet fitter Paul Crowley, who had calmly gone to work straight after having his head badly singed from the explosion.
These attacks bring out the very best in people, at the same time as they are being perpetrated by the very worst.
But we have reached the point now when the sheer frequency of atrocities, and the common cause behind them, is damaging the very fabric of our society and lives.
Britain just doesn’t feel safe.
This latest attack is particularly worrying for a number of reasons.
The two suspects are friends.
One, who has not yet been named, is an 18-year-old refugee from Iraq. The other, Yahya Faroukh, is a 21-year-old refugee from Syria.
They have both lived with the same foster parents in Surrey, a wonderful couple named Penny and Ronald Jones who have helped raise 268 children.
Yet the Joneses, it appears, knew very little about the background of their charges.
Penny and Ronald Jones (pictured on a luxury cruise holiday) unwittingly gave their love and support to two young suspected jihadis that are currently in police custody – after welcoming hundreds of foster children into their home over the years
A man was caught on camera with a bag just like the one the bomb was in. The teenager in custody, welcomed to the Jones’ home, was by all accounts an angry young man and a tinderbox waiting to blow
The 18-year-old, from all accounts, was a tinderbox waiting to blow; an angry young man, born in Baghdad shortly before the Iraq War, whose parents had died, and who was brought to Britain for a supposedly better life.
He was bitter, resentful, and increasingly volatile.
Ian Harvey, Conservative leader of the local borough council, said that ‘neighbours had noted he was quite a difficult boy, he could be quite aggressive. He was unhappy when there was anything on the news about what was happening in Iraq.’
There, right there, is a massive alarm bell, surely?
A young, disturbed Iraqi orphan full of rage at what has happened to his country from a war fought against his people by his adopted country.
If that’s not a recipe for radicalisation, then what is?
Yet nobody did anything about it.
The boy is even said to have had several run-ins with police in recent weeks, including one at the very train station where the bomb was detonated.
Meanwhile, Faroukh moved out to a place near Heathrow Airport with no TV or much furniture, where he was regularly seen engaging in late night prayer sessions in the garden and having animated Arabic conversations with other men. What was really going on at that house?
The Joneses are blameless. They are decent people who acted with the very best of intentions.
When they received MBEs at Buckingham Palace in 2009, Penny, 71, said: ‘We open our hearts to all the children. Anybody that comes to us, we will do whatever we can to help them with whatever they need.’
They came out of retirement a few years ago specifically to help war-torn refugees. ‘We try and support where we can because they’ve had bad lives,’ said Ronald, who is 88 and uses a mobility scooter. ‘They just need to be loved.’
It takes a very special generosity of spirit to do this.
But it would appear their kindness in this case has been badly betrayed, and not just by those they tried to care for, but by those in the UK refugee programme system who allocated the young men in the first place.
They Joneses are ‘horrified’ by what they have discovered about the background of the two suspects since the bombing and arrests.
Apparently, and I find this absolutely shocking, foster carers in the UK are only told a refugee’s first name, alleged age and where they come from.
How can this be remotely sensible given the times we now live in?
Amid all this, Donald Trump has once again been painted as the villain.
Shortly after the bomb went off, he tweeted: ‘Another attack in London by a loser terrorist. These are sick and demented people who were in the sights of Scotland Yard. Must be proactive!’
Trump was ridiculed for this tweet, sent soon after the attack happened – but what did he do that was so wrong?
As with all things Trump, reaction was fast and furious.
He was mocked and abused and told to keep his big nose out of British affairs.
There were renewed calls from the leader of the Liberal Democrat Party to have his state visit to Britain cancelled because he’s supposedly such a monster.
Yet what did Trump actually say that was so wrong?
It WAS another attack in London by a loser terrorist.
They ARE sick and demented people.
The 18-year-old kid WAS reportedly in the sights of the police.
And yes, we absolutely DO need to be more proactive.
Talking of which, why were we told nothing about the bucket bomb suspect all day when the police clearly knew very quickly who he was and could presumably have released CCTV footage to help catch him?
I sincerely hope it wasn’t some form of absurd political correctness because he’s a Muslim?
Trump has been widely vilified for his travel ban proposal on people travelling from seven predominantly Muslim war-torn countries, including Syria and Iraq, to America until they undergo stringent new checks.
He also wants the US Refugee Admissions programme to be suspended for 120 days for the same reason.
These plans have been met with implacable outrage, particularly from Trump-hating celebrities and liberals.
I, too, have problems with them, not least because the ban doesn’t include countries like Saudi Arabia that have produced the terrorists who’ve actually attacked America. So it’s inconsistent and was also poorly executed when it was first attempted.
But Trump is at least trying to do something about this increasing and highly dangerous threat.
What are Britain’s leaders, from Prime Minister Theresa May to London Mayor Sadiq Khan, doing other than spouting endless repetitive platitudes about the (heroic) emergency services tasked with picking up the pieces after each attack?
Trump has been widely vilified for his travel ban proposal – and i too have some problems with it. But Trump is at least trying to do something. Britain’s leaders are just spouting endless repetitive platitudes
If it does indeed turn out that the people responsible for this latest attack on London were young men from Iraq and Syria who came through Britain’s own refugee programme, then maybe it’s time to stop screaming abuse at Trump, and actually tighten up our own system?
You don’t have to like the US President, or the way he talks, tweets or behaves, to accept that Trump appears to be the only world leader out there right now with the steely determination to make his country safer from Islamist terrorism.
Yes, Britain, like America, has a moral duty to help those whose lives have been shattered by war.
But we also have an even greater duty to stop our own citizens from being murdered by terrorists.
Penny and Ronald Jones are understandably hugely upset about what’s happened.
I’m not just upset. I’m furious.
How many more of these angry young men are sitting in foster homes right now, plotting terror attacks?
How much have their foster carers been told about their backgrounds?
Who is monitoring them if their behaviour deteriorates or become suspicious?
What do we really know about the huge number of young men, like these two suspects, coming into Britain via Europe as supposed refugees from places like Iraq and Syria?
It’s not ‘racist’ to ask these questions, or ‘unfair’ to refugees, it’s just common sense.
Britain’s got big problems with radicalised Islamist terror, but at the moment I’m seeing precious few answers.
If this bomb had gone off as it was intended to, we might have been dealing with the biggest terror attack Britain has ever seen.
Trump’s right: we need to be more proactive and stop these bastards, whoever they are or claim to be, from killing more of our people.