Forget the meaningless platitudes. There is a way to beat this evil – before yet more blood is spilled

FOR the third time in less than three months, innocent people going about their everyday lives have been slaughtered at random and without conscience by Islamist fanatics filled with hatred and contempt for our democracy and our secular freedoms.

First, it was tourists and ordinary Londoners strolling across Westminster Bridge. Then, heartbreakingly young girls and their mothers leaving a Manchester pop concert. And now, people enjoying their evening in an area of the capital noted for its lively bars, cafes and restaurants.

Using hired vans as lethal weapons, nail bombs and foot-long knives, these crazed zealots have deliberately targeted vulnerable, unsuspecting members of the public in popular locations that are almost impossible to protect.

It’s cowardly and contemptible, of course. But it’s also deadly, striking at liberal society’s soft underbelly.

With the honourable exception of Theresa May, the response so far from the political class has been depressingly predictable. In place of constructive comments or anything that might provide genuine reassurance, we’ve been fed a stream of platitudes and glib clichés.

They tell us we must stay calm and soldier on, remain vigilant, not let the terrorists win by changing our behaviour, not let them divide communities and, above all, recognise that their violent jihadi creed is a perversion of Islam and thoroughly rejected by ordinary Muslims.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s words were typical. In the wake of Saturday’s outrage, he said: ‘London is one of the safest cities in the world, if not the safest city in the world . . . We will never let these cowards win.’

The complacency of that statement simply beggars belief. If we’re so safe, then why is the MI5 terrorist threat level oscillating between severe and critical — the highest on the scale?

Banalities will no longer do. We need action — now. There is a war being fought on our streets and it’s time to deploy all the weapons at our disposal. As the Prime Minister said yesterday: ‘Enough is enough.’

The fact is that we will keep our heads and we will prevail. This a country that lived through the Blitz — during which towns and cities up and down the country were bombed almost every night for eight months, at a cost of 43,000 lives — not to mention nearly three decades of indiscriminate carnage perpetrated by Jeremy Corbyn’s friends in the IRA.

The British people are biologically programmed to defy those who threaten them and do not buckle under stress.

But we don’t deserve to be patronised. What we want to hear from our political masters are not sermons about not letting the terrorists win, but what they are going to do to stop them.

This is a threat like no other we have faced in the past, and we require strong and unequivocal leadership to guide us through it.

Much of that leadership must come from within the Islamic community. These terrorists may be on the fringes of mainstream Islam, but they are Muslims nonetheless.

Indeed, the London Bridge killers shouted ‘ This is for Allah’ as they slashed, stabbed and cut the throats of dozens of people.

In the name of multiculturalism, too many Muslim families have been able to insulate themselves from wider British society, and that has provided a climate in which extremism can thrive. This self- imposed apartheid must end. Ordinary Muslims must take responsibility for the terrorists in their midst and root them out. If they suspect young men are becoming radicalised, it’s their duty as citizens of this country to inform the authorities.

Next, there is the vexed question of how to galvanise our policing of this terror upsurge. In all democratic societies, a balance must be struck between civil liberties and the protection of the public.

The painful truth is that the balance in Britain today needs to be fundamentally readjusted.

The Mail has huge admiration for the dedication and courage of the police and MI5 in tackling this scourge. Since the Westminster attack on March 22, they have foiled no fewer than five plots, which reflects well on their professionalism — but also reveals the sheer scale of the threat facing us all.

Make no mistake, this is a new breed of terrorist. Most previous plots had fairly long gestation periods, as symbolic targets were selected, weapons or explosives acquired and plans carefully laid: think of the Brighton bombing, or 7/7, which were many months in the preparation.

But these new attacks are haphazard and impromptu, with impressionable and often troubled Muslim boys watching Islamic State beheadings online, reading the vile IS propaganda that is rife across the internet, or seeing news coverage of terror attacks on their TV screens and being inspired to launch copycat attacks.

As Mrs May said yesterday, ‘terrorism breeds terrorism’ and, in France, Belgium, Germany and Sweden, as well as here, law enforcement agencies are struggling to cope. The numbers of young men involved, their lack of previous terror convictions and the sheer randomness of the targets has created a policing nightmare.

On Saturday, the speed of the Scotland Yard response was truly extraordinary. Just eight minutes after receiving the first emergency call, armed officers had shot all three terrorists dead.

Yet in that brief period, seven people were murdered and more than 40 injured. And worryingly, as with several previous attacks, at least one of the perpetrators was already on the MI5/ police radar. He was associated with a well-known radical cleric, but because he was regarded as being a minor player, the security services did not have the resources to place him under close surveillance.

We owe it to the dead of London and Manchester to ensure that this situation never arises again. If MI5 or the police need extra resources, they must have them — whatever it takes.

Similarly, with an estimated 3,000 radicals living in the UK and hundreds returning from Syria, there must be a huge extension of the terrorism prevention orders known as TPIMs, which restrict the movements of suspects.

(And if there is any problem funding these changes, the Mail has a humble suggestion — that we take the money from the £12 billion a year we squander on foreign aid.)

The longer prison sentences for terrorists pledged by Mrs May are also to be welcomed. But perhaps her most important mission is to bring to heel the tax-avoiding social media giants who allow terrorist propaganda, bloodsoaked IS videos and bomb-making instructions to be spread across the internet with impunity.

Only last week, an IS manual urging followers to slit the throats of infidels was circulated on Google.

At the recent G7 summit, Mrs May secured support for an international crackdown on the terrorist bile carried by these global companies, and that must now be carried through with the threat of massive fines — or possibly even criminal charges — if they refuse to comply.

So, while the Prime Minister is working to tackle the ‘evil ideology of Islamist extremism’ and improve the security and well-being of the British people, what is the Labour Party doing?

Suddenly, Mr Corbyn seems to have had a Damascene conversion to the merits of tougher policing. Having previously described the ‘shoot-to-kill’ policy as ‘ dangerous and counterproductive’, he now seems to be all for it. He also says he would consider new anti-terror laws, which is even more surprising given that he voted against such legislation 56 times when he was a backbencher.

The truth is that Mr Corbyn has made a career out of at best excusing, and at worst supporting, terror groups. He called Hamas and Hezbollah ‘friends’, has taken tea with IRA bombers and laid a wreath at the grave of a Palestinian militant involved in the Munich massacre. The idea that he has had such a radical change of heart overnight is risible.

And, of course, his ex-girlfriend Diane Abbott, who would be Home Secretary in a Corbyn government, is just as bad. She voted against banning al Qaeda in 2000 and, in the Eighties, championed the IRA, once saying: ‘Every defeat of the British state is a victory for us all.’

It is likely that the London Bridge attack was intended to disrupt the General Election, which takes place in three days’ time. Those behind it have failed, and all parties rightly agree that the democratic process must go on.

When the people consider how to cast their vote, they must ask themselves in whose hands Britain would be a safer place: Theresa May’s or Jeremy Corbyn’s. The answer should be blindingly obvious.

If we are to defeat these butchers, we need a strategy that is both coherent and uncompromising. Too much blood has already been spilled. Enough is enough.