BRITAIN: The terror casts its shadow wider and draws ever closer. On July 7th the threat facing Britain assumed a chilling new dimension with the discovery that the perpetrators of the attacks on London's transport network were "home grown" terrorists on a suicide mission.
It moved on to a different plain again yesterday. Death on the Underground in south London on a summer morning - a suspected suicide bomber pursued by police, secret services and special forces who will shoot to kill in what police commissioner Sir Ian Blair rightly describes as conditions of unknown threat and grave danger.
These are incredibly dangerous times in Tony Blair's Britain and for the prime minister himself. Shares in Blair's premiership have continued rising in the aftermath of July 7th.
Cool and measured in his response, Blair has all the qualities people expect of a leader in a time of national crisis or emergency. Then, as again on Thursday, he had no need of the old thespian skills to strike the right balance between defiance and exhortation, articulating a real and present danger while leading the determined return to normal life that has been the hallmark of this resilient city.
In parliament, too, there has been no replay of that old New Labour sin of "spin". Home secretary Charles Clarke has shown a welcome lack of David Blunkett's ever-present populist instinct, and he and Blair have shown suitable caution in seeking cross-party consensus for new anti-terrorist laws.
Some, of course, detect a trap, and think the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats might eventually regret being too close to a government which Michael Howard and Charles Kennedy have previously cast as instinctively authoritarian.
But for the moment at least, differences about ID cards and the need for judicial oversight of control orders imposing effective house arrest on terror suspects are in abeyance. The focus so far has largely been on closing legal loopholes and the creation of new offences covering people at terrorist training camps and barring or excluding radical clerics and other extremists promoting hate and glorifying terror.
Even some wishing him well doubt if Clarke will be able successfully to prosecute people for "indirectly" promoting terrorism through written articles, websites and the like. Cynics detect "window dressing" and expect little change in practice.
Yet even if some of the latest proposals have not been fully developed, Clarke and Blair are clearly determined to cultivate a more hostile environment for those who would inspire disaffected Muslim youths to wage war.
They will face resistance further down the line if the liberties of British citizens are further curtailed while the government shows itself unable or unwilling to remove those granted leave to remain in Britain whom Blair himself says "abuse British hospitality" and preach what he calls a "perverted" version of Islam.
The political consensus will hardly be broken either if police chiefs have their way and win powers to hold terror suspects for questioning for up to three months rather than the present 14 days.
In an era when terrorism has gone global, many experts agree that 14 days is simply not adequate or appropriate.
Moreover, Conservative and Lib Dem civil libertarians may well content themselves that due process is still preferable to internment by another name. In the current climate, likewise, few will object to increased use of powers to stop and search and their use among the travelling public on the Underground.
Yet there may also be public confusion about this government's enthusiasm for the expansion of faith schools, as there is about its promotion of a law banning the incitement to religious hatred which many believe is motivated by a desire to win back Muslim voters alienated by the Iraq war.
More attention than Blair might like, too, may be paid to his conduct of the Northern Ireland peace process in the coming weeks and months. Most Britons are bored with that subject. However, many politicians and commentators will be alert to any readiness to fudge his demands of the IRA, and Blair is vulnerable to the latent suspicion that he does not always practise in his backyard what he preaches on the world stage.
Such dangers obviously lie further down the line in the course of protracted political discourse. The real and pressing danger for Blair - underlined by yesterday's extraordinary developments, less than 24 hours after Thursday's unsuccessful bombing mission - is that events might begin to run beyond his control.
As one expert ventured, the "coping strategies" we have witnessed thus far have rather presumed that terrorist attacks would be obligingly infrequent.
If instead they prove to be sustained, can the security and emergency services bear the strain? Are they really sufficiently resourced? If terror, disruption and death become commonplace, might people tire of Blair's familiar assurance and begin to question his government's ability to protect them?
What then for "the communities" whom Sir Ian Blair yesterday implored to ignore the rumour mill and take their facts from the police? People of all communities in London last night were hardly concerned with questions of high politics and policies.
Their silent prayer, rather, was that the police would be able to demonstrate, and quickly, that they had indeed got their facts right about the man shot dead on the Underground at Stockwell.