Will anyone rise to take al-Qaeda's bait?

THE VOICE of Muslim Britain seems almost provocative in the opinion sampled so far. A quarter claim some sympathy with the "feelings and motives" of those who carried out the attacks, and 6% consider the July 7 attacks justified.

But widen the focus to look at British political opinion, and the picture is not much different. When ICM asked the country at large, three-quarters thought Tony Blair was to some degree responsible for the suicide bombings.

In Westminster, there is unity - as is always the case in time of national crises. But across the country, there is division and an increasing amount of dissent. The dilemma facing politicians from all parties this summer is what to do now.

The 80-day parliamentary recess will provide plenty of time to ruminate on the new situation. Britain's security threat now seems more analogous to Jerusalem than New York: rather than taking one big hit, we face a stream of small attacks.

There had been a temptation to conclude that London has "had its turn" - and escaped quite lightly compared to New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. But then came the botched attacks of last Thursday.

Four more would-be suicide bombers is a remarkable yield for a supposedly tolerant and integrated country such as Britain - and, in a stroke, puts us on a par with the Middle East in terms of countries vulnerable to such attack.

This month alone, Britain has seen eight suicide bombers, albeit four of them unsuccessful. In the last year, Israel has suffered only six attacks. Israeli ministers have the facility of negotiating a truce with its extremists: London does not.

London may well have joined Jerusalem in facing this kind of new war from people who make home-grown explosives and do not have far to travel to carry out their attacks. A third London suicide attack will cement this comparison.

In times of attack, political leaders rally together - as we saw last week when Tony Blair held a joint meeting with Michael Howard and Charles Kennedy, his Tory and Liberal Democrat counterparts.

From the moment he first heard about the 7/7 bomb attacks, Blair has been anxious to crush any suggestion that they were linked to Iraq (and, ergo, to him). The 11 September and Bali bombings preceded the Iraq invasion, he says.

The government's narrative is that al-Qaeda has hit 26 countries, only a handful of which helped invade Iraq. The Egyptian tourist attraction bombings yesterday bolster Blair's theme: the threat from Islamic terrorism is frighteningly general.

Egypt sent no troops to invade Iraq. Neither did Turkey, which was struck by a suicide bomber last weekend, though in that case it was Kurdish separatists who rushed to claim responsibility. So Mr Blair has a good case for saying Iraq is not the determining factor - but is he right to say Iraq did not amplify the risk?

It is now clear that the majority of the public do not believe him. The polls point to a feeling that, while an al-Qaeda threat may have existed before, Britain stirred a hornet's nest when it invaded Iraq and London has now been stung.

Sympathy with suicide bombers is by no means restricted to disaffected Muslims in Yorkshire. "As long as young people feel they have got no hope but to blow themselves up, you are never going to make progress," Cherie Blair once said. She was talking about Palestine three years ago - and just hours after a suicide bomb in a Jerusalem bus had killed 40 people. But the general idea that politicians shoulder a large part of the blame for such attacks remains popular today.

Last week, Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, argued that the terror attacks saw Britain reaping the harvest of its foreign policy in the Middle East: it would be a very bold Muslim cleric who would venture the same opinion.

Such comments have yet to seep through to the floor of the House of Commons. Mark Fisher, a Labour backbencher, was a lone voice when he accused Blair of being "in denial" about the link between the Iraq war and the bombs.

While several MPs agree with him, it is inappropriate to say it just yet. But after the summer recess, the lines of attack may be drawn. Blair's enemies are likely to start using the London bombings as a weapon against the Prime Minister.

The split, however, may not be across political party lines. The Liberal Democrats are in a state of flux now - unable to decide whether their next move is left or right, and unsure whether or not to start saying "we told you so".

This is not so for Labour rebels, who argued from the first that the Iraq war made Britain a more dangerous place. Clare Short, the former International Development Secretary, has already made her views public.

Smaller parties such as the Scottish Nationalists, have been less shy in drawing an explicit link. Alex Salmond, the party leader, has been one of the few to have taunted Mr Blair in the Commons by linking Iraq with the London attacks.

In private, even some Conservatives say that the war on terror has made Britain more open to attacks. But the Tories are mulling a different route: to ask why Britain was allowed to develop hotbeds of Islamic extremism.

The problem is that immigration, the bugbear of the Tories, does not seem to have been the problem. Three of the four July 7 bombers were born here: so far, the Tories do not have a plausible and defensible line of attack.

So for now, Charles Kennedy and Michael Howard are sticking with Blair because neither of them have figured out an alternative strategy. Both will know that the path from here is fraught with risks.

If al-Qaeda did plot the July 7 attacks, this would have been precisely the strategic intention: to scare British politicians away from the war on terror, and make it clear there is a price to pay for messing with Islamic fundamentalism.

It will be a test of the House of Commons to see if anyone will echo the jihadists' argument. The temptation to stoop so low, especially for anti-war parties such as the SNP and Liberal Democrats, is growing with every opinion poll.

After the July 7 attacks, the consensus was that the British public would not turn on its government as the Spanish did during the March 11, 2004 attacks in Madrid - which triggered a surprise victory for the anti-war Socialist Party. Spain's response certainly seemed to embolden the jihadists, who went on to plot further murders in Spain, including a (foiled) plot to assassinate members of its High Court in Madrid.

Might they score a victory in Britain too? There is now enough opinion poll research to make this an open question. All al-Qaeda needs now is a political party to rise to the bait.