This weekend could have been very different. Instead of relief at the narrow escape London had in the early hours of Friday, we would have been mourning the death and destruction bombers had brought to the capital. And perhaps Glasgow airport too. The people behind these attempted atrocities clearly have twisted minds. How else to explain an attack directed at “ladies night” at the Tiger Tiger nightclub? For Islamists – and there seems little doubt that Muslim extremists were behind the plot – young women drinking, dancing and enjoying themselves embodies everything they find repulsive about western society. Bombers had struck nightclubs in Bali in 2002, killing 200 and injuring hundreds, and it was known that they had been eager to strike at clubs in London.

There will be other weekends when we fear we will be commenting not on close shaves but on completed terrorist attacks. It provides a reminder that the threat is ever-present. In April five men were imprisoned in the fertiliser bomb plot, Operation Crevice. The 2,000 suspects MI5 is monitoring is a huge number and there are almost certainly more whom they have not yet identified. At least this time the security services can take comfort from the fact that the bombs failed, and perhaps from the knowledge that they were not dealing with suicide bombers. But these are small crumbs of comfort. They will be back.

Responding to the terrorist threat requires a variety of measures, including constant vigilance and a greater willingness within the Muslim community to tell the police about radicalised youths. The crackdown on those who preach hate must also be redoubled with the knowledge that gullible young men are still being turned against British society. The security services, too, need to raise their game in recruiting more people from ethnic groups and getting them to infiltrate Islamist cells, much as they did against the IRA. The war against terrorism has to be fought on many fronts while preserving the freedoms that Islamists wish to destroy.