As I began to write this, at about 10.30 on the morning of Thursday 23rd March, I still did not know anything about the perpetrator of yesterday’s murders in Westminster.

And yet. Despite the lack of real knowledge there is a strange ‘something must be done’ atmosphere which I greatly dislike. There is much intolerant emotionalism in which any dissent is sniffed at by amateur thought police as if it were some sort of disrespect to the dead (whose memory I honour and to whose families I offer my profound condolences, if a total stranger’s words on this matter are of any use to them).

I am being pestered on the web by people who have already made their minds up about what happened and what to do about it. Some want more armed police, some more spending on ‘security’ and even less contact between politicians and public. And I can hear politicians (in many cases the same ones who have also been saying conciliatory things about the victorious terrorist Martin McGuinness, within the last 24 hours) prosing on about how they will ‘never give in to terror’. Well, actions will speak louder than words on that, as always.

I have said, and continue to say, that it is impossible to say anything intelligent about Wednesday’s events *in detail* until we know a good deal more about the person who committed these crimes. This always takes some time to come out. This time it seems to be taking longer than usual.

In general, I am sympathetic to much (though not all) of what the former Times editor Sir Simon Jenkins says here:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/22/westminster-attack-tragedy-not-threat-democracy

In particular, I must put these points to those who rush to judgement:

We know that the murders were committed by the abuse of a car and with knives. The normal cry of ‘gun control’, when guns are involved is therefore useless. The idea of tighter restrictions on car ownership is also plainly absurd. The idea that we can ban the sale of knives, or enforce a ban on carrying them, is equally implausible.

In the absence of any knowledge about who carried out the attack, I cannot myself see how it can be used as an argument for increased surveillance, unless and until evidence is brought that existing restrictions on surveillance prevented foreknowledge of this specific attack. I have yet to see any.

The self-styled ‘security’ agencies have large budgets to justify and are given to uncheckable boasts about how effective they are. I am a journalist, trained to doubt such claims, and persuaded by decades of experience that such doubts are justified - and I do not like such bodies becoming too powerful. Forgive me if I remain sceptical about any demands from them, either for more power to snoop on the innocent, or more money.

I am told that this incident is an argument for the squadrons of heavily-armed police officers who now stand around in various parts of big cities. Is it? I am not sure. The Houses of Parliament are obviously full of, and surrounded by, armed officers, as anyone with eyes to see would have noted at any time over the past ten years, and perhaps longer. Yet Wednesday’s culprit, even so, made a murderous attack on a police officer in these precincts. If he was capable of reason at all at the time, he either did not care what happened to him or actively expected to be shot. And so he was. In either case, he was not deterred by armed police officers.

In any case, the purpose of the police is not to act as sentries for state buildings. That is a job for the Army, and if things have got as serious as is claimed, then soldiers should be deployed in such roles (as they are now in France) rather than being despatched to Estonia.

It is now almost 2.30 p.m. We still do not know the name of the culprit, even though the BBC are now saying his name is known to the authorities. No doubt this reluctance to reveal his name, which I must admit I cannot fathom, will be explained in time.