We have to start with the ritualistic part of any consideration of an apparent attempted terrorist attack. We do not know the whole story behind the arrest of five men on terrorist charges near RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire on Sunday morning. Anyone old enough to have played Chinese whispers as a child knows how quickly information can become distorted or mangled. The ubiquity of social media has potentiated this a thousandfold. So we ought to be cautious.

This is what we do know. At 12.45 a.m. on Sunday, Gloucestershire constabulary received a call concerning ‘three suspicious vehicles’ moving in the direction of RAF Fairford, a Ministry of Defence facility operated by the US Air Force. Five men were subsequently arrested near Whelford, two miles south-east of the base, and a bomb disposal team was deployed to the area.

The suspects were initially detained under the Explosives Act 1875 but then arrested under section 5 of the Terrorism Act 2006 relating to the preparation of terrorist acts. This allows them to be held for 14 days without charge. Counter Terrorism Policing, a network chaired by the Metropolitan Police’s Assistant Commissioner for Specialist Operations, is leading the investigation and a major incident has been declared.

It is clear that this was an attempted terrorist explosives attack on RAF Fairford. The Prime Minister asked people ‘not to speculate while the authorities establish the full facts’, Meanwhile, the Defence Secretary, Wes Streeting, more realistically said ‘this is not the time for me to speculate’. But it is neither wrong nor unhelpful........

© The Spectator