Did it cross their minds that the real men of violence, the real threat to world peace, are not the democratically-elected President of the USA, or the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, but the deranged, hate-filled, fundamentalist killers who lurk in the shadows? Probably not. The protesters are so blinkered, so self-righteous, so bigoted against America, that they can’t begin to understand that while the homicide bombers were bringing death and destruction to the streets of Istanbul, they were doing their bit for terrorism on the streets of London.

Every single one of the useful idiots marching yesterday is a foot soldier for rogue states, tyranny, al-Qa’ida and the forces of Islamofascism. However ludicrous London mayor Ken Livingstone may sound here when he denounces George W Bush as the greatest threat to world peace ever, his words when beamed around the world by satellite give heart to those who wish to destroy us. Will Livingstone still be blaming Bush and Blair when the kind of explosion we saw in Istanbul yesterday rips through the Christmas shopping crowds in Oxford Street or blows Birmingham’s rebuilt Bull Ring to kingdom come? The attacks in Turkey were aimed at us just as surely as if the terrorists had driven a truck bomb straight into Nelson’s Column yesterday afternoon.

The fact that Trafalgar Square was playing host to an anti-Bush demo wouldn’t have made the slightest bit of difference. Their banners would have been no more of a deterrent than Lambeth Council declaring itself a nuclear-free zone at the height of the Cold War would have saved South London from a Soviet missile. Terrorists don’t stop to read T-shirts. They don’t care who they kill. Imperialist capitalist running dogs or the Tooting Popular Front. Wolfowitz or Wolfie Smith, it’s all the same to them. If they thought they could have got away with it, the terrorists would have taken out central London, demonstration or no demonstration. Bring on the 72 virgins. Instead they chose a softer target, Istanbul, just as they did last weekend. The fact that Turkey is an Islamic society didn’t stop them. Although their primary targets were Jewish and British, they don’t mind killing brother Muslims.

In a commanding speech in London, President Bush couldn’t have spelt out the reality more clearly if the screens of his teleprompter had been blown from purest Waterford. The only shame was that he couldn’t make the speech to the joint Houses of Parliament because some MPs couldn’t be guaranteed to behave themselves. The schoolkids on yesterday’s march can be forgiven their naivety. The grown-ups and the politicians who encouraged them can’t.

If they really wanted to protest against murder and international terror they chose the wrong route. They should have headed to the Finsbury Park mosque, where Captain Hook still peddles his hatred, or the North London base of al-Muhajiroun, the extremist organisation which celebrates 9/11 and boasts of recruiting impressionable young Muslim men for holy war against the West.