DAVID CAMERON has finally proved that he is, in fact, that which, for so long and by so many, he was said to be: the heir to Tony Blair.

Like Mr Blair, he has only one principle – self-interest – and only one political strategy: the diversionary device. This week we saw both these facets of his character and behaviour in classic style.

As a response to the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby, Mr Cameron proposes to set up a task force at cabinet level to tackle the rise of Islamic extremism. Here the Prime Minister, rattled by Ukip, fearing for his political survival and haunted by the controversies over homosexual “marriage” and Europe, has characteristically resorted to a diversionary tactic. That is what his new task force is and nothing else.

The only question to be asked is: Why now, 12 years after the terrorist attacks on New York and eight years after the atrocities perpetrated in London?

Were not these terrible events sufficient to rouse the Government from its complacent slumbers? Why was not some powerful organisation set up much earlier?

It will be said in Mr Cameron’s defence that he has been in government for only three years and so it was not his prerogative to decide high-level policies such as this. But I didn’t hear him clamouring for the setting up of a task force throughout those years he was Leader of the Opposition.

Thank goodness, however, for the fact that history is such that the right thing is often done for the wrong reason. Better we have the task force late rather than never.

The shocking truth is that recent British governments have been unwilling to act firmly and decisively to counter the Islamist threat. So this threat has grown and developed to the point that even the Government now admits that there are thousands of radicalised young Muslim men in this country.

Corrupted by sentimentality and politically- correct fantasies about so called Islamophobia, governments have looked squarely at the reality of the terrorist threat – but then looked away.

The word Islamophobia is a nonsense anyhow.

A phobia is an irrational fear. Is it irrational to be afraid of terrorist attacks performed in the name of Islam? Or, as a nation, are we so far descended into euphemism and evasions that we are going to die of our political correctness?

It is ten years since Professor Marcello Pera, a philosopher and former president of the Italian Senate, warned: “Is there a war? I answer, yes there is a war and I believe the responsible thing is to recognise it and to say so, regardless of whether the politically-correct thing to do is to keep our mouths shut.

“In Afghanistan, Kashmir, Chechnya, Dagestan, Ossetia, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Bosnia, Kosovo, the Palestinian Territories, Egypt, Morocco and much of the Islamic and Arab world, large groups of fundamentalists, radicals, extremists – the Taliban, Al Qaida, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Muslim Brothers, Islamic Jihad, the Islamic Armed Group and many more have declared a holy war on the West. This is not my imagination.

It is a message they have proclaimed, written, preached, communicated and circulated in black and white. Why should I not take note of it?”

Unfortunately, the British have got form when it comes to evasiveness and appeasing our enemies. Throughout the 1930s it was thought morally upright to appease Hitler.

A pity then that Cameron is only the heir to Blair and not the heir to Churchill.