OUR leaders are not taking rational action in the face of the terrorist threat.

There is a conspiracy among all the parties to avoid the issue. As a result, they are making it likely that British people will die of political correctness (PC).

A Christian nurse is sacked for offering to pray for a patient. Yet the preachers of hate and jihad are permitted to continue their recruiting sermons in many mosques – inciting a generation of young Muslims to kill us.

Yes, death by PC. The Detroit underpants would-be plane bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had an extreme Islamist trail traceable from radicalisation in London to al Qaida training camps in Yemen and his own father alerted the authorities to his intentions.

Even so, he was able to board an aeroplane in order to blow it out of the sky. Yet when genteel old Methodist ladies turn up at the airport, they have their orange juice seized and their little needlework kits confiscated.

Everyone is soon going to have to stand in front of the new full-body scanners – not just conspicuous Pakistanis or Nigerians or Somalis with dodgy documents, but russet-faced Devon farmers, delectable debutantes with their porcelain complexion, small children and even the England cricket team. This policy is mindless, perverse and useless.

The only benefit that might come of it is that the operation of thousands of these full-body scanners could provide congenial employment for out-of-work teenage boys. Yes, let’s share the joke now. We shall not be able to joke about deaths from political correctness after the event.

Instead of the useless inspections currently operating at airports, there should be a more intelligent method of profiling likely suspects, and I am not suggesting that only passengers who look as if they are Muslims.

There are obvious reasons for checking some passengers rather than others. For example, Abdulmutallab was known to have bought a one-way ticket – in cash. Wouldn’t you think that such strange behaviour might have attracted the attention of so-called “Intelligence”?

If you see a man in a mask, a striped shirt, carrying a jemmy and a sack with the word Swag written on it, might you not reasonably suspect him for a burglar?

Actually, I doubt whether all the tiresome inspections, frisking, removal of shoes and confiscation of soft drinks has prevented a single attack. What is this elaborate precautionary process in aid of? Nothing. It is irrational.

I mean, the most successful terrorist attack in Britain in recent years was not on plane, but on the trains. So why don’t they search everybody entering the London Underground stations?

I use the Underground a lot and I see thousands of tube passengers every day carrying rucksacks and briefcases. It would be a simple matter for a terrorist to blow up a tube train any time he felt like it.

The reason there is no effective screening, of course, is that it is not feasible when hundreds of thousands of people use the Underground day and night. They might as well close the tube altogether. Trying to search everyone would amount to the same thing.

There is no rational security policy for air travel. And so little old ladies will continue to have their drinks bottles taken from them and their sewing sets confiscated owing to the authorities’ undiscriminating folly.

■ Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael’s, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.