After the liquid bomb plot, what now for UK security?

MI5 and New Scotland Yard are feeling very pleased with themselves following guilty verdicts against the liquid bomb plotters. They have three scalps: Tanvir Hussain (above), Abdulla Ahmed Ali and Assad Sarwar, all convicted of conspiring to detonate bombs aboard at least seven jets flying out of Heathrow in August 2006.

But, after two trials costing £21m, the question our triumphant security services must ask themselves is: What now?

The liquid bomb plot will be the last of the high-profile cases such as Operation Crevice that comes to court in Britain - until another attack takes place or, of course, is mercifully averted.

All the outstanding cells of plotters have received their punishment, and the complicated legal apparatus demanded by Tony Blair and subsequently Gordon Brown - control orders which allow for house arrest, 42 days detention etc - stands idle.

Indeed control orders look likely to collapse, with reports emerging that they will be allowed to lapse, as MI5 and the terror police refuse to reveal the secret evidence behind them to the courts.

Even the case which closed at Woolwich Crown Court on Monday wasn't a total victory. Three other defendants were acquitted of involvement in the plot, while one man was cleared entirely. The CPS has a week to decide whether to seek retrials against these men, or whether to let them go.

Then there is Rashid Rauf, the man thought to be al-Qaeda's link to the plotters. Was Rauf really killed, as reported by US forces, in a drone attack in Pakistan last November?

The reality is that the public is turning against the war on Afghanistan, the original focus of the American-led 'war on terror' against the forces that had sponsored and carried out the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center.

The British government and its spymasters are finding it increasingly difficult to persuade the populace that a) our troops in Helmand are fighting a war that is intrinsically linked to the safety of the UK's streets, and b) that fighting terror should remain at the forefront of Government policy.

One thing is certain: the government will take full advantage of the outcome of the liquid bomb trial and its handy reminder that home-grown Islamic terrorism is a real risk.

The BBC's security correspondent Frank Gardner has already quoted "Whitehall officials" who revealed to him that al-Qaeda would try to bomb commercial airliners again. At the same time John McDowell, the head of the Metropolitan Police's Counter-terrorism Command, reminded the BBC that the arrest of the plotters, two days before a supposed dry run of the attacks, was "a relatively close thing".

But such sentiments are unlikely to cut much ice with a public weary of war in Afghanistan, and rather more concerned with paying their mortgages. ·