Two things in particular leapt out at me from the Telegraph's YouGov poll on attitudes to the terrorist threat to this country. The first was the relative robustness of the response. Although more than three quarters of those polled thought the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq had made terror attacks in Britain more likely, a narrow majority thought that if these invasions hadn't happened, this would have either made no difference to or even increased the chances of an attack in Britain. Morever, more than twice as many agreed that although taking tough action against the terrorists might increase the chance of an attack in the short term, it made it less likely in the long term that terror would succeed.

The second point was that, despite this encouragingly sensible overall response, there was however a sharp political divide which some people - including the psephologist Profesor Anthony King, who wrote the commentary acompanying the poll -- find surprising. For the fainthearts are mainly conservatives. Fewer Labour voters than Tories thought failing to invade Afghanistan or Iraq would have reduced the likelihood of an attack in Britain; many more Labour voters thought Britain should retain its alliance with the US in the 'war on terror'; and many more Labour voters thought a tough line would reduce terror in the long term.

King puts the discrepancy down to 'purely partisan considerations'. I disagree. I think the conservative reaction has far deeper, cultural roots. These poll findings correspond with my own personal observations made over some time now, that the real flakiness and appeasement is coming from conservative middle Britain, while old Labour remains as sturdy and steadfast as befits the traditional British way.

That's not to say the weakness doesn't originate in the left: indeed, the left's virulent anti-Americanism and anti-Israelism has, through its dominance over our institutions, driven the debate. But it's the main consumers of those institutions, the educated middling classes, who have imbibed the lethal moral inversion and ignorant demonisation of the US and Israel characterising that side of the argument. It's these people who are principally the consumers of higher education, BBC Radio Four and BBC TV news and current affairs, and the high-minded commentaries of Church of England clerics and Christian NGOs -- all of which have been significantly corrupted by the venomous world-view of the left.

And it's these people who not only run the country, but have colonised public discussion. They drown out the voices of those sturdier citizens who have no such public muscle and who regard with unmitigated derision and disgust the contortions of the chattering classes -- whose amazement when opinion polls reveal such dissent from their own absurd and bankrupt thinking is itself a spectacle to behold.