Heathrow fire is a wake-up call to the UK… it’s catastrophic to think what would happen if hostile force pulled the plug

WE now know that the fire that shut down Heathrow was NOT started by forces that wish us harm.

Counter-terrorism police have concluded there was no foul play.

But as the country reels from the chaos caused by the closure of the world’s ­second-busiest airport, one chilling fact is already certain.

How fragile we are.

How quickly our free, open society comes apart at the seams.

How fast everyday life is replaced by bedlam.

And how close we live to everything we take for granted falling to bits.

Just one blaze at a single electrical substation on the outskirts of West London has cancelled well over a thousand flights, left thousands of homes without power and disrupted countless lives.

The turmoil will last for days.

But whatever set that substation ablaze, let it serve as a wake-up call for our nation in these uncertain times.

Our critical national infrastructure is clearly a soft touch. Our airports. The ­National Grid.

The undersea fibre-optic cables that connect us to the world — and each other.

Those miles upon miles of telecommunication cables that power every corner of our lives now, and control everything from air-traffic control to the banking system.

Ninety-nine per cent of global internet traffic goes through undersea cables.

Seabed pipelines supply the oil and gas we need for our homes and economy. How catastrophic it would be if some hostile force pulled the plug.

It is not alarmist to say — we know they would love to.

The Red Army are never going to be marching down Whitehall.

Even after three years of carnage, Vladimir Putin’s Russia has only taken 20 per cent of Ukraine.

But Russia has other ways to hurt us. And they may have more success in this covert war than they ever had on the battlefield.

We have already witnessed this new kind of terrorism. Nato says Russia is “actively mapping”; critical infrastructure on the seabed of Europe.

In the UK, the Ministry of Defence has a surveillance ship to detect threats to crucial undersea cables.

This new threat is not the kind of ­terror that flies a plane into a building, drives a car into a crowd or runs amok with a knife.

Make our lives hell

But the new terror is designed to wreck lives, cause chaos, weaken resolve and stretch society to breaking point.

Russia does not have the power to ­conquer us. But Russia has the will to make our lives hell.

I’ll say it again — the fire at Heathrow could simply be what happens when 25,000 litres of cooling fuel catches alight.

But we know — don’t we? — that Russia loathes this country for its unstinting support for Ukraine.

And we know — don’t we? — that we have homegrown activists who delude themselves that disrupting our lives somehow furthers their cause.

We are far, far too vulnerable to the whole lousy lot of them.

Before we protect Ukraine, we need to start protecting our way of life.

We must protect our critical national infrastructure from exactly the kind of turmoil we have seen at Heathrow.

One fire — whether started by accident or design — should never bring this country to its knees.

Do you want to know what a hero looks like?

THE last surviving Battle of Britain pilot, John “Paddy”; Hemingway DFC, went to his rest in Dublin on St Patrick’s Day at the age of 105.

As a citizen of the neutral Republic of Ireland, Paddy could have sat out World War Two.

Instead, he fought with unimaginable bravery from the first day of the war to the last.

The ten months of combat experience Paddy already had by the start of the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940 almost certainly kept him alive.

He attributed his survival to the luck of the Irish.

It was also a miracle.

He was shot down four times, and on one memorable occasion was saved by a tree when his parachute failed to open.

His friends all died, and Paddy always said that they were the true heroes.

Well, Paddy, to many of us, you – the last of The Few – were the definition of a hero.

We thank you for your service, sir. And for our freedom.

LADY GAGA, 38, has furiously blasted wrinkly-hating ageists who call her too old to be a pop star.

Collecting an innovator gong, the singer seethed: “Even though the world might consider a woman in her late thirties old for a pop star, which is insane, I promise that I am just getting warmed up”;.

Old at 38?

That is not much older than the biggest pop star in the world – Taylor Swift, who turns 36 in December.

And it is half a lifetime younger than all the rock royalty – Mick Jagger, 81, Keith Richards, 81, Paul McCartney, 82, Bob Dylan, 83, and that fresh-faced youngster Eric Clapton, 79 – every one of them still playing live.

Too old at 38?

That really is gaga.

TV YOU HAVE TO SEE

ADOLESCENCE has hit a nerve like no drama has for many years.

The four-part Netflix series recalls the very best of British TV.

Boys From The Blackstuff in the Eighties.

Johnny Go Home in the Seventies.

Cathy Come Home in the Sixties.

As good as that.

Adolescence is about a 13-year-old boy accused of murdering a female schoolmate.

It is about the pressures of being young today, and how living online can warp and shatter our children.

There are brilliant performances from the entire cast, especially Owen Cooper as the accused boy and Stephen Graham as his broken-hearted dad.

The country is talking about Adolescence in the same week that Nicholas Prosper was sent to jail for the murder of his mother, sister and brother.

Only a chance encounter with cops at the end of their night shift prevented Prosper from achieving his deranged dream of embarking on a massacre of innocent schoolchildren.

Prosper’s father said that over the last year his violence-obsessed son had “withdrawn into an online world”;.

Are there any more terrifying words in the English language?

Adolescence is about how so much poison – so much hate, so much bullying, so much twisting of minds, so much misogyny – begins online but has horrific consequences in the real world.

Adolescence is more than brilliant.

It is unmissable.

WHERE is the peace that Donald Trump promised the world?

Wasn’t Trump going to resolve the war in Ukraine on his first day back in the White House?

All Donald has done is encourage the man who started the worst war in Europe since 1945.

It is appropriate that Putin has offered Trump an ice-hockey match between Russia and America.

Because the monster in Moscow is currently skating rings around the windbag in Washington.

SING IT? LET’S WIN IT!

CAN you feel it yet?

Es kommt nach hause, Es kommt nach hause – Der Fussball kommt nach hause!

England are going to win the next World Cup.

I don’t give a damn if new England manager Thomas Tuchel does not sing the national anthem.

I can remember plenty of England internationals who stayed tight-lipped during the singing of God Save The Queen – Gary Neville is the most obvious example.

Tuchel – who loves this country more than many of the locals – is German and says he has to “earn”; the right to sing the national anthem.

Sounds like a good deal to me.

Thomas can warble God Save The King for the first time on July 19, 2026 at the Meadowlands Sports Complex in New Jersey – immediately before England play in the World Cup Final.

I have not felt so completely certain that England are going to win the next World Cup since, oh, the last World Cup.

NOT SO PUNK...

MUSIC fans of a certain vintage will have chuckled ruefully to hear Brit-hating punk duo Lambrini Girls branding the UK an “extremely racist s**thole”;.

“I think it is embarrassing to be from England,”; snarls singer-guitarist Phoebe Lunny.

“We’re extremely racist.

“We’re extremely xenophobic.

“Our Government are fascists.”;

This hysterical rhetoric is standard teenage rock ’n’ roll rebellion.

But what’s interesting about the Lambrini Girls is our so-called goose-stepping fascist Government is funding them.

The Brighton band will receive a share of a £1.6million grant from the Music Export Growth Scheme.

“This Government believes in backing our incredible British artists and supports their right to free expression,”; simpers a Government spokesperson.

Rebels with a grant!

Sid Vicious is laughing in his grave.