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In the new James Bond film, there’s a scene where ‘M’, Bond’s boss, goes on national television and declares that she knows who the villain is, where he is, what he’s up to and, furthermore, that her agents are following his every move.

Now, you’re probably thinking ‘what a preposterous load of old bollocks, that’s far-fetched even by the standards of Bond movies’. Ordinarily, we’d agree (we did make it up after all) but that was before we read the speech given last week by head of MI5, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller.

In the widely-reported speech, Dame Eliza declared to an invited audience, some of whom were journalists who came out and told the world, that her spooks are currently tracking 30 terror plots and have 1,600 individuals ‘who are actively engaged in plotting, or facilitating, terrorist acts here and overseas’ under surveillance. Now, clearly, we’re not espionage material. We weren’t buggered at Oxford or whatever the entry requirement is. But is this really the right way to go about catching dangerous terrorists?

Similarly, we’re not al Qaeda terrorists planning an attack. This isn’t an invitation for MI5 to come round and pretend to drown us to see what we know, but if we were such creatures, our first reaction on hearing Manningham-Buller’s speech would be to shout, ‘Bloody hell, we’ve been rumbled!’, shave off the beard and get the fuck out of town. Only to return to die another day. Hasn’t our top spook, you know, kind of let the cat out of the bag? Aren’t MI5 supposed to be good with secrets? We wouldn’t be surprised to hear that Dame Eliza blurted out what she’s got her kids for Christmas at the dinner table this week. Or maybe we’re wrong and her spies told her that the 1,600 suspects don’t have televisions or read newspapers or are on holiday.

Still, if you’ve got this far it means you’re still alive. In the last few days, there’s been so many terrifying pronouncements of impending doom made by the great and the good, predicting unprecedented murder and mayhem, that we wondered if there was any point in turning up this week. That’s if we weren’t dead ourselves.

No sooner had Dame Eliza finished telling us that terrorists are among us and might use ‘chemicals, bacteriological agents, radioactive materials and even nuclear technology’ than up jumped Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair with his speech to the ‘Urban Age’ conference in Berlin. He painted no less bleak a picture. ‘The sky is dark,’ he said repeating the sixth-form poetic imagery he’s used twice before in order to illustrate how much shit he thinks we’re in.

And on it went all week, this blizzard of fear. The Foreign Office declared chillingly that al Qaeda are trying to obtain material for a nuclear or biological attack. An ‘anonymous official’ coolly briefed the Daily Mail that terrorists are even closer to mounting a chemical attack. Home Secretary John Reid icily told Radio 4 that a ‘wave’ of attacks was being planned. Another terrorist attack in the UK is ‘highly likely’ he said frostily, not wishing to scare anybody.

Sir Ian recalled the ricin poison plot that was broken up last year. What he failed to mention is that no ricin was ever found and the defendants at the subsequent trial were all acquitted. He also invoked Dhiren Barot, the al Qaeda terrorist and his plot to explode a dirty bomb among other things, who got 40 years the other week. Again, what Blair failed to mention was that experts say Barot would have needed to collect the radioactive isotopes from 10,000 smoke alarms in order to build it. We know al Qaeda are supposed to be well-funded and organised but 10,000 smoke alarms? Surely at the very least, somebody would have noticed the Asian man down the road having the seemingly pathological fear of his house burning down?

(Blair also said that ‘very considerable numbers of Muslims believe life in Britain has got worse for them since 2001 and they attribute that worsening to the war on terror and perceived Islamophobia’ despite ‘no evidence of a significant rise in Islamophobic attacks in Britain’. It’s all perception you see, not reality. Typical isn’t it? Politicians and the right-wing press stir up ‘enemy within’ scares and look where it gets you. Poor Sir Ian. His men shoot an innocent Brazilian who is then smeared as a rapist and a coke fiend by ‘police sources’. Then Blair sends 250 men round to a house to shoot the wrong bloke and beat up the neighbours. The shot man is then falsely accused of being a nonce. And suddenly everybody’s paranoid! What’s a police commissioner to do?)

So far, so cynical, you might say. Of course there’s a real danger and as we saw in London last year there are people who will kill us if given the chance. Talk and predictions of terrorist plots are coming thicker and faster than Wayne Rooney. But how many of us run around screaming at the announcement of another? Nobody? OK, how many of us are a slightly edgy? Not many. John Reid said a few months back that terrorism and security were now ‘the highest concerns for daily living’. Really? You can tell he doesn’t have to worry about paying his rent or sending kids going to a shitty school, can’t you?

These speeches are like the Home Office’s ‘Current Threat Level’ system (currently standing at ‘Severe’, Armageddon fans). Sure, knowing terrorists want nuclear weapons in order to kill more of us is informative but if we’re supposed to go about our normal daily lives, why bother telling us any more than that there are bad people who want to kill us and that the police and MI5 are doing all they can to stop them? What do you do with the information that, right now, terrorists may be attempting to corner the UK market in smoke alarms? It’s like expecting the ordinary man and woman in the street to give a shit about the plotlines of EastEnders other than to keep a watchful eye in case, on the very rare occasions, something significant might occur.

Despite the likes of Blair and Manningham-Buller being supposedly non-political figures, they have agendas like everybody else. ‘I believe that an extension to the 28 days time for detention will have to be examined again in the near future,’ said Blair, setting out his stall. Like everyone else, he just wants an easy life and being able lock people up without charge for 90 days will take him a little closer to it.

Like the bloke in charge of the stationery cupboard in your office, Dame Eliza no doubt frets about her budget (and she needs a lot more paperclips than he does, and ones that can turn into flamethrowers as well, probably). Politicians like the scary talk coming from others because it means it isn’t automatically dismissed out of hand like it would be if they said it. ‘When the Director-General of our chief security service says it, it carries a great deal of weight,’ as John Reid put it to Radio 4.

Dr Reid can then crack on with ID cards, 90 days detention, deporting terrorist suspects to countries where they might be tortured (‘thanks to its constant use, the word “suspect” is now charged with the presumption of guilt,’ said the Joseph Rowntree report into the Government’s conduct of The War Against Terror) and all the rest of it. (All we can say is, no, Dr. No.)

Couple that with the fact that most (white) people don’t really mind such measures because they can’t imagine themselves ever being victims of them and you have a recipe for royally pissing off a section of the population who are actually on the side of the angels. Reid can deny being a human rights-abusing fascist by reminding us it’s what MI5 and the Met wanted. And by the way, that David Cameron and Ming Campbell are a pair of liberal terrorist-loving pansies. They were against these measures – don’t vote for them.

In fact, it does sound like a James Bond plot after all. There’s an implacable enemy with plenty of foot soldiers and crazy schemes. We have our rule-breaking maverick heroes improvising as they go along, shooting first and asking questions later and always having a hackneyed one-liner ready. Spineless and effete colleagues doubt their motives. Their bosses look on, disapproving of their employees’ methods but then again John and Eliza and Ian do seem to get results, of a sort, despite the body count and the mayhem.

And the whole situation, like a Bond girl, is thoroughly fucked.

(First published in this week’s The Friday Thing.)