The Sketch: Simon Carr

As the great bell echoed the MPs stood as one

It was no time for cynicism, or even scepticism. Parliament expressed its grief and was at one with the nation – together in spirit with the millions all over the country in sitting rooms, classrooms and workplaces, on the Tube and in the street – all joined in communion under the high windows of the House of Commons.

It lasted for just three minutes, and then they started talking again. But while it lasted, 400-odd parliamentarians showed they had the power to move us.

The great bell had echoed through the Palace of Westminster, the MPs rose, to stand in rows, perfectly, gravely, transcendentally still. The silence gathered around them.

It's a great mistake when they speak.

The Prime Minister did the best, bless him. He had taken the initiative, summoned Parliament when the smoke was still clearing from the disaster. In his statement he occupied every reasonable position, and was rewarded with greetings of "Here, here!" as sincere as a traditional Amen.

In all he said, he sounded like a decent, Christian, public school boy determined to do the right thing. It's why he is in an impossible position. As they all are, the decent Members of Parliament.

"Terrorism must never be appeased," Tony Blair said. Surprising, some may think, in view of the number of IRA prisoners released in return for guns that were never surrendered. "Terrorism will never succeed," Iain Duncan Smith told us. That couldn't be right – half the world's modern states (including the US) were founded by sometime terrorists-turned-presidents.

"The loss of one innocent life is equivalent to the loss of all humanity," Mr Duncan Smith quoted. This remote and mystical idea is belied, is it not, by the last 5,000 years of slaughter, torture, slavery and genocide.

And then: "Cowardly acts of evil will never succeed," the new Tory leader averred. Maybe not. But what about flying fully laden planes into great symbols of Western power and reducing them to rubble?

Mr Duncan Smith urged the Government "to do whatever is necessary to prevent such a thing ever happening again". This is a tall order, but luckily, his new foreign affairs spokesman, Michael Ancram, has a solution. He quoted Chairman Mao, who described the terrorist as swimming in a sea of people. "The challenge facing us today," Mr Ancram said, "is to dry up the sea."

A little drastic? The Tories have a lot of ground to make up; drying up the sea would be a remarkable managerial display.

Jack Straw told us that terrorism was "self-defeating". Really? Why can't we just sit down and watch that pan out?

Mr Straw was passionate and grammatical. Then he said something chilling. He repeated something the Prime Minister had said, but with added emphasis. He warned us how these people were perfectly prepared to attack the West with chemical, biological or nuclear weapons – if they could get their hands on them.

There was something in Mr Straw's manner which made me say: "God, they're going to invade Iraq." You know: Saddam Hussein's biological warfare plants. His nuclear ambitions. Are they going to invade Iraq? Or Afghanistan?

And how many minutes' silence will that call for, this time next year, under the high windows of the House of Commons?