POLITICIANS don’t cease to be politicians at times of national crisis, and of course they look for electoral advantage wherever the opportunity arises. But cynicism aside, I don’t subscribe to the theory that Theresa May sought to put the election campaign into deep freeze in order to take the heat off her manifesto U-turn. She genuinely believed that it would be insensitive and irresponsible to conduct normal electioneering while dead teenage girls were still being identified, and the security threat had been raised to “critical”, meaning there’s an imminent threat of multiple terror attacks.

But that doesn’t mean she was right. The only people who cheered when they heard that the General Election was being halted “until further notice” were the perverted murderers of Islamic State. We cannot afford to reward terrorists by allowing them to obstruct the democratic process even for a few days. Yes, when Diana Princess of Wales died in a car crash in 1997, the Scottish devolution referendum was halted for a week while the nation went into an emotional spasm. But that was different: she wasn’t the victim of an attack by a group that regards democracy itself as an enemy.

The election campaign will now resume tomorrow, though Ukip is aiming to break the moratorium to exploit anti-immigrant sentiment. Politics doesn’t stop when campaigning does. All the parties have been wondering how to exploit events to their best advantage. Tory strategists will be excited by the opportunity for Mrs May to demonstrate strong and stable leadership in time of crisis. Would you seriously want Jeremy Corbyn to be handling the aftermath of the Manchester bombing? He who is the terrorist friend? Who defended the IRA? Of course, Tory MPs would never say this out loud – but when tabloid newspapers are printing cartoons depicting balaclava-wearing IRA terrorists acting as Labour election canvassers, they don’t have to.

For its part, Labour will be thinking about how it should counter this implicit allegation that Mr Corbyn is soft on terror and the causes of terror. Everyone knows, or should do, that he did not endorse the Irish Republican bombers, who detonated their largest-ever IED in Manchester’s Corporation Street in 1996. Nor has the Labour leader condoned any terrorist activities by Palestinian groups. But it can be counter-productive to go on and on about this: it just reminds people of Mr Corbyn’s positive remarks about the Irish nationalist cause.

There is intense frustration in the Labour camp that they’ve been denied the opportunity to press home their advantage over the “dementia tax” debacle. Labour believes the PM was caught bang to rights conducting a U-turn on the key plank of her manifesto during an election campaign. This is not the first time the lady was for u-turning. Her first budget as Prime Minister (and First Lord of the Treasury) descended into shambles over the proposal to raise National Insurance contributions on White Van Man in breach of a previous Tory pledge not to do so. Strong and stable is beginning to looking pretty weak and wobbly.

There was actually little clear evidence that Labour was making significant advances in the opinion polls before the Manchester bombing, but Labour supporters believe that Mr Corbyn was closing the gap. How infuriating therefore that they have to sit on their hands while Mrs May continues to dominate the airwaves.Of course, the PM has to be seen to be out and about in the aftermath of the bombing. Making announcements about threat levels, holding meetings in the Cobra cabinet crisis room, being seen with senior police out on the streets. It’s only human nature for Labour to think that the PM has continued her election campaign by other means. The opposition parties were already incensed at the way the media had allowed her to get away with avoiding spontaneous encounters with voters and holding meetings with pre-selected audiences in controlled environments.

But no one says elections have to be fair. In the vacuum left by the campaign freeze, the post-Manchester debate continued to move in a generally Tory-positive direction. The Daily Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson caused a minor eruption on social media by suggesting that it is time for terrorist suspects to be interned. “How long are we going to let them kill our children?” she wrote, condemning those liberal voices calling for community cohesion. The former Smiths front man, Morrissey, then attacked Labour politicians for being reluctant to identify the bombers as Islamists.

The Conservatives haven’t endorsed the idea of locking people up without trial. After the disaster of internment in Northern Ireland in the early 1970s I don’t believe any UK government would seriously consider such a policy again, even a right-wing one. But equally, many ordinary voters are looking for retribution, and some are thinking what Morrissey is thinking: that multiculturalism, political correctness and a reluctance to antagonise Muslim groups is hampering the fight against terrorism. That does damage to Labour if only because people identify Mr Corbyn with political correctness, and Labour in general with ethnic minorities.

The suicide bomber, Salman Abedi, was the son of Muslim refugees from Libya. That is enough to convince many voters that immigration in general is unwise, and giving asylum to refugees endangers the safety of their children. The Labour mayor, Andy Burnham, was quite right to insist that Abedi no more represented Muslims than the killer of Jo Cox represented white people. But a lot of people don’t accept that moral equivalence.

Again, the Tories don’t have to say anything here – they know they’re regarded as tougher on crime in general than Labour, and tougher on terrorism in particular. There’s not a lot of concrete evidence for this. Indeed, Tony Blair’s response to the 7/7 bombings in London in 2005 was to propose a draconian terrorism act that appalled many of Labour’s liberal supporters. Nevertheless, we’re living in the toxic backwash of Brexit when it has become acceptable to demonise migrants, and only the Tories are promising to cut migration to under 100,000.

When the election campaign does resume, Labour and the SNP will have to clear away the moral debris left by the outrage and try to restore some kind of normal political discourse. It won’t be easy. There were signs that the campaign was shifting against Mrs May, but Manchester has rebooted it. The Tory landslide is back on track.