Fiasco Royale: Labour’s ineptitude

18 November 2006

Fraser Nelson reveals the mounting fury within the intelligence community at ministers’ failure to set in place a serious framework for smashing Islamic terrorism. Too little too late is the angry verdict of the spooks

In the document, Islamic terrorism is explained in terms of social exclusion. ‘Most Muslims suffer high levels of disadvantage,’ it says — as if this were somehow a reason to blow yourself up on the London Underground. Amazingly, the Sure Start nursery scheme, Mr Brown’s pet project, is billed as a means of helping to defeat terrorism by promoting ‘cohesion in communities’. Of course, the biographies of the London bombers disproved the deprivation theory: they included university graduates, keen cricketers and teachers. One had been received in the House of Commons by an MP. Like the 9/11 bombers, they were not drawn from the underclass.

For more than a year, Mr Blair has known that his terrorism strategy is useless. Last autumn the No. 10 Delivery Unit handed him a confidential report based on an investigation into the way in which Project Contest was seen within Whitehall. Its findings were devastating. ‘The strategy is immature,’ the document said. ‘Forward planning is disjointed or has yet to occur. Accountability for delivery is weak. Real world impact is seldom measured.’ This is what intelligence officials — from Special Branch to the Ms and Qs of Whitehall — thought of their marching orders. Yet, staggeringly, Project Contest has survived for want of a better idea.

So when John Reid became Home Secretary, he inherited a terrorism strategy that was no more fit for purpose than the rest of his dysfunctional department. He has set about rectifying this in a series of confidential Thursday afternoon meetings where MI5 and MI6 meet with various Whitehall officials to try to piece together some kind of plan. One who has been present at these gatherings assures me that Project Contest is ‘not completely rubbish’ and its ideas about preventing terrorism are basically sound. The problem is that no one has implemented the agenda, or any other agenda. In effect, there is no co-ordinated approach to counter-terrorism.