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Saturday 22 November 2008

Politics

What’s so special about 2020? Brownism is all about postponement

Gordon Brown lacks urgency and only picks fights that he knows he can win.

Take, for example, the numbers of Bills laid before parliament which involve the year 2020. This, we learn, is when 500,000 new apprenticeships will be set up, and when Britain’s carbon dioxide emissions will be down by a quarter, and when the promised three million new homes will have been constructed. With stunning arrogance, this assumes a seventh-term Labour government, still running along the direction which the Prime Minister laid out on Tuesday. The idea, presumably, is that Britain would by then be celebrating a near quarter-century of Brownite policies.

Meanwhile, back in 2007, a more immediate challenge beckons. It was widely expected that the Queen’s Speech would set the parameters for a straightforward confrontation between ministers seeking to increase the number of days a terrorist suspect can be detained without charge, and those who think 28 is plenty (or too much). The government had nurtured the expectation that Mr Brown wanted the threshold doubled to 56 days. It would be a Blair-style trial of strength: the former prime minister was defeated two years ago over plans to extend this to 90 days. That defeat makes the task all the more symbolic for Mr Brown: a chance to show he can boldly go where Mr Blair could not.

The other attraction for the PM, of course, is that calling for an extension allows Labour to portray the Conservatives as being soft on terrorism, as the Opposition remains implacably opposed to any extension beyond 28 days. So here is an area where the Tories are intransigent, yet public opinion is against them and in favour of longer detentions. It should be the perfect battle.

The terrorism threat has hardly subsided. The extent of it was laid out in stark terms on Monday in the first public speech by Jonathan Evans, the new director-general of MI5. He said his agency is tracking 2,000 terror suspects — a 25 per cent jump in the last year. Yet — in the event — Mr Brown’s entry to battle was half-hearted and hesitant, much less specific than the pre-spin had suggested.

It is largely due to MI5’s success, much of it secret, that Britain does not feel like a country under daily attack. As Mr Evans was politely trying to say, this is not from want of trying on behalf of al-Qa’eda.

The number of plots is growing partly because MI5’s anti-terrorist radar is so much improved. Its profile of the enemy has never been clearer. The agency has steadily worked its way down the age groups, starting with 25-year-olds, then going down to 20-year-olds, and now finding teenagers being groomed for suicide missions. There is a stronger link to university education than to poverty. Al-Qa’eda and its affiliates are emphatically not tapping into feelings of social injustice. The highest risk group is low achievers, who may see suicide bombing as a means of leaving a mark on the world.

More articles from: Fraser Nelson | this section

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