Gordon Brown has a new plan to beat terror. This is what he should do

Do you feel safe? Every time you go to the airport do you worry that you might be blown up by Islamist militants? Do you avoid using public transport, or frequenting louche nightclubs, for fear of being targeted by fanatical suicide bombers?

While the 7 July bomb attacks against London’s transportation system in 2005 have rightly dominated the public’s consciousness in terms of the tangible threat posed by Muslim terror groups, there have been many more foiled attacks that would have created far more carnage had they succeeded with their deadly designs.

Just imagine the appalling loss of life that would have occurred if the plot to blow up a number of transatlantic flights departing from Heathrow in the summer of 2006 had not been foiled. The destruction of Pan Am flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in December 1988 killed a total of 270 people in the air and on the ground; the planned terrorist attack on Heathrow would have killed many more people. As recently as last summer hundreds of London partygoers had a lucky escape when a series of car bombs that were set to explode outside some of the capital’s more high-profile nightclubs failed to detonate.

This last attack, of course, occurred shortly after Gordon Brown had taken up residence in 10 Downing Street, and the calm and professional manner with which he and Jacqui Smith, his newly appointed Home Secretary, handled the aftermath contributed to the development of the initial feelgood factor (remember that?) which attended the Brown government’s first months in office.

After ten years of the opportunistic photo ops and glib soundbites that so often characterised Tony Blair’s contribution to the war on terror, the public appeared to welcome Mr Brown’s more measured, and far less hysterical, approach to these challenges to national security, a fact that Mr Brown himself appeared to grasp when he committed himself to setting up a review of Britain’s national security strategy, which is shortly to publish its recommendations.