A calm response to the third crisis, but Brown ain't seen nothing yet
Published 09 August 2007
It is already an orthodoxy, and one which future historians may have difficulty escaping, that the Gordon Brown era has begun in an atmosphere of crisis. We are told that in the space of just a few weeks the new Prime Minister has experienced not only a baptism by fire, with the attempted bombings in London and Glasgow, but a baptism by water, with flooding on an unprecedented scale, and lately baptism by pestilence (if such a rite exists), with the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Surrey.
To those directly involved in these events, and to the politicians and journalists who are receiving the late-night phone calls and attending the Cobra meetings or the emergency press conferences, the drama is probably self-evident, but can we really call it a baptism of fire? Is Brown's mettle as Prime Minister really being tested?
The trials of his first weeks look different when compared with those of John Major, another untheatrical chancellor who took over from a domineering ego-politician without recourse to the ballot box. If you look at what was on the agenda when that young cabinet met, you see that a chasm separates the political challenges of late 1990 from those of summer 2007.
Full-scale land war in the Gulf was weeks away - that "mother of all battles" promised by Saddam Hussein, which carried real risk that chemical and biological weapons might be used on British troops. The Soviet Union was melting down in a manner as swift as it was terrifying; no one could tell what would become of the world's second superpower, with its vast nuclear arsenal and its many restless dominions.
The British economy was hurtling towards recession, with unemployment rising, government revenues plummeting and the base rate at 14 per cent. We had also just joined the European Exchange Rate Mechanism and, to cap it all for Major, the Tories were ten points behind in the polls.
It is true that these were slow-burning crises of the kind that might keep a prime minister awake at night worrying, rather than getting him out of bed to take urgent action. But unless you live in Tewkesbury or farm cattle in Surrey you might think that they make Brown's recent problems look modest by comparison.
We live in excitable times and - as Tony Blair was kind enough to point out before leaving office - the feral beasts of our media bear much of the responsibility. We need the occasional reality check to remind us what makes a crisis. So it was striking to note how flooding in England faded from our papers and screens once hundreds had died and millions had been displaced by monsoon rains in India and Bangladesh.
Foot-and-mouth, for all the economic damage it can do and the distress it can cause (and we do not underestimate these), does not threaten life and limb, or stability, or the national well-being, in the way war or recession can. Terrorism is a graver threat but, even there, recent experience has taught us how resilient our way of life is, how hard it is for an extremist minority to damage our society in fundamental ways.
What Brown has been called upon to do so far, he has done well. He deserves credit for his general air of calm. He made the right decision to cut short his holiday in order to co-ordinate government actions. The response, unlike the first outbreak in 2001, was swift and smooth, even if one or two specific decisions may be found to be mistaken. Publication of an interim report so soon was helpful, and if research laboratory workers are to blame, new procedures must be put in place, urgently.
The really big challenges that will define Brown's government still lie ahead, however, and though crises are by nature unpredictable we can guess at the directions from which some of them will come. Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Palestine and Lebanon remain dangerous flashpoints; Zimbabwe festers alarmingly; global inequality and its consequences are threats; climate change is only beginning to exert its dire influence.
At home we have our own inequalities, as well as crowded prisons, racial tensions, health, transport and the integrity of politics. How Brown handles these will tell us what sort of prime minister we have.
Past glamour, present anger
No one, for more than a generation, has loved an airport. The thrill of a stamp in the passport, the exotic chatter of foreign voices, the glamour of cabin-staff uniforms - everything that once gave airports charm is now banal or passé. Instead, we have places which distil all that is enervating and infuriating in modern life, and which serve it up to us relentlessly, until we snap.
It should be no surprise, therefore, that BAA, which runs most of our big airports, is not a popular company. We also know that, given its devotion to the expansion of air travel, and given the certain damage that expansion will do to the environment - mainly, though not exclusively, through its contribution to global warming - BAA is on the path to becoming far more unpopular. Cheap weekends in Tallinn or Prague have their allure, but that allure will collapse in the coming world of heatwaves and floods, and the expansionists will be reviled.
So it was strange to see BAA courting unpopularity by trying its damnedest to obstruct the forthcoming protests at and around Heathrow. BAA's legal action, however you interpret its formal outcome, strengthened the hand of opponents of airport expansion. Not only did it give publicity to the demonstrations, it exposed the company's bunker mentality, its talk-to-the-hand attitude to political challenge. Protest in this cause is more than legitimate; it is necessary. If you can join in, in a legal and responsible way, we urge you to do so.
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