UK Politics
Fingers crossed, we'll get past this
Published 05 July 2007
The terrorists actions were directed at the new administration in a blatant attempt to derail the promise of change in policy
Harold Macmillan had a theory about political life: "Events, dear boy, events." We have had plenty of political life in recent days. Indeed, the first days of Gordon Brown's government have been such a long time in politics, it feels like all the years since 9/11 just rolling on. If the hints of new ideas hovering around the new administration are to survive the acrid fumes of fresh terror attacks, they will have to hold fast to the distinction between politics driven by events and sensible policy.
The car bombs in London and Glasgow were not designed to coincide with the departure of Tony Blair. Terrorists know that he is history and best forgotten. I believe their actions were directed at the new administration in a blatant attempt to derail the promise of change in policy. Events clamour for reaction and rapid response; and terrorism above all demands instant gratification. We want to know and see that something is being done, right now, at this very moment, about these dastardly bombers. But the focus on the imminent and immediate comes at a price. Before anyone is aware of how it happened, and the work of change can actually begin, politics as usual is all there is.
This is what the terrorists really want. They want the old politics of the Blair years to continue. Their rotten theology needs someone to hate. They can see that if Brown succeeds in shifting the emphasis of the "war on terror" to winning hearts and minds, he will deprive them of something to loath. Nothing distracts hearts and minds more than events. Nothing hardens hearts and implants fixed ideas in minds like such events as the terrorist actions of the past week. And that is precisely why we need a new policy, the shift in emphasis, in the first place.
Policy is not just thinking about the future, it is about holding steady to choices designed to make a different future possible and bring a different future into being. And that is why policy is always at the mercy of events.
Ever since the 11 September 2001 attacks, responding to the enormity of terrorism has sent Britain down the security and armed-response channel. Implacable opposition, draconian measures and fighting fire with fire have produced more, not less terrorism at home and abroad. This has divided people and undermined mutual trust. And it has made us not safer from the callous terrorists but ever more hostage to their perverse agenda of mutually reinforcing brutality.
Gordon Brown's shift of emphasis is the first hint that this redundant shadow-boxing might be dispensed with. It is this flicker of hope that the terrorists want to extinguish. But if ever there were a time for a policy rethink on where events have brought us, now is that time.
Undoubtedly, the coming weeks will see the drip-feed of news of home-grown maniacs plotting and planning for haphazard destruction of their fellow citizens. Yet this lunatic fringe cannot be allowed to maintain its veto over the majority of British Muslims who despise their motives and means. The hearts and minds of the majority have always been implacably opposed to the madmen, because they misappropriate that which is closest to our hearts and turn it into a perversion our minds can't comprehend.
The battle for hearts and minds is not about convincing the overwhelming majority of Brit ish Muslims to disown, hunt down and root out the lunatic fringe. It is about convincing the rest of the British public that we never owned them or wanted them in the first place. No one knows better than British Muslims how destructive the creeping fear caused by terrorism is: we experience it in the flicker of doubt and mistrust whenever we own up and speak out as Muslims. It complicates all our dealings with required caveats and proofs of moderation and allegiance that should never be in question.
There were subtle nuances running through the inordinately long transfer from Blair to Brown. A subtlety carried through into Brown's cabinet selections. There was the hint that quiet doubts about the option for disastrous military engagement might be rethought. David Mili band as Foreign Secretary, with his expressed opposition to our unconscionable inaction over Lebanon, for example, suggested this would not be a government hidebound by the need to argue all was for the best in the best of Blair's world.
Now the terrorists have issued a challenge to Brown. Can he, and his new ministers, hold to the shift of emphasis and policy change we urgently need in the face of events?
I am keeping my fingers crossed. I hope the harbingers of promise did not go up in flames at Glasgow Airport.
Andrew Stephen, page 30
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