Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Brown’s masterful interview with Andrew Marr this morning made three good points. First, that in our reaction to terrorism, we are in it together and we won’t be intimidated and or allow it to undermine our way of life. And he defined this as including a traditional respect for civil liberties that avoids arbitrariness and ensures judicial oversight and accountability to parliament. It is still difficult not to believe that his predecessor won’t pop up and try and steal the limelight. But his words were a fine contrast with Blair’s notorious, and indeed arbitrary, announcement on 5 August 2005, a month after the 7/7 atrocities, that “the rules of the game have changed” and his later dismissal of concern for civil liberties as old fashioned.
Second, Brown emphasised the need to win hearts and minds and separate “decent people from all religions” from extremists and their “perversion of religion” and he accepted that peace in Iraq and Afghanistan and "making progress in the Middle East with Palestine and Israel will make a difference" Here I have disagree with my friend Matt d’Ancona who wonders whether Brown “has made the great error of believing that there is a causal link between the growth of Islamism and the Middle East conflict” Of course there is a causal link between the growth of Islamism and the Middle East conflict. Even if Israeli policy had nothing to do with the origins of bin Ladinism, the latter’s appeal feeds off the continued violence and injustice of the Middle East. It was a great relief that Brown did not refer to a “war on terror”, or go on, like Matt, about “a fundamentalist battle over our very mode of existence”.
Third, instead of inflated language he talked about expenditure on security doubling to 2 billion pounds a year, a unified security budget, a long-term commitment. This is much more believable that Blair’s puffing away about how he would “send out a clear signal”.
The attacks cast their grim light on the relentlessly reactionary nature of al Qaida terrorism, which will now reinforce a militaristic definition of Britishness. They do so even though, thankfully, they failed to bring in their harvest of intended victims. It’s a point worth repeating. Brown’s constitutional announcement planned for Monday will probably be delayed and our own process of democratic debate is displaced and even overshadowed by the priority for statements on security. I say repeating because Isabel Hilton and I made the point in an article about Democracy and openDemocracy where we pointed out how the 7/7 attacks not only disrupted the Gleneagles summit they also drove 'Make Poverty History’ and the peaceful protests against the G8 from the headlines, silencing public democratic engagement.
