As the prime minister sunned himself in the Caribbean and the deputy prime minister, John Prescott, technically remained in charge of government, it was John Reid, the home secretary, who was out in public making almost statesman-like broadcasts to the nation in the immediate aftermath of the alleged terror plot revelations.
Given Reid’s widely acknowledged fierce ambition, it is likely that having grasped the putative leadership mantle, he will be unwilling to let it go any time soon. But with this promotion, if that is what it can be called, he faces the onerous task of persuading the public that the government has done everything possible to manage and control the events of the past week.
He began with an early-morning television appearance on August 13, where every answer to questions about the alleged plot to blow up transatlantic planes was peppered with one word: balance. And we will be hearing more of that word over the coming weeks as he seeks to counter doubts in some quarters that there really was an imminent threat, and, secondly, the view that the disaffection of Muslim youth is a result of the government’s foreign policy.
The briefings from Reid’s camp are that the government recognises the calls for openness and transparency and this is reflected in the decision to make the security threat levels public. This came into effect only on August 1.
The level of alert is determined by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, operating from the MI5 headquarters. This is important, the government says, because it is out of the hands of ministers.
But the balance, according to Reid, comes in the need to explain that if the level is reduced — as it finally was this Monday — it is because there is no specific intelligence of an imminent threat, not because there is less risk of an attack. What ministers dread most, understandably, is that if the level is reduced and there is an attack that people will turn around and ask: ‘Why did you do that?’
On the other hand, there is a certain political expediency in the terror alert having been raised to the highest level in our history, not least because Reid can say: ‘I told you so’. Some have suggested that it will not be too long before he starts trying to reintroduce 90-day detentions, which ministers failed to get through Parliament earlier this year.
What the government has not adequately addressed is why the JTAC security alert was raised to critical only at 2am last Thursday, either at the same time as the raids were taking place or shortly after they were over. The suggestion would be that this security alert, therefore, was for public consumption only and was in security terms fairly meaningless.
In the spirit of openness that is increasingly demanded after the Forest Gate raid and the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, Reid’s argument will also be: ‘Here is some information but you have to accept that intelligence is not 100% science, it is an assessment of risk.’
Secondly, he is at pains to say that the public can have openness but not at the expense of jeopardising operations or the subsequent need to bring any wrongdoers to trial.
The result of this is carefully drip-fed information, for instance, about telephone intercepts between Pakistan and the UK, and the supposed revelation that evidence was found in bottle banks in High Wycombe. All this insinuates that the intelligence might have been flawed last time but it is robust this time.
The second prong of the government’s offensive, which also began last weekend, and is likely to continue for some weeks, is to counter the claims that the radicalisation of young Muslims is because of foreign policy. Reid began by highlighting a little-known case of what is believed to be the first Al-Qa’eda plot in the UK. This was in 2000 in Birmingham, before the war in Iraq and, of course, the conflict in Lebanon.
Communities and Local Government Secretary Ruth Kelly also finally appeared on Monday, meeting community leaders to tell them they must do more to tackle extremism. It is hard not to think that that will be as effective as asking teenagers not to smoke behind the bike shed.
On the ground in Walthamstow and High Wycombe, the message is quite simply that disaffected youth do not go to the mosques and listen to the imams, they go to Internet chat rooms and hang around local gyms. And, while Reid might be right to say that foreign policy must not be dictated by extremism, there are young Muslims who are vulnerable to the effects of the images from Bosnia, Iraq and Lebanon.
If that is what they think — rightly or wrongly — the government has to listen if they are to engage at all.
