Prime minister's reaction to emergency may test any consensus, writes Frank Millar, London Editor
Cometh the hour, cometh a new prime minister for Britain's renewed security crisis; and it is certainly a baptism of fire for Gordon Brown.
The United Kingdom is again under terrorist attack, the sense of it felt acutely across the whole of the country now after a weekend of relief marked by tremendous courage but tempered also by apprehension mingled with fear.
The vigilance of an ambulance crew had combined with the bravery of bomb disposal experts to avert slaughter in the heart of London's West End in the early hours of Friday morning.
Yet relief at the discovery of a second car and its deadly cargo quickly gave way to horror at the realisation of the cold deliberation and intent of those who presumably planned to kill still more as they fled the first scene of intended carnage. Late on Friday night the assumption had to be that more attacks would follow. The third came at Glasgow airport on Saturday, triggering scares, alerts and reviews of security procedures from Luton to Liverpool, Belfast to Birmingham. After its third meeting in 24 hours the cabinet's emergency Cabinet Office Briefing Room A (Cobra) committee upgraded the UK to its highest level of terror alert, critical, in anticipation of further possible "imminent" attacks.
Four days into his premiership and Gordon Brown was facing the most threatening moment for the United Kingdom since the 7/7 bombings in London two years ago. Then, prime minister Tony Blair - with chancellor Gordon Brown in Scotland for the G8 summit on Africa - was forced to fly back to London to take command of the crisis. Queuing for a flight back from Edinburgh that day, indeed, it did seem to be happening in another place. However, any sense of distance, and thus safety, was dispelled brutally with the Glasgow attack coinciding with Queen Elizabeth's presence in Edinburgh for the official opening of the new Scottish parliamentary season.
"We are all in this together," Mr Brown reminded the British people in his first major interview as prime minister on the BBC yesterday. And MPs on all sides will reflect that reality in the Commons this afternoon when new home secretary Jacqui Smith reports to the House on the attacks, the progress made by police, security and intelligence investigations, and the government's detailed response in terms of additional security measures affecting airports and other crowded places.
It will be an occasion characterised by calls for a "national consensus" in face of national emergency. What flows from today's exchanges will also provide an early test of Mr Brown's promised move from Blair's so-called "sofa" style back to genuine "cabinet government", increased accountability to parliament and a non-partisan approach to politics.
Tory shadow home secretary David Davis will want to give Ms Smith the opportunity to demonstrate she is not simply another populist home secretary cut from the same cloth as predecessors John Reid and David Blunkett.
Shadow foreign secretary William Hague and shadow chancellor George Osborne also signalled Conservative support should a review finally incline Brown and Smith to opt for the use of intercept evidence in courts, along with the right for police to resume questioning terror suspects after they have been arrested and charged. However, the bipartisan spirit may still be tested by Mr Brown's desire to move beyond the present 28 days and revive the government's earlier plan to allow suspects to be held for 90 days. The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, along with many Labour MPs, previously rejected this as detention by another name. Hague and Osborne did not rule out entirely a change of attitude yesterday, while stressing this could only be as a result of "compelling evidence" for such a change, which they said the government had previously failed to produce.
In his interview Mr Brown said this was not the immediate issue, and indicated he would seek consensus, while reiterating that the measure was necessary given the complexity of police investigations into the activities of people "with multiple identities, multiple addresses and multiple points of contact with a terrorist organisation".
The disposition of opposition parties and Labour doubters may also turn on how Mr Brown actually seeks to make good his promise to find the right "balance" between security measures and the protection and enhancement of civil liberties. Maybe it will be different this time.
However, we should not be surprised either if the "consensus" of the moment eventually breaks down, as it did spectacularly after 7/7 when security again became an issue for distinctly partisan politics, with Labour setting to cast the Conservatives as "soft" on terror.
Even in the midst of national emergencies, there is always politics geared to the next election. And if veteran left-winger Diane Abbott is right, Ms Smith will prove to be "no soggy libertarian".
On Iraq, meanwhile, the Conservatives continue to tack somewhere to the left of the government. Mr Brown was emphatic yesterday that there is no foreign policy cause to justify the renewed terrorist assault.
Terrorist actions are "unrelated in detail to the situation in any one country", he said, observing that al Qaeda is operating in some 60 countries worldwide and that the 9/11 attacks on the United States occurred before the Iraq war. Mr Hague was at one with Mr Brown in dismissing the idea that Iraq has made the UK less safe, while repeating the Conservative view that a review of what happened in respect of the war and its aftermath should be taking place in London as well as Washington.
The quiet dismay on Labour's otherwise rejuvenated benches will be that in this regard the new prime minister sounded distinctly Blairite, just as the former prime minister launched a fresh assault on Muslims who foster a "false sense of grievance" against Britain and America - while warning that international terrorism will remain a key preoccupation not only for Mr Brown but for the next prime minister and, possibly, the one after that.