Last weekend I was sternly assured by a shadow Cabinet member that the Conservatives would resist the temptation to attack the government over the terrorism arrests. ‘The only people who benefit when an opposition starts playing politics with the issue are the terrorists,’ he declared. Things must have seemed rather different in David Cameron’s holiday villa in Corfu. A few hours after he arrived at Gatwick airport, partisan hostilities were resumed.
Labour’s complaint — that the Tory leader was ‘playing politics’ with terrorism — was as predictable as it was sanctimonious. Since the alleged terrorist plot came to light at 6 a.m. on 10 August everyone has been playing at politics, with varying degrees of success. Labour’s real worry is not that Mr Cameron plays politics, but that he does so effectively.
The government has good reason to be furious about the Tory offensive. First, Mr Cameron has struck while the shop is being minded by the preposterous John Prescott. Labour dare not allow the public to witness a Cameron v. Prescott battle. So it resorts to crying foul, hoping to drown out the indecipherable jabbering of the Deputy Prime Minister. We can expect much of this for the next week.
Moreover, the government has much to be defensive about. The chaos witnessed at British airports has been only the most vis-ible sign of a general lack of preparedness — and it is not at all disloyal for an opposition party to say so. One example lies in counter-terrorism. Intelligence sources have told The Spectator that the battle against home-grown extremists has been handicapped by a two-year delay in giving MI5 the budget needed to respond to the new threat. It takes three years to train agent runners and surveillance teams.
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