Criticise Us? It’s They Who Are Wrong
Posted by Simon Emmett on February 2, 2010, 09:58
If there is one thing that you will immediately notice from a press conference given by a Labour party Minister or Secretary of State, is that they believe that they cannot do any wrong, or improve themselves. That is the response we are seeing from the Home Office after the very influential Home Affairs Select Committee accused the government of “Institutional Inertia” when dealing with the terrorist threat.
The Committee, chaired by leading Labour back bencher Keith Vaz, has labelled the accusation as during the inquiry the committee found that suggestions for reforms to the counter-terrorism structure where constantly ignored.
This has been the trend of this Labour government over the last twelve and a half years. They truly believe that they do not need to improve anything that they do, as they are the best and know everything. Well, that quite frankly is rubbish. It is the way of life that improvements can always be made, and that is all the important when dealing with the threat of modern terrorism.
However, instead of looking at the report in a sensible and adult way, and thinking “maybe they have a point, and we could make things even better”, the Home Secretary Alan Johnson has criticised the report, and simply said that the Home Affairs committee is the one in the wrong. A very mature argument, I think not.
The fact is that modern terrorism is constantly changing, what structures worked a few years ago, are out of date now. Thats is because the terrorist organisations are smart enough to change their methods to avoid detection. That is why the label in “institutional inertia” is so pertinent. The Home Office think that as they have been successful with one type of threat they will be successful with every terrorist threat. If they truly that then there is a risk to our national security.
The Labour government live in denial when in comes to terrorism, as they are institutional scare of even the slightest criticism. This was evident in the length of time we had to wait for an inquiry into Iraq, and why we have NEVER had a public inquiry into the intelligence failing of the 7/7 (and failed 21/7) bombings in London.
The Home Office need to listen to the Home affairs Select Committee, and have a hard look at whether what is in place meets the current, and future, terrorist threat and not just the previous one.
