Crisis? What crisis?

The front page of today’s Daily Mirror is simply absurd. Above the headline (“IS IT REALLY TIME TO CHILLAX?”) is a strapline across the top of the page:

Our country is in the middle of a terrorism crisis, Prime Minister. And you’ve decided to go on holiday to Ibiza.

The Mirror is not alone. All of this morning’s tabloids have had a go at David Cameron for taking a week’s holiday. So let’s get things in proportion.

Our country is not “in the middle of a terrorism crisis”. There has been one murder committed by freelance Islamist nutters. It was a shocking attack, yes, but a single murder – however appalling – does not constitute a ‘crisis’. To indulge in this sort of hyperbole is to do precisely what the killers wanted. This applies especially in the case of the Daily Mirror, which accompanies its self-righteous reporting with a lurid invitation to “watch shocking footage of terrorists”.

Suppose Cameron had bowed to the demands of the tabloids and stayed in his office. What could he have achieved that has not already been done? Resurrect the Communications Data Bill, perhaps? Better he takes a break.

At the Huffington Post, Mehdi Hasan is spot on:

To be fair to the PM, he’s the one who said we should all carry on with business as usual, with normal everyday life, despite last Wednesday’s horrific crime, and we all praised him for saying so. Now, it seems, some of us cynically want to have a go at him for practising what he preaches. I’m with Dave - the only way to defeat terrorism is to refuse to be terrorised. Oh, and the only way to get ‘normal’, ‘in touch’ people at the top of politics is to allow them to do ‘normal’ and ‘in touch’ things like go on holiday. Even if it is, ahem, to Ibiza...

Back from the dead: the snoopers’ charter

We all thought the snoopers’ charter (aka the Communications Data Bill) was gone. We thought Nick Clegg had killed it off. We thought it was safely dead and buried.

But today, a loud creaking sound could be heard as two coffin lids opened. One coffin contained the Communications Data Bill. The other contained former Tory leader Michael Howard (who you may recall had “something of the night” about him). Besides Howard, various zombies from among the Labour Party’s former home secretaries also sprang into action, aided by the Liberal Democrats’ very own Alex Carlile, who seems to have gone over to the dark side.

The BBC reports:

Labour and the Conservatives could unite to push through the controversial communications bill despite Lib Dem objections, a former Tory leader says.

The reason Howard and other leading Tory and Labour politicians want to revive this bill – apart, of course, from rank populism and instinctive authoritarianism – is a knee-jerk reaction to the murder in Woolwich. It’s an example of “hard cases make bad law” if ever there was one.

In today’s Observer, Henry Porter explains why mass surveillance wouldn’t have saved Drummer Rigby:

Two former Labour home secretaries, a security minister and a former “independent” reviewer of terror laws have called for the swift review of the communications data bill, following the Woolwich killing. If I didn’t believe these were the first reactions to a shocking crime, I’d put the interventions of Jack Straw, Lord (John) Reid, Lord (Alan) West and Lord (Alex) Carlile down to cynical opportunism, because I’m afraid that is very much how it looked.

Give our guys the tools to fight terror on the streets, they say; “the proportionate tools”, eagerly adds the former reviewer of terror laws, Lord Carlile. But not one of them bothered to produce the smallest evidence that the type of surveillance proposed in the “snoopers’ charter” would have stopped the two suspects, Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale.

The simple flaw in their case is that both men were already known to MI5, which was aware of their associations and radicalisation. The agency, it’s claimed, may even have tried to recruit Adebolajo. If intelligence officers had thought it necessary, they possessed all the powers they needed to monitor the pair’s emails, texts, phone calls and internet use. Some 500,000 intercepts are already granted every year. So the idea that giving police and MI5 untrammelled access to the nation’s communications data would have provided vital information that would have averted Lee Rigby’s murder is almost certainly wrong.

Porter warns us about the role of the civil service in persistently reviving this bill:

...the forces advocating oppressive laws are never far from the surface. At the Home Office, there are still several senior civil servants, most notably Charles Farr, head of security and counterterrorism, who are committed to mass surveillance. Not just out of the belief that the public would be safer, one suspects, but because their personalities incline them to authoritarian solutions – obedience and control over personal freedom...

Sooner or later, another surveillance bill will appear, probably devised by Charles Farr, and almost certainly supported by [John] Reid and his nervy, authoritarian pals. If interceptions are to be upgraded to meet the challenges of developing communications, we have to be sure that they are compliant with a fully functioning democracy.

It could be worse. We could have had a Labour government:

In response to this terrible event, the government didn’t do too badly and we should be thankful that, for the moment, we are not facing another Labour attack on our freedom.

This is why I have never shared the view of some of my friends on the left of the Liberal Democrats that we and Labour are somehow together on the ‘progressive’ side of politics. The enthusiastic support for the snoopers’ charter shown by John Reid, Jack Straw and Alan Johnson should serve to remind Liberal Democrats with short memories just how illiberal New Labour was.

Postscript: An excellent piece by Fraser Nelson in the Spectator:

On Friday, I was thinking how lucky we are not to have Tony Blair anymore. Had he been still in power, there would be about 12 new laws being rammed through parliament by now.

Woolwich: Political and media hysteria only aids terrorism

Well said Simon Jenkins in today’s Guardian:

We will not buckle to terrorism said David Cameron after the Woolwich murder on Wednesday. He then buckled. Everyone buckled. The home secretary buckled, the defence secretary buckled, the communities secretary buckled, the mayor of London buckled, the chief of police buckled, the press buckled, the BBC summoned its senior editors and they buckled. Everyone buckled.

The first question in any war – terrorism is allegedly a war – is to ask what the enemy most wants you to do. The Woolwich killers wanted publicity for their crime, available nowadays at the click of a mobile phone. They got it in buckets...

There is little a modern government can do to stem the initial publicity that terrorism craves. But it has considerable control over the subsequent response. When the Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, pleaded for calm and for London to continue as normal, he was spitting into a hurricane. Terror could not have begged for more sensational attention than was granted it by Britain’s political community and media.

The clue to poor political judgement can be found in the poor political language:

Intoning a response to horror is one of the rituals of modern politics. The adjective mountain grows ever higher, depraved, sickening, horrific, barbaric, unspeakable. Damnation is sanctified by platitude. Unctuous “thoughts for the day” are uttered by religious leaders. If it bleeds it not only leads, it pleads for cliched analysis.

Jenkins advocates restraint:

In taking mundane acts of violence and setting them on a global stage, we not only politicise them, we risk validating the furies that drive them. Closing down the internet to starve terrorist acts of publicity is not feasible, and stifles the debate that should be taking place peacefully. But we do have the option to exercise self-restraint in the aftermath, to control the impulse to hyperbole. We can deny the terrorist the megaphone of exaggeration and hysteria. When Cameron yesterday said we should defy terror by going about our normal business, he was right. Why did he not do so?

It is this echo chamber of horror, set up by the media, public figures and government, that does much of terrorism’s job for it. It converts mere crimes into significant acts. It turns criminals into heroes in the eyes of their admirers. It takes violence and graces it with the terms of a political debate. The danger is that this debate is one the terrorist might sometimes win.

So why do political leaders add to the ‘adjective mountain’? It is because our post-Diana, how-does-it-feel media culture – in which every news item must be turned into a vicarious experience – demands an emotional not a rational response. It is a brave person who risks appearing unfeeling by resisting that sentimental pressure. But such bravery is necessary for leadership instead of followership.

A cool analysis and a rational response? No, let’s tie another teddy bear to the nearest railings.

Postscript: More good sense on this subject from Frank Furedi and Jonathan Calder.

Woolwich: The selective memory of the EDL and BNP

Only hours after yesterday’s horrific killing, guess who showed up on the streets on Woolwich?

A 100-strong group of English Defence League (EDL) members marched in the near-by area last night and British National party (BNP) leader Nick Griffin took to Twitter this morning to call for a protest – ‘United against Muslim terror’ – for this Saturday.

There were no similar protests by EDL or BNP supporters after the mass murder committed by Anders Breivik in Norway. I wonder why?