Why's Brown so slow?
Sir: In his interesting and positive account of Gordon Brown's visit to America, Matthew d'Ancona reveals that Brown's thinking on the causes of terrorism has 'shifted' since the recent so-called Islamist 'doctors' plot' to set off car bombs in the West End and at Glasgow airport.
'In the past, he has tended to believe that the root cause of global terrorism was economic deprivation: or, to put it another way, that trade and aid would be the core of strategic triumph over our Islamist adversaries. The inferno at Glasgow airport sealed in his mind a shift of analysis: that twisted ideas, rather than poverty, were the true basis of the problem.'
Mr d'Ancona's source is clearly impeccable — Mr Brown himself. But the implication is alarming; it is that our new Prime Minister has, till now, ignored what the Islamists themselves have been telling us over and over — that they are not trying to draw attention to poverty but seeking to Islamise the West and murder infidels. As far as they are concerned this is war, or jihad, against us, all of us. One might have hoped that Mr Brown had understood this long ago. Tony Blair certainly did.
William Shawcross St Mawes, Cornwall
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