"Britain has been tested and not found wanting. This is who we are."
Gordon Brown used his first Labour Conference as Prime Minister to give everyone a pat on the back for surviving all the challenges the first few months of his premiership has thrown at the nation... flooding, terrorist attempts on Glasgow Airport and central London, outbreaks of foot and mouth.
It was that last one, in particular, which prompted a snort of derision. Please first consider the following statements:
1 - Britain currently faces a greater threat of chemical/biological attack than it did, say, 10 years ago. [True/False]
2 - If you ask people what's the first thing about the UK which pops into their head, they will probably say "rainy". [True/False]
3 - The single highest priority for a chemical/biological analysis centre is containment. If it can't do that, it shouldn't be allowed to do anything else. [True/False].
According to the official reports, the recent outbreaks of foot and mouth all have their origins in the state-run labs at Pirbright. The official report said that viral material escaped from the labs because of high rainfall and defective drainage. Five years ago, at a time when public fear over the possibility of terrorist attacks ('dirty bombs', chemical/biological contamination) was being stoked by large-scale public exercises like this, a government review of the labs specifically identified issues with funding, maintenance and the state of the facilities: "not commensurate with what might be expected for work with infectious diseases".
You might be tempted to conclude that the coded message of Gordon's speech was actually this: "Look, I know Tony made a complete arse of everything and left the entire policy landscape strewn with cluster bombs, but thank goodness un-flash Gordon has his hand on the wheel now, eh?".
Well, yes, except that we should also remember that the catastrophic run on the Northern Rock bank happened under the financial and regulatory system over which Mr Brown presided from May 1997. Northern Rock is a publicly-quoted savings bank and mortgage lender. Yesterday's Financial Times noted that its market capitalisation now represents less than 1% of assets.
Oh, well done, old thing... jolly well done.
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