The most impressive thing about the first days of Gordon Brown's premiership has been that he has responded to attempted terrorist attacks with calmer, less rhetorical language than the British and US governments had used on previous occasions. He has united our outrage with the outrage felt by the vast majority of Muslims in Britain at attacks on their own community by desperate fanatics specifically sent into Britain to perpetrate terrible crimes against innocent people. "Not in our name," the reaction of Muslim leaders and the people they represent to any terrorist attacks on innocent people, was a response made easier by Gordon's clear recognition that it is the terrorist disease, not the Muslim people, which we need to resist. The words unite them with those, like ourselves, who opposed the war in Iraq and the whole concept of a "war against terror."

Any war against terrorism is bound to be lost because the more furious and desperate the punitive action against the terrorists the more terrorists will be spawned by outrage at those actions. It is a vicious circle that sucks us into a black hole. The stronger we think we are, the deeper we go in.
We must strengthen and encourage the voice of moderation in those communities which are already resisting the dangerous impulse in some of its young people to feel so outraged by acts of oppression against members of their faith that they would destroy their own lives to hurt the oppressors. Such an impulse cannot possibly be deterred by threats of overwhelming force. The same lesson had to be learnt in Northern Ireland. The government needed to speak to each community and show them that there was more to gain through political than through military action.
We have to recognise that there are some dangerous, well funded fanatics who can only be stopped by vigilant security measures. However, Jack Cunningham spoke sense immediately after the atrocity of 9/11 when he said that it was "the sense of betrayal on the part of many people who are poverty stricken that provides fertile ground for the recruitment of fanatics who care nothing for human life, including their own" and concluded that "we all have a duty to work for a fairer, more peaceful world." Gordon Brown and his Home Secretary Jacqui Smith have already shown that they intend to work in that spirit.