Obsession with public opinion is the terrorist’s best ally

There is nothing Gordon Brown relishes more than a chance to claim leadership on the global stage: and so it was all but inevitable that the Prime Minister would find a way of holding an "emergency summit" in London after the Christmas Day airline bomb attack – a "crisis meeting" on Yemen, as it turns out. He loves a crisis meeting, does Gordon. And, like all politicians, he is pathologically fearful of inaction – or, more accurately, the appearance of inaction.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the Obama administration has flailed badly in its response to the attempted downing of Northwest Airlines flight 253 over Detroit: a deeply unsettling echo of September 11, a sort of 9/11-lite. In spite of warnings from the suspect's own father, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's name was not posted by US intelligence on the official "no-fly" list. Yet, according to Janet Napolitano, Obama's Homeland Security Secretary, "the system worked". To which one can only reply: not so much.

The primary purpose of the PM's New Year's Day statement, posted on the Downing Street website, was to convey the opposite impression: a leader in control, unfazed, overseeing a surge in activity. "We have trebled our security budget," Gordon declared; then added that "we must never be complacent" – which is why he has ordered a thorough review of airport security and already signalled his support for full-body scanners. There was just a whiff of condescension in his promise that all this would be done "in cooperation with President Obama and the Americans" – as if the PM were saying, "leave this to me, Barack, I know what I'm doing."

That said, Brown is also keenly aware of the potentially hideous embarrassment for this country in Abdulmutallab's immediate past. The Nigerian did, after all, spend three years studying at University College London, before embarking on his career (it is alleged) as a fully-fledged jihadi. Was he radicalised at UCL? In a sentence of fabulously tortured syntax, Gordon urged us not to draw conclusions. "Although we are increasingly clear that he linked up with al-Qaeda in Yemen after leaving London," the PM said, "we nevertheless need to remain vigilant against people being radicalised here as well as abroad."

All of this is a familiar ritual, one to which we should have grown used since 9/11. There is an Islamist attack, successful or narrowly-thwarted. Governments promise a tough response: summits, reviews, the facing of "hard choices", the removal of gloves. We are told, as Tony Blair told us on August 5, 2005, after the 7/7 atrocities, that "the rules of the game have changed". There is a flurry of activity. And then, quietly, everybody creeps back to their various comfort zones.

More than eight years after the destruction of the World Trade Centre, there are two competing narratives in the West. The first is frightening, difficult and poses a host of deeply unwelcome questions. According to this version of events, we face a global struggle against a new mutation of militant Islamism ready to use all and any means at its disposal, bonded by anti-semitism, hatred of America and a desire to enforce sharia law and to restore the Caliphate. This network plots globally and kills locally. The merit of this is that it happens to be true.

The second narrative dismisses the whole notion of the "war on terror" as an aberration of the Bush-Blair era. According to this version of events, Islamist terror is mostly the consequence of "Western foreign policy" (for example, the Iraq War was directly responsible for 7/7). With Bush and Blair gone, and al-Qaeda supposedly scattered to the winds, it follows that the winding up of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan will bring the whole sorry chapter to an end, and we can all get on with life as normal. The only flaw in this comforting narrative is that it happens to be complete nonsense.

In recent years, the Labour Government, driven by the ebb and flow of public opinion, has borrowed arbitrarily from both narratives. A year ago, David Miliband declared that "the notion [of the war on terror] is misleading and mistaken" and may even have done "more harm than good", and that there was no "unified, transnational enemy". The terrorist threat, he said, was disaggregated and heterogeneous. We were dealing with "myriad fragmented demands".

Yet on Friday the Prime Minister explicitly (and correctly) acknowledged the existence of a global Islamist network. "Almost 10 years after September 11, international terrorism is still a very real threat," he said. "Al-Qaeda and their associates continue in their ambition to indoctrinate thousands of young people around the world with a deadly desire to kill and maim." That's true. But was the Foreign Secretary freelancing a year ago or accurately reflecting the tactical position of the British Government at the time?

According to the Guardian, "profiling" – more stringent checks for certain types of passenger – is now "in the mix" of the review of airport security. Hitherto, this Government has always ruled out this technique on the grounds that it would provoke ill feeling among Muslims and British Asians. In 2005, prime minister Blair said that "the rules of the game have changed". Last November, on the other hand, Alan Johnson readily conceded that some of the counter-terrorism proposals after 7/7 were "too draconian" and "not the right way to go". Yet, last Monday, the same Home Secretary was talking tough again on the Today programme, warning of the perils of "the most serious threat from a type of terrorism that we have never experienced before".

Which is the authentic voice of the Government? Robust or appeasing? Hawkish or dove-lovely? The truth is: both and neither. The tone and content are determined by the news cycle, by the needs of the hour. And that is the great advantage the jihadis have over us: they think not in days, but in centuries. They would never drop the phrase "long war" because, for them, all wars are long. Gordon will have his summit on Yemen – and then it will all be forgotten, before you can say "election campaign launch". Meanwhile, doubtless pleased and fortified by the political mayhem caused by the Detroit attack, al-Qaeda will resume its quiet plans for a campaign of infinitely longer duration.