Only option to live dangerously: A year-end reminder to Tony Blair

Martin Kettle, Guardian News Service, London

Even at the time, Tony Blair's message to the nation was arrestingly somber. "I cannot recall a time," he said on the first day of 2003, "when Britain was confronted, simultaneously, by such a range of difficult and, in some cases, dangerous problems."

Inevitably, Blair singled out the mounting international crisis over Iraq in his next breath. But Iraq, which looms so large in retrospect, by no means monopolized his gloomy survey of the year to come. The intelligence flowing across his desk pointed to a continuing threat of attack by al-Qaeda, Blair went on. The lack of progress in the Middle East peace process had the potential to wreak havoc too. And then there was North Korea.

Twelve months ago, all this struck some observers as needlessly pessimistic. Politically, it seemed a bit too gloomy and disjunctive. At the end of 2002, most people in this country were again optimistic about the future, ICM reported. The economy seemed buoyant. Few people thought they were in much danger from terrorism.

Yet 12 months later, Blair's apprehensive message seems closer to the mark. Today, somber warnings chime more closely with the current national mood. Indeed, if Blair were to reissue last year's message this week to mark the dawn of 2004, few would think that he had called it seriously wrong.

Britain's role in the invasion of Iraq has been a catalyst in creating this change. Yet we need to beware of looking at everything through that unique prism. Blair's serious misjudgment over Iraq should not be made to bear too much of the weight of explanation for the wider new pessimism. Opponents of the war may need to be reminded that public opinion currently approves of the invasion by nearly two to one.

As 2003 draws to its close, it is surely al-Qaeda, rather than the repercussions of Iraq, that casts a darker shadow over Britain's future. If the mass of intelligence flowing across the prime minister's desk pointed to a continuing terrorist threat a year ago, then how much truer is that statement today? We are a target, Blair said a year ago.

Well, we are no less of one today. The threat from al-Qaeda is real, he went on. That threat is no less real now. There is no such thing as 100 percent security against a serious enemy, he added. That is also every bit as true now as then.

Since Sept. 11, most western governments have operated on the assumption that their countries will be a target some time. This is not mere general prudence. It is cold-eyed and urgent realism. In the past few weeks alone, al-Qaeda and its allies have mounted two assassination attempts on Pakistan's leader and have carried out a pair of devastating missions in Istanbul. We know they have the means and the motives. We must assume they merely await their opportunities.

It is only a matter of time before some flaw in our own defenses allows an attack to take place in Europe that is as devastating as those that occurred in Istanbul. Ministers say it is beyond doubt that Britain will one day be a target. How far this would be a consequence of Blair's pro-American policy over Iraq is an inevitable question, but recent terror-related cancellations of Air France transatlantic flights imply that Osama bin Laden is no respecter of individual national stances on the war.

Exactly where and how such terrorism will come to Britain is unknowable. That it will come here somehow is surely not. Planes are the most obvious means, as Sept. 11 itself and the shoe- bomber Richard Reid have proved. But planes are not the only means. Talk of a bin Laden plan to hijack the new Queen Mary 2 on its maiden voyage may be so much silly season hype, but it is not inconceivable. The carnage in the 1917 Halifax harbor disaster stands as a permanent reminder that a ship bomb in a crowded harbor has to be taken very seriously in a world in which piracy is so widespread and so easy.

No one who flies to a place like Saudi Arabia can be unaware of the risks they currently run. Last night's car bomb in Riyadh was a fresh reminder that these can be dangerous places for people from open societies. The Mail on Sunday's claim that the Saudis have arrested two terrorists planning a suicide attack on a BA jumbo in Riyadh has not been confirmed, but it is a disturbing straw in the increasingly threatening wind.

This forms the all too credible background to the decision by the government to deploy sky marshals on selected passenger flights across the Atlantic and on some other routes. The decision has been denounced by the pilots' union as dangerous, and mocked by some commentators as too headline grabbing.

Yet if, as most of us want, the planes are to be kept flying in the face of the terrorists' fanatical determination to bring them down, then what are governments supposed to do? It is all very well complaining that the transport secretary, Alistair Darling, is making life more dangerous in the air. In some ways, he may be. Yet if a suicide hijack succeeds, killing hundreds of people, the first question that will be asked is why stronger measures were not taken to protect the victims.

Questions of this kind mark the difference between the lives that ministers and the rest of us live. Most people give these risks only occasional and passing attention. To us, the thought that we may all be murdered in our beds is remote. To hapless ministers, it is a serious possibility for which they must try to prepare, and for which they will be held accountable when it occurs.

In 2004, there is a greater likelihood than at any time since 1945 that large numbers of civilians will be the victims of an act of pitiless aggression. Most of us deal with this fear by ignoring it. For a Blair or a Darling, there is no such luxury. Just occasionally, perhaps, we should have the humility to see the awfulness of the world that they inhabit, and which they strive so unavailingly to control.