Blair's incendiary legacy passes to Brown

What more vivid illustration could there be of the nature of the incendiary baton that Tony Blair has handed to his successor than the events of Gordon Brown's first 72 hours as Prime Minister? In the early hours of Thursday morning, three British soldiers were killed in Iraq. On Friday, two car bombs were found in central London. Then yesterday, a car in flames was driven into the main terminal building at Glasgow airport.

The most challenging early tasks that face Mr Brown are rebalancing our armed forces' engagements abroad, and meeting the threat of terrorism at home. As they came to define the kind of leader that Mr Blair was, so they will define Mr Brown's character as a leader.

There are three phases to this. First, the immediate response to the terrorist threat. There is not much politicians can do except satisfy themselves that the police and the security services are working effectively to find the suspects, identify the threat and learn the lessons. When they have done that, they have to reassure the public. Mr Brown and Jacqui Smith, the new Home Secretary, managed that well enough. Now they have to ensure resources continue to be deployed efficiently in response to the evolving threat. In this, Mr Brown has made an astute appointment of Admiral Sir Alan West as minister responsible for domestic security. It says something for the national security credibility of this Labour Government that a former head of the Royal Navy should be prepared to take the post.

Second, Mr Brown must decide what to do about British forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. As Raymond Whitaker, our foreign editor, writes on pages 18-19, the military rationale for our forces' presence in Basra has all but expired. From the original intention that the troops would run an interim administration of much of southern Iraq before handing over to locals, our soldiers are now staying out of harm's way as much as possible in a fortified complex at the airport. We owe an obligation to the Iraqi people, but have reached the point where Mr Brown needs to persuade the Iraqi government that this obligation is now best met without our military presence.

In Afghanistan, the problems are the inverse of those in Iraq. The mission of our troops can be achieved, where in Iraq it cannot. But we need more troops in Afghanistan not fewer. We report today further evidence of the overstretch of military resources caused by engagement in two combat theatres at the same time: the priority is to concentrate resources on the fight that is winnable.

Third, the new Prime Minister has to attend to the underlying causes of jihadist terrorism. Of course, there is a link with foreign policy, in that British engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan is used as a grievance by the ideologues of al-Qa'ida to rouse anti- Western sentiment. That sense of grievance is monstrously misplaced because it asserts that the purpose of Western intervention in those countries is to oppress Muslims. However mistaken the Iraq invasion was, that was not its purpose; the removal of the Tal-iban regime in Afghanistan was explicitly authorised by the United Nations and supported by nearly every Muslim country in the world. Yet the belief that the British state is complicit in American evil is powerful enough to help motivate young men brought up in this country to kill their fellow citizens by suicide bombing.

But foreign policy is only one factor: the alleged immorality of Western lifestyles is another recurrent theme. That the London car bomb outside a nightclub was the work of jihadist terrorists is suggested by the chilling words of one of the plotters recently jailed for planning to bomb the Ministry of Sound: "The biggest nightclub in central London: no one can put their hands up and say they are innocent ... those slags dancing around."

British jihadism may be associated with an extreme form of a psychosocial crisis of identity among second-generation Muslim immigrants, which makes it peculiarly resistant to quick fixes. Impressively, Mr Brown was already doing many of the right things before news of the planned explosions broke. He had appointed Shahid Malik as an international development minister, and Sadiq Khan to the Whips' Office, the first Muslim members of a British Government. They will, we hope, strengthen the voice of the vast majority of Muslims who are dedicated to this country. He had appointed Adam Ingram to review our military response to terrorism around the world. And David Miliband and his team can make a fresh start in seeking to explain the motives of British foreign policy.

Now, though, in the first three days of his premiership, the urgency of Mr Brown's challenge has been brought home. Our new Prime Minister's qualities as a statesman are being tested already.

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