The Prime Minister has got to decide whether he is tender or tough on terrorism
If you ask Google “What is the meaning of life, the Universe and everything?” the search engine replies: “42”. This is, of course, the response given by the Deep Thought Computer in Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. But it could just as easily explain why our Deep Thought Prime Minister decided that it should be possible for the State to detain terrorist suspects without charge for 42 days.
The number on which Gordon Brown’s reputation now depends was plucked randomly from the air. I clearly remember conversations with ministers just a few months ago in which they