If there was any doubt about how closely new British Prime Minister Gordon Brown would hew to Tony “bigger-than-a-poodle” Blair‘s line on TWAT etc., I think he dispelled it by his remarks on Sunday:

Mr Brown told Andrew Marr on BBC One‘s Sunday AM it was “clear that we are dealing, in general terms, with people who are associated with al-Qaeda”.

George Bush‘s best fear-mongers couldn’t have put it any better.

Tony Blair, for all the myopia he displayed on the subject of Iraq and TWAT, never stooped to fear-mongering, as far as I can remember. And here’s Gordon Brown, barely out of the starting gates, and already out-Bushing Tony Blair.

Because what is abundantly clear is that what we saw in Britain over the last few days — between the two cars in London filled with “petrol, gas cylinders and nails” and the Glasgow airport incident — is a bunch of amateur wannabe terrorists. They may have been inspired by al Qaeda, or not. But certainly, and fortunately, they lacked the expertise to do any real damage:

Security experts said that neither the bomb materials nor the cellphone triggering device was particularly sophisticated. Nor, said Sajjan M. Gohel, a counterterrorism expert with the Asia-Pacific Foundation, did the attack “seem to be very well planned.”

The second car, by the way, was towed away from the spot it was left to explode in because it was illegally parked.

If this is the hand of al Qaeda, they obviously merged with the Keystone Cops while no one was looking. To say these jokers are “associated” with al Qaeda is probably the biggest fear-mongering stretch the British Prime Minister could pull under the circumstances. And the shameless bugger pulled just that stretch.

Watch him closely. I won’t be surprised at all to see him talking wildly about suitcase bombs one of these days. (For the record, weapons experts seem to be agreed that suitcase bombs are a zero probability terrorist threat.)

Brown is ably supported by his terrorism adviser:

Lord Stevens, Mr Brown’s new terrorism adviser, has said the attacks signalled a “major escalation in the war being waged on us by Islamic terrorists”.

He wrote in his column in the News of the World: “It is clear a loose but deadly network of interlinked operational cells has developed.”

That too is a bushel of blatant bullsh*t. All that is clear is that another group was inspired to amateur terrorism, a group that was long on intent but fortunately short on capability. That is bloody well not a “major escalation in the war being waged … by Islamic terrorists”. It is bloody well not evidence of “a loose but deadly network of interlinked operational cells”. (For a thoroughly contemptuous dismissal of this hype, see Larry Johnson‘s post at TPM Café.)

When Brown goes “ruff ruff” about suitcase nukes, presumably Stevens will be right there going “woof woof” along with him. And then, presumably, they will ceremonially sniff each other’s asses.

But for anyone who’s strolling along Downing Street, going “How much is that doggie in the window? I do hope that doggie’s for sale!”, the answer seems to be: “Sorry, kiddo. This one’s bought already, and all paid for, too.”!

(Please note: only sporadic posts this week.)