The UK Times says Gordon Brown has to get serious in the wake of this week's aborted terror attacks, offering up a number of sound suggestions:

First, to boost further the budgets of the intelligence agencies by an instant transfer of resources from the contingency reserve which is set aside in the Finance Act every year and then to reassess funding in the comprehensive spending review that has been inherited by Alistair Darling.

Secondly, to legislate to allow the authorities much more power to control travel between Britain and Pakistan, which - as everyone involved in this field knows - is a route that might as well be labelled the terror trail, such is the traffic that passes through it. We used to have rules that prevented British citizens in Northern Ireland from coming to the mainland without permission. Something similar is required to deal with the route to and from Pakistan.

Thirdly, to salvage what is now a totally discredited system of control orders (destroyed courtesy of the judiciary) by suspending whatever sections of the Human Rights Act may be required and derogating from the entirety of the European Convention on Human Rights if that cannot be avoided. A balance always has to be struck between security and liberty, but the age of the car bomber means it has to be assessed again.

This might seem like a draconian agenda. It is. Yet it has to be done because one sizeable car bomb would blow the most massive hole in Britain's reputation and well as cause slaughter. A serious man for serious times, indeed. Now is the time to see how serious he will be.