Terrorism. Floods. Foot and Mouth. The crises have come thick and fast following the change of Prime Minister.

As someone once remarked, it’s "events dear boy" that can take over for the incumbent of 10 Downing Street. Gordon Brown arrived in office with many plans to change the tone and sometimes the policies, only to find the tone and the agenda were changed for him by three different attacks upon our way of life.

His first reaction in each case has been good. He has shown energy and interest in each crisis. He has supervised an effective communications strategy, he has spoken as a national rather than as a party politician, and he has included representatives of all the main parties in his response and briefings.

In the longer term what will matter is how effective he proves, with his team of Ministers and officials, in handling the aftermath and in taking action to prevent recurrence. He also has to handle the natural concern that the floods were made worse by the failure of the Environment Agency to clean its drains and ditches fully??and maintain its flood defences in good order. He needs to show that in future they will be better at keeping what they have in working order, and faster at strengthening our flood defences where they are demonstrably weak. Instead of paying their senior staff bonuses they should be looking at what action they should take to??deal with??the unsatisfactory performance.

He now also has to produce an independent investigation into the source of the foot and mouth infection. If it turns out that it has come from Pirbright, whether from the government labs themselevs or from the government regulated private sector labs, he will need to be generous in compensation for those who have lost and convincing in measures to ensure no repeat.

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