In detention

Shadow Home Secretary Ed Balls, a leading West Yorkshire MP, appears to recognise this failure with his call to cut the pre-charge detention period for terror suspects to 14 days. This contrasts sharply with his party's authoritarianism before the election when it tried – and failed – to increase the timeframe to 90 days, and then to 42 days.

Yet, with the current limit standing at 28 days, many will be perplexed that Ministers are looking to halve the detention period when the terror threat to this country and the West appears to be so serious, even more so given the recent attempt to blow up two cargo planes.

Mr Balls is right when he says that a careful balance needs to be struck between preserving fundamental civil liberties and protecting Britain from further atrocities, but he must be careful to ensure that Labour's volte-face is not a direct response to the continuing fallout over the torture of those terrorist suspects who were held at Guantanamo Bay. There's no place for political opportunism on this issue.

His judgment needs to be a pragmatic one and both Labour, and the coalition for that matter, need to demonstrate that any attempt to reduce the detention period has the full backing of the police and the security services.

That remains the primary issue, with the repositioning of Labour a secondary matter as former ministers, like Mr Balls, consider why their party lost their election, and how it can win back the public's support with a set of considered policies that properly address the unique challenges facing Britain.