And, when dealing with that most intangible of economic assets, confidence, reducing interest rates can cut both ways. A half-point reduction can be read as much as an invitation to panic as to resume spending and investment. Curious, then, that Gordon Brown does not make more of the policy that he is trying to pursue, which will have a direct effect in mitigating some of the negative impacts of al-Qa'ida terrorism on tourism, travel and consumer spending generally. Perhaps because it smacks too much of the kind of bastard Keynesianism practised so unsuccessfully in the 1970s, Mr Brown does not advertise the macro-economic benefits of public-spending increases – as opposed to the (promised) benefits of improved public services.Higher public spending on the health service, schools and transport should not only increase spending power in the economy but should soak up some of the unemployment that threatens to rise again. The trouble is that the education budget has been underspent, partly because of the teacher shortage, while health spending has failed to deliver the improvements needed to maintain taxpayer support in future. The drive for "delivery" is now more urgent than ever.Not only, then, will a downturn in the British economy make it easier to recruit teachers, but recruiting more teachers, teachers' assistants, nurses and health service workers could help soften the shockwaves still reverberating from the collapse of the twin towers two months ago..

In three out of four cases, devolution in the UK has been a disappointment – so far. In Scotland, Wales and London, it has not produced the sharpened sense of democratic accountability which its advocates, including this newspaper, hoped. Only in Northern Ireland, where it has been driven by the more urgent imperative of bringing the former men of violence in from the cold, has the experiment exceeded expectations. In three out of four cases, devolution in the UK has been a disappointment – so far. In Scotland, Wales and London, it has not produced the sharpened sense of democratic accountability which its advocates, including this newspaper, hoped. Only in Northern Ireland, where it has been driven by the more urgent imperative of bringing the former men of violence in from the cold, has the experiment exceeded expectations.It is no coincidence, either, that in Northern Ireland the power that has been handed down from Westminster has been grasped by politicians of stature, above all by David Trimble, the Ulster Unionist leader.In Scotland, on the other hand, the new parliament was abandoned by all the nation's political leaders of substance, with the diffident exception of the late Donald Dewar.

Labour's big names chose to hold out for better things in national politics. Menzies Campbell for the Liberal Democrats stayed in London, although the decent and likeable Jim Wallace is one of Holyrood's more persuasive leaders. For the Conservatives Sir Malcolm Rifkind would have done better there that trying to get back to the Commons, although David McLetchie, their leader in Edinburgh, has been vindicated in his dogged pursuit of the question of Henry McLeish's subletting interests. The most striking abdication, though, has been that of Alex Salmond, who, it turned out, was the Scottish National Party's only figure of any weight.That left an assembly of the second-rate, the inexperienced and the unknown, with the Labour contingent at least heavily influenced by the prevailing culture of local-government politicking rather than any sense of national mission.Mr McLeish was never up to the job, which is why he had no grip on it and why an allegedly minor failing, from which he claims he obtained no personal benefit, could not be shaken off. At least he deserves some credit for doing the decent thing in the end.The question of who should succeed him is less important than that of the means by which his successor is chosen – assuming, as seems only realistic, that the new leader of the Scottish Labour Party will be the new First Minister. Mr McLeish himself was the product of a fix, dictated from London, which short-circuited the Labour Party's one-member, one-vote election system. He was chosen, over Jack McConnell, now his most likely successor, by the Scottish Labour Party's ruling executive.At long last it must be hoped that Tony Blair has learnt the lessons of trying to fix internal Labour Party elections in Scotland, Wales and London, and allow the grassroots members and trade union levy-payers their say.