The recent controversy over the level of security that Premier Ewart Brown needs has drawn a surprisingly heavy response from all sides of the community.

At least part of the reaction has been sparked because of the unprecedented Cabinet Office entourage that the Premier has built in a very short time.

His predecessor, Alex Scott, made do with a Cabinet Secretary who was also head of the civil service and used the Director of Communication and Information as his primary spokeswoman. Whether Mr. Scott could have used more assistance is moot; on taking office, Dr, Brown has gone to the other extreme.

Not only did he appoint a chief of staff, he also hired a press secretary and a consultant, whose main task is to deal with race relations. At the same time, the post of Cabinet Secretary was divided, once again, into two, with Dr. Brown’s former Permanent Secretary for Tourism and Transport, becoming Secretary to the Cabinet while former Assistant Cabinet Secretary Kenneth Dill was made Head of the Civil Service.

Not long after, Dr. Brown determined, or his security advisors advised him, that he should be accompanied by a plains clothed Police officer on his trips abroad. Dr. Brown also chose to revert to remaining in his own home as Premier rather than taking up residence in Clifton, which had just been renovated at vast expense so that Bermuda could have a home fit for Premiers, and security improvements that have been required since at least the time of Dame Pamela Gordon are being put in place at his private home at taxpayers’ expense.

In a short period of time, Dr. Brown has added roughly $460,000 in salary costs alone to his entourage (Chief of Staff, $100,000; Press secretary $100,000, consultant $80,000; Cabinet Secretary $100,000-plus, Policeman $80,000).

So it is against that background that the decision that Dr. Brown should be accompanied by a Police officer needs to be seen.

It may be that the security requirements for Dr. Brown are needed.

Some people have suggested that the first people to criticise the lack of security should, God forbid, something happen to Dr. Brown, are the ones who are criticising his empire building now. The other argument is that times have changed from the days when David Saul rode to the Cabinet Office on his moped and when Premiers actually walked down the street and talked to people. And certainly, few laypersons are qualified to judge the security a Premier needs.

But the evidence, at least to the layman, does not support this. It has been more than 30 years since Governor Sir Richard Sharples was assassinated and will be 30 years in December since the 1977 riots. Bermuda has changed. In general, there is more crime now, but the likelihood and risks of politically motivated violence are much lower, not least because some of the people who advocated it then are now in Government.

By all accounts, Dr. Brown remains quite popular and the two incidents that have sparked this added security seem fairly minor. The guessing here is that Dr. Brown is not the first Premier to have avoided a drunk wishing to speak to him at the Cabinet Office, and now that he is a member of the Mid-Ocean Club, he should probably get used to it. Similarly, the approach at the Airport last week sounds reasonably non-threatening, not least because the man in question was allowed to wander around long after he had approached Dr. Brown, and it is hard to see that happening if the Policemen who were present felt he posed an imminent threat. And what exactly was he going to do with a box cutter anyway? It is true that they worked on September 11, but that was certainly the first and last time.

Dr. Brown, in a short period of time has built up a good deal of insulation between himself and the people who voted him in, at the same time that he has engineered an unprecedented personality cult. Now, inevitably, there is a backlash, and his supposed security needs are an easy target.