Over the course of the past 48 hours, it has become quite clear that this year's Budget debate will be about one subject - tourism.

The first sign came on Thursday night in Premier Jennifer Smith's "address to the nation", which, taken down to its bare bones was explicitly a call for the community to pull together to revive tourism and implicitly was a call for people to stop criticising embattled Tourism Minister David Allen.

The next sign was Opposition Leader Grant Gibbons' Reply to the Budget.

Naturally, the Reply was more than that. Financial and economic matters have always been the United Bermuda Party's strength, and Dr. Gibbons maps out a clear and cogent view of the economy and international business in a speech that the Government would be wise to consider carefully.

In the speech, Dr. Gibbons expanded on his theme that Finance Minister Eugene Cox was gambling with the Budget by holding the line on taxes while continuing to spend heavily on current and capital spending in the expectation that the US recession will end in the middle of this year and that Bermuda's economy, especially tourism, will rebound as a result.

That is a big gamble, bearing in mind that no one can entirely agree on when or to what degree the US economy will recover or if Bermuda will naturally follow the US when it does.

Dr. Gibbons pointed out that Bermuda tourism signally did not benefit in the 1990s when the US enjoyed a sustained period of extraordinary growth.

The situation is worse now when Government admits that in the Island's major US markets (New York, Atlanta and so on) Bermuda "is not included in the decision when a selection of destination is made by households with the financial capacity to enjoy a Bermuda vacation".

That is, as Dr. Gibbons points out, a shocking indictment, regardless of the effects of September 11. The Tourism Ministry has spent more than $100 million in three years and the result has been that Bermuda isn't even a blip on the radar screen in Bermuda's major markets.

Ms Smith called for an end to partisanship on tourism. The UBP is not going to oblige and has set aside the first ten hours of the Budget Debate, starting on Monday, to debate tourism, and judging by the tenor of Dr. Gibbons' comments yesterday, to attack Minister Allen.

It is hard to blame them. Rarely has one person promised so much and delivered so little.

The Opposition thinks his record of failure is now so voluminous that the the only way to salvage tourism is to take it out of the hands of Government and put it in the hands of a tourism authority.

Nor does the UBP think that any more money should be given to the Tourism Ministry on the basis that it too will be wasted.

What the Opposition is clearly saying is that Mr. Allen should go. It is impossible to disagree.

Premier Smith called for the community to pull together to rebuild tourism. It is still not clear if disagreement with the Government's tourism policies is now unpatriotic.

What should be clear is that the community will not get behind tourism if the current Minister is not held accountable for his record of failure. If Ms Smith was attempting to bolster Mr. Allen's position in her national address, she failed. The facts speak louder than her words.

Mr. Allen has, to paraphrase Oliver Cromwell, stayed too long for the little good he has done, and, it might be added, he should go before he does any more damage.

When that happens, the community can and should pull together to address the real structural problems of price and service that are at the heart of tourism's problems. But Mr. Allen, whose watch has seen air arrivals fall to their lowest level since 1968 and total arrivals fall to their lowest level since 1973, is not the person to lead that charge. Unthinking and unquestioning adherence to the policies he has laid out in the last three years would be madness.

Mr. Allen must go, and a tourism authority, led jointly by the public and private sectors, is the best way to revitalise tourism.