maxchambers's blog

The Home Affairs and Justice debate on Tuesday’s Queens Speech was dominated by Government proposals to “seek consensus” on increasing the maximum period of pre-charge detention for terrorist suspects. Yet such a consensus will be difficult, if not impossible, to come by. Yesterday, Members of the House from all corners and sides questioned the fuzzy thinking behind Jacqui Smith’s proposals.

The Shadow Home Secretary reminded us that “our freedom was bought at a very high price. We on this side will not give that freedom away without very good reason indeed.”   So, is there good reason? What is the basis for the planned extension of pre-charge detention? One might expect that the police have been experiencing great difficulty in compiling sufficient evidence to charge terrorist suspects within 28 days. But the Home Secretary admits that there has not been once case where they have been up against the wire. The basis for extension is that, due to “trends of increasing complexity” the Home Secretary can imagine a circumstance where the police might need more than 28 days. There are whole rafts of circumstances I can imagine on a great range of topics, but should we legislate on wholly hypothetical situations?  

With no evidence on which to base more draconian measures, how would the Home Secretary like to go about this extension? Will the Government repeat the tactics of 2005 by seeking a very high figure in order to get a compromise extension somewhere in the middle? Why is the figure of 56 days being bandied around by Government Ministers? What’s the basis for it? Because it’s 28 multiplied by two and it sounds nice? Sir Ian Blair (he of the “if you’ve got the power to remove me, go ahead” attitude to public service) thinks the right amount of time we should detain potentially innocent people should be “somewhere between 50 and 90 days”.

What fantastically useless advice!   So, pick a figure. 90? 77? 56? 49? Whatever the Government decide, this issue is, for good reason, going to dominate the political scene for some time…

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In a week dominated by more foot and mouth and an unprecedented outbreak of Bluetongue on Britain’s farms, Gordon Brown fired the first shot in the warm-up to the General Election. It was his personal blueprint, setting out his values and his moral compass. A blueprint for a Prime Minister who appeared to have caught Bluetongue. Set against a deep blue screen, the Prime Minister came out of the closet and revealed himself to be a Tory to his bones. Gordon was trying to convince Middle England, straight-faced, that front is back, left is right, and red is blue. Perhaps some of them were persuaded by vacant statements like “Aspiration for the many and not the few” that they had been born yesterday. Surely most of them were left wondering, “Where’s the beef?”

Election fever seems to be the new political Superbug. Gordon Brown has been helping to spread it by getting his hands as mucky as possible in recent weeks, pinching Quentin Davies, Conservative ideas, and cadging considerable ground. But yesterday, he was scrubbing them furiously. Not of election fever, but of the last decade. Desperate to cleanse himself of the germs festering from the Blair years. Wringing his hands of the Northern Rock crisis, pledging to toughen his own failed laws on cannabis, binge drinking and gambling. Barely a flicker on the EU Constitution. Hardly a single mention of Iraq. “Don’t blame me!” he was shouting, “I wasn’t there!” But he was, of course.

It was awfully depressing. It was the first time that, as a voter, you might credibly feel that choice had finally diminished, that red had merged with blue to become the colour of Gordon’s chosen tie. He spoke of “British jobs for British people”, limits on immigration, “British values”, tough prison sentences for knife possession. “You’re safe with Gordon!” he was telling the Daily Mail readers. If you closed your eyes, you could almost forget who you were listening to. Surely that is the strategy – to confuse the British people. To covince them that you’re not the Gordon Brown of Big Government and stealth tax. That you’re not the Chancellor who spent all their money and plundered their pension funds. The one who held the purse strings and plotted his way to Downing Street during 10 years of wasted opportunity. No, this is a different Gordon entirely. It’s the new and very British Gordon Brown, with aspiration, opportunity and social responsibility seeping out of every pore.

What the new, improved, Gordon Brown has done as Prime Minister so far is to mirror the way Chelsea played football under Jose Mourinho, going 1-0 ahead and then stifling the opposition by playing dull defensive football, squeezing the life out of the game. The polls suggest the electorate appreciate this contrast with Tony Blair’s presidential, informal style. But yesterday he went further – by cloaking himself in blue, the speech was the political equivalent of scoring the first goal, bursting the ball, and chucking it into a lake. The Prime Minister appeared to be saying “There is no choice”. That is what he represents. So far he is getting away with it. Those who worry about rising disenchantment with politics and permanent cynicism about politicians could do worse than to start with yesterday’s speech. David Cameron’s challenge next week is no longer to show that Brown represents no change – that plainly has not worked. His challenge is rather, to demonstrate that the Conservative leader himself offers a real choice, one that is attractive, stark, and unmistakable.

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