Labour and civil liberties - Putting the offensive into PR offensive

Searching around for a first line for this piece, I caught a snippet of tonight's Smallville (which I watch for the fatstock prices):

Since I was, at that moment, trying to come up with a pithy way of starting an article about the monstrous egotism and arrogance of Charles Clarke, I subsequently experienced an unpleasant confusion of imageries, the most lasting of which is the vision of the engorged Home Secretary frenziedly pounding away at the flattened corpse of the British judicial system. Not pleasant, and I doubt I'll sleep comfortably tonight, but it does provide a useful metaphor for what the bastards are doing. I suspect only Hogarth could do it justice on canvas, however.

These thoughts are prompted by the 24-hour shock and awe (well, it's more schlock and ordure, really) assault from, in descending order of awfulness, the Prime Minister, the Safety Elephant, the highly laughable Denis 'I speak a foreign language so I got made Europe Minister' MacShane and the Guardian's pet 'New Labour's got the word 'Labour' in so they must be sort of ok, really' journos, Martin Kettle and Michael White. These gentlemen are, apparently, all upset simultaneously about the same thing, the distortions and lies from 'the media' about New Labour's wonderful and benevolent record on crime, terrorism and civil liberties. Yeah, right. This has the Number 10 spin machine's fingerprints all over it - PM on Saturday, Home Sec on Monday evening, tame journos and a loyal Party minnow in the morning paper. It's a PR offensive, pure and simple.

Now, it seems to me, and a lot of other people who read and write blogs that the mainstream media dropped the ball on New Labour's legislative onslaught until the wilder souls out on the internet started pointing it out to them. It's quite possible (he says, swelling with self-importance), that they would never have picked it up without us. Mind you, I hesitate to include myself in that number, the credit must go to people like no2id, wtwu at SpyBlog, The Register, for it's excellent ID card work, and many others - check the links on the front page, most of the best guys are on there. In that sense, then, this PR offensive is aimed squarely at these sites, and indeed this site. We're all targets now.

So let's fight back. Tony has been, according to Denis MacShane, 'blogging' in the Observer, which seems to mean exchanging (or getting someone to exchange) a few emails with Henry Porter. Tell you what, Tony, get someone to teach you how to use a computer (Euan, perhaps, he might be more useful there than blabbing to leading Tories that you're going to stay on to the bitter end) and come and do some proper blogging. I'd support you if you wanted to write on here, fair enough. You might not find some of our regular commentators quite as welcoming, however.

Tony was prompted by Henry Porter's original articles, which contain this interesting snippet:

Well, he puts it rather well, I think. Certainly, the lack of historical context and appreciation in New Labour is quite staggering. What the hell were they doing at school, selling prefect's badges for favours?

Actually, Porter's main point is the one that a lot of us are making - if you say you don't intend to use sweeping, draconian, authoritarian powers, don't enact them. You may, in your arrogance, believe that 35% of the voting public is enough to give you a Thousand Years of Glorious Rule, but all ivory towers fall eventually, and you may find yourself as Citizen Blair in a few years looking at someone with a strong whiff of jackboots greedily seizing those powers (particularly if Margaret Hodge keeps up her BNP publicity drive). While the thought of Tony being marched off to 90 days detention without trial is a pleasing one, I'd reluctantly be forced to protest against it and demand that he's given a fair trial. I doubt this favour would be returned.

So, what's Tony's response to Mr. Porter's entirely legitimate and well-expressed concerns? He comes out swinging like the best blinkered head-in-sand keyboard warrior. Perhaps he's catching on. He even pulls out the oldest trick in the flamers' book - accuse your opponents of displaying your own weakness (cf. every time Michelle Malkin accuses someone of hypocrisy) in the hope that shouting louder will stop people noticing:

Having got the soundbite out of the way, the Dear Leader proceeds to produce a glorious mishmash of misunderstanding, exaggeration and things that are, well, just plain wrong. Masterful stuff, Tone. What else? The removal of jury trials is in 'a small number of cases', the introduction of control orders is for 'a small number of cases'. Bollocks. Every wedge has a thin end, and there's nothing in the legislation that limits the number of times it's used. It's the words on the statute book that matter, not the bland reassurances of a professional liar.

He uses the Brian Haw protest in Parliament Square as an example of freedom of speech in action despite the strenuous efforts of the Home Office to remove it, up to and including passing a law specifically aimed at it. That's taking brazen cheek to a whole new level. Brian Haw is still there mainly because of Brian Haw and partly because of the High Court, and I doubt either of them will be terribly chuffed that Tony is taking the credit. One could say he is just plain wrong.

Virtually everything he says is at right angles to reality - control orders have "elaborate mechanisms of scrutiny and oversight." - back in the real world Mr. Justice Sullivan's opinion is rather different:

The 'elaborate mechanisms' consist, in reality, of Charles Clarke's hand, a pen and a piece of paper.

I really urge you all to read the correspondence and pass it on - it's a remarkable document. It's not often you see that many Blair half-truths and whole lies written down so neatly. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. This'll keep us going for months.

The laughable Denis MacShane suggests in his article that Lord Steyn, who currently acts as a lightning conductor for the disapproval aimed by inadequate politicians at senior judges, should give up his seat in the Lords now he's retired as a Law Lord. His brass neck award comes with this section:

Could someone please assist us and examine the knuckles of Sir Gulam Noon, Chai Patel, Barry Townsley and David Garrard to see if they measure up to the required degree of letterbox scarring? Alternatively, we'll have a whip round and buy the poor suffering Mr. MacShane some serviceable gloves, with a short note explaining that Mr. Blair doesn't like people questioning how people become Lords, and he'd be wise to keep off the subject.

As it happens, Lord Steyn is a prominent supporter of the rule of law. He was an opponent of apartheid (he's South African) and in his time has stood up against Augusto Pinochet and the excrescence that is Guantanamo Bay. That a man like this is now considered to be a natural enemy of New Labour is conclusive proof of the argument that Tony and co. aren't remotely good news when it comes to law and order, justice and fairness. Steyn was also instrumental in the introduction of the Human Rights Act, so Tony's boasts about that one are at the very least hypocritical.

Mr. MacShane could do with reading this article. He needn't get much further than the first sentence:

I strongly urge Mr. MacShane to follow the noble Lord's lead and keep his cakehole shut. If he'd taken this advice before putting his name to such a fearful load of old bollocks he'd have saved himself a lot of ridicule. The part on ID cards is particularly gruesome. The man must be thicker than a two-brick sandwich.

*UPDATE* Chicken Yoghurt were working on the same story - check it out here.