Brown nabs another Tory idea

hogarth zombie

the tories are plain wrong about detention of suspects - they keep banging on about the rules in other countries. but in europe only spain has had anything like 7/7 and the various bomb plots. it is a complete mystery why the Conservative Party should set its face against the advice of the police on this of all matters

hogarth zombie

the tories are plain wrong about detention of suspects - they keep banging on about the rules in other countries. but in europe only spain has had anything like 7/7 and the various bomb plots. it is a complete mystery why the Conservative Party should set its face against the advice of the police on this of all matters

James T Kirk

I wonder what Quentin Davies is thinking, now that he realizes he has joined a government which relies for a key element of its security measures on a policy poached from the party he just deserted?

MikeA

The 90 (or is it 56?) day detention of suspects is pure politics not practical law enforcement. Show me exactly where 90/56 day detention would have helped in any of the current terrorist investigations / convictions? The 90/56 day detention is a political signal..."We NuLab are strong on fighting terror (ignoring that their misguided policies are complicit in encouraging it) and will grant the police draconian powers to eliminate it, unlike the soft-on-terror tories and libdems who oppose 90day detention on lily-livered civil liberties grounds." It makes NuLab look strong (when actually they are weak) on terror. Who cares if 90/56 days makes a difference? It's great politics. This also totally ignores the fact that the police are very well armed to fight terrorism. Also don't forget that new anti-terrorist legislation seems to get used for non-terrorist crimes. Remember the Natwest 5, they got extradited to the US on a one-sided and fast tracked extradition process that was put in to combat terrorism. Remember Walter Wolfgang who called Jack Straw a liar at the Labour party Brighton conference and was violently ejected by Labour thugs. He was arrested by Sussex police under anti-terrorism laws. But sadly hogarth zombie is right. The Tories and LibDems are on the wrong side of this argument with the public.

Carroll Powell

Why does this put the Tories in a tricky position? It just proves they were right all along. No-one's made the case for a 56-day detention period nor for ID cards. Anyway the key thing is to make sure the police actually do their job - the border police won't be any good if they sit around filling in forms and meeting pointless Government targets, a point I hope David Davis will keep on making.

EyeSee

Grow up! We want the best solutions. If Brown has to get all his ideas from the Tories and is constantly doing U turns on his own policies a)we get the best solutions b) the electorate can see what is going on, so c) the Tories have to point out that it is possible to vote for the party that have been right all along. No the country cannot afford to give Labour a chance (let alone ten years to spend the inheritance) so the sooner we get back to mending the fences and much else the better. I still don't understand why we need detention without charge? If we have some idea that those held are up to no good, we must have some evidence, enough to charge them to get the ball rolling as it were? Blimey we hold enough people on remand for doing pretty much nothing every day! Perhaps it's like the reassurances we get from Brown about how successful the security services are at defeating loads of terrorist plots. Which strangely don't uncover any weapons or explosives, or lead to any arrests, except the one where a member of the public called in about what some guy was storing. Oh and the ones that go off. So many lies Mr Brown, so many mistakes to cover up and do U turns on.