Labour’s terror u-turn doesn’t lessen its authoritarianism

DavidDP

"the New Generation"

Please. Stop it.

Andy

They are still a set of Fascists. The only difference is they are now, thank God, out of power. Long may they remain so.

TrevorsDen

Agreed David ... and Ed Balls a mastermind? Pleeeze!

If you are convicted - then your DNA goes on record. Why should I (not a criminal!) give up my DNA to a govt that could be headed by Ed Balls? Balls talks rubbish. We the public are not individuals to Balls and his like. We are just components to be manipulated. Objects to be told what to do.
Balls is just Big Brother - even looks like him.

Luke

It's a substantive change in direction by the new generation, as you say. I wouldn't under-estimate the possible impact of a more liberal labour party on British politics.

Frank P

Typo alert: should be the New Degeneration.

Nicholas

Yes, please don't collude with Labour in this "New Generation" nonsense. There is nothing new about this lot. They are just Brown's old gang trying desperately to rehabilitate Labour by distancing themselves from the policies, incompetence and malevolence they were largely responsible for. It's laughably manipulative and you should be exposing it and ridiculing it - not pontificating about its prospects.

Chris

"Civil liberties provide contention over the Dolcelatte and port; no one else is interested"

This is what the authoritarians always say. It's not true. People may articulate it differently, but everyone knows we live in a bureaucratic, bossy nightmare. They want the coalition to make it stop.

Vulture

The tide of history is running against liberalism.

After the inevitable next Islamist atrocity we will see the Coalition swing inexorably behind draconian surveillance laws - just wait and see.

Mind you, they still won't be draconian enough.

Tarka the Rotter

Which Tory MP was so patronising about his constituents knowing about John Locke? Name the blighter. MInd you, he has a point thanks to years of the stultifying National Curriculum 'bite-sized chunks' of history which conveniently ignores the constitutional struggles of the seventeenth century... More importantly, MPs are elected to ensure a watch is kept on the executive, that legislation does not infringe on the liberties of the people as enshrined in Common Law - so he should do what he's paid to do. As for Balls and his slight of hand... he'd make the perfect Cardinal Waleran Bygod in 'Pillars of the Earth'...

Rhoda Klapp

Is there no part of their record which they will stand behind?

Publius

Yes, please stop this "New Generation" idiocy.

I often think you write this stuff just to bait your readers.

TrevorsDen

Horribly 50 people were killed in 7/7. 60,000 civilians were killed in WW2. Yet Labour want to introduce more draconian measures than we had in WW2.

The only defence against terror is to ignore it. The greatest tragedy is that terrorists actually think that killing a few civilians will change policy. Its self evident that no govt no society can survive if it responds that way, so their methods are self defeating.

Simon Stephenson

Ed Balls - now there's a name to strike fear and suspicion into everyone who cares about the future of this country and those who live in it. A Son of Stalin, to whom words are no more than a means of getting what he wants, achieving what he wants to achieve, deceiving people into feeling differently about him and his intentions from how they would feel if they knew what he actually intends.

How regrettable it is that humanity should continue to throw up such people, and how fundamental to our future that they are recognised for what they are, and that they are not trusted further than one could kick them.

Verity

Simon Stephenson - "a son of Stalin", I like that, and "sons and daughters of Stalin" can be applied wholesale to the entire sinister socialist programme, with its roots in Common Purpose, of this toxic political construct.

Fergus Pickering

Balls - pretty adjacent to arsehole, wouldn't you say?

Simon Stephenson

"Horribly 50 people were killed in 7/7. 60,000 civilians were killed in WW2. Yet Labour want to introduce more draconian measures than we had in WW2."

But you won't twig the reasoning behind this if you think in the one-dimensional terms of looking at the security threat. Labour's strategy is to use every event, every crisis to advance the institution of Big-State authoritarianism. The response to any event is to increase the amount of State interference in individuals' lives. This is the focal point of their entire political philosophy - to promote in people the idea that they are nothing without the State, that they are subordinate to it in every way; and to do all in their power to establish this as normal, default, mainstream understanding.

It's not so much economic socialism that drives them, it's authoritarianism, pure and simple. And this is why so many of the horrors of modern society are common to all major political parties, whether supposedly of the right or the left. What binds them together is that they are all authoritarian, and what is the great worry for our future is that they should have been successful in establishing with so many of the general public that this is a wholesome and natural method of organisation under which we should live.

pharbitis

'Generation Ed?'
Some mix-up of letter and word order, perhaps?
Should it not be dE-generation?
Can't be New Generation as there is nothing 'new' about it ... same old etc.
Is this just careless journalsism after too long a lie-in on a Sunday?

Boudicca

It's all the usual balls from the Master himself. How do you know Balls is lying? Because he is blinking and speaking.

Nicholas

Simon Stephenson - two excellent analyses which contain more insight in far fewer words than most of the Spectator's blog posts.

Simon Stephenson

Nicholas : 4.34pm

Thank you for those kind words.

I think in my 2.19pm post, I left the way open for people to interpret Labour's behaviour as being just natural reaction by those concerned about dangers to society. Yes, they are pro-authoritarian in the way they expect to deal with society's problems, but what they do is no more than one would expect from a group of people with this particular outlook on social organisation.

It's more than this. If it were true that they were merely responding to situations in the only way they know how, then there would be reversals of authoritarian dictats when temporary dangers had passed by. There is no trace of this ever happening. Never has Labour concluded that bureaucratic meddling is no longer justified by the threat; never has it concluded that state intervention is in any way unnecessary or counter-productive; and never has it given any indication that it sees authoritarian advance as anything other than welcome, irrespective of the circumstances.

So the best-fit answer to what is going on is that Labour strategy is to fabricate the seriousness of events in order to maximise the feeling of fear and civil disquiet, so as to make possible the ever-upward ratcheting of State incursion into people's lives. The policies are not proportionate responses to the events, they're calculated permanent advances that masquerade as temporary actions dealing with crises that are largely illusionary.

Major Plonquer 1

Ed Balls couldn't 'mastermind' a fart at a baked bean eating contest.

Chris lancashire

You shouldn't use words such as "Balls" and "high-minded principles" in the same sentence.

tb

Labour doesn't support 90 days detention any more, they were wrong an apologise for that.

(but they do support 100 days detention)