Men of goodwill disagreed today

Silent Hunter

My understanding is that this bill cannot be repealed.

It can be amended, but not repealed.

Let's not kid ourselves here as to the magnitude of what this venal & corrupt Labour Government have done to us tonight.........they have overthrown centuries of natural justice and the very essence of what it meant to 'be British'.

They should be removed by a citizens revolt rather than a General Election.

The utter bastards!!! >:O(

Sherlock

This is Conservative Home's finest hour - free speech and democracy in action - many activists weren't happy, but in order to revive politics there needs to be open discussion.

It is clear from this post that the Conservatives need to rethink their position on 42 days, though.

Gary Monro

If the Tories do not repeal this legislation it will be more because they fear the electoral consequences than because they believe the legislation is effective.

This - and the horse-trading that seems to have taken place in order that the government get its way - illustrate exactly why we cannot trust any government with our liberty. Human nature just doesn't allow them to treat it with the reverence it requires - and we deserve.

quietlycontrarian.blogspot.com/

ChrisD

"They are two people who can not be accused of playing politics with national security, something that some of their more shrill commenters should bear in mind."

With the timing of that editorial and the drum roll you could almost hear when it was rolled out today, you must be joking!
And excuse me, but just maybe some of those shrill commentators were thinking more about the ill timing of this intervention and the way it was then used to misrepresent their views!
With what I witnessed today in our Parliament, please don't lecture the people who had nothing to gain other than the hard fought for right of liberty and democracy for feeling rightly angered at the way their Parliament turned into a fire sell on principles using taxpayers money.
Just once in while can we stop the love in among certain journalists and commentators, step back and look at the wider implications of their actions?
The timing of this editorial was no more thought out to its conclusion than the dogs dinner that is this legislation.

Kevyn Bodman

There are 'men of goodwill' on both sides, true.
I don't include 'MPs who voted against their better judgment tonight out of loyalty to their party' as men of goodwill.
They've voted to restrict my freedoms.
This is not going to stop with terrorist suspects; demonstrators and dissidents will be on the target list within a few years, but they'll be defined as terrorist suspects so that'll be OK.
Won't it?

Fred

Well it will be a useful guide to the Tories in power, won't it? What every one learnt about Blair Brown and their gang was that things said in Opposition, promises made, were worthless. Will Cameron be different?

David

No parliament can bind its successor, Silent Hunter.

Fergus Pickering

What, Igather we have got, is a bill which is unworkable partly because of all the last minute tinkering. But that doesn't matter because the Lords will hold it up and by the time Brown gets it through the Goverrnment will be on its last legs. What you idle journalists should do is to explain to us what they do in France and Germany and the like when they want to bang up dangerous Muslims - because that's what we are talking about, isn't it? Or will the wicked word Muslim ensure that this contribution is pulled?

Chris

I don't know where you get that understanding, Silent Hunter. It certainly can be repealed. (I'm one of the few that don't think it matters if it isn't, and that the hysterical squealing about Magna Carta is silly self-indulgence, but there you go.)

Adam McNestrie

The 10p tax furore wasn’t about people paying a new starting rate for income tax; the 42-day pre-charge detention is not about the extension of government powers to hold terrorist suspects without charge. These are synthetic controveries spun from virtual issues. They represent the shadow cast by power in an age of consensus politics. An adversarial political system must have conflict; the heat generated by partisan political conflict has to find a site for its release. And so, like the United States and the Soviet Union in 1970’s and 1980’s, we get proxy wars – conflicts purporting to be about one thing (social justice; the liberty of the individual) which ultimately are about something else altogether.

Read my blog, just who the hell are we?, at:
http://adammcnestrie.wordpress.com/

C Powell

Conservative Home were quite wrong in their views, just as they were wrong to come out in support of ID cards. This is a fundamental issue of principle on where the balance of power as between the state and the citizen should lie. Labour and the DUP have put themselves on the wrong side. The Tories - if they mean to stand for anything - should be on the side of the individual, on the side of individual liberty and freedom, in favour of curbing the powers of an over-mighty and intrusive state. If Tim Montgomerie doesn't understand this, then he is not worth listening to.

As to being "soft on terror", don't make me laugh: it's Labour who are soft on terror. It is Labour which have abandoned all controls on immigration and let in all sorts of people who wish to do us harm, it is Labour who have failed to take action to deport those who are a danger to the UK, it is Labour who failed for years to take any action to prosecute in this country those who threatened us (remember they only prosecuted Abu Hamza after the US asked for his extradition), it is Labour who pursued the multicultural agenda which allowed extremist groups to flourish here, it is Labour who tried to close down any debate on whether it was in our interests to have immigrants from radically different cultures by shouting "racism", it was Labour who failed to taken any steps to assimilate immigrants, it was Labour who sucked up to self-appointed community leaders in order to get their votes (and was none too fussy about how those votes were cast) who were in denial about the terrorists within their community, it was Labour who last year said that we mustn't make any linkage between Islam and terrorism even though an Islamist ideology is at the heart of the current terrorist threat we face. It is Labour which has failed to take the terrorist threat seriously, failed to understand it, failed to take the day-to-day steps to counter it but then uses it to aggrandize its own power, attack our freedoms and save the face of a discredited and unelected Prime Minister. Utterly utterly shameful.

John

Silent Hunter is exactly that kind of shrill critic who will never be open to persuasion, since all he does is spout slogans. I have seen bloggers elsewhere asking, with the air of Socratic sages: What can you achieve in 42 days that you cannot achieve in 28? Well, you can achieve 14-days' worth of additional information gathering. Duh!
That's why I have always supported 42 days, notwithstanding the fact that I loathe this government.
And btw: the beginning of the end was last autumn, when Bean didn't call an election.

john miller

What a hoot - the Government have certainly got a handle on the penal system. Get 'em in the nick early, before you have any evidence and let 'em out early (29,000 last year) because you haven't any room.

At rate, the prisons will be full of people who haven't any evidence against them - and that must be the last thing the government wants, eh?

TColvin

Fergus Pickering; would you have said the government banged up Catholics when the IRA were bombing us? No. So be a good chap and practice consistency.

David C

"Politically, I think tonight was a wash. If Brown had lost, it really would have been the beginning of the end. But I don’t think a win delivered by the Democratic Unionists is going to mark the beginning of any great Brown revival."

My apologies and it may seem counter-intuitive, but if Brown had lost the vote, I think that it would have done his cause some good.
To be defeated over a measure of his own choosing, in which he has (apparently) the support of the public would have helped with his credibility.
The public respects somebody who can 'take knocks' as well as hand them out.
But with the second part, I wholeheartedly agree. The 'behind the scenes deals', the spin, the arm-twisting, the appeals to loyalty rather than principle while shreiking about the opposition's 'lack of principle', the willingness to eviscerate the measure simply to get its 'name on the books'.
The public, even those who support the measure, will look at all of that and see the man behind it as a Bully and a Coward and a Fraud.

cuffleyburgers

Does this men of good will umbrella term extend also the DUP worms who sold their principles down the river in exchange for some as-yet-unclarified bribe?

JONNY

Just wondering how Matthew d'Ancona would stand up to the psychological torture of 42 days in solitary without evidence or trial, knowing he was innocent.
Sorry. That's stupid. Of course it won't happen to the likes of him. Just those other people...

mart

James, I hadn't considered the idea of a free vote on this subject before you wrote it here.

Giving a free vote would have commanded much respect in the country, especially because the issue is not party-political.

See what coverage the Commons received in the media when they discussed 24 weeks recently. MPs gave speeches that were worth listening to, and the country respected them more for it.

Instead what we have here looks like a very low politics indeed, with deals being done behind the scenes.

Talia

Very, very well said, C Powell

PayDirt

I trust the Conservatives will not repeal the 42-day detention measure and I hope the Lords have the sense to pass into law. It’s no good the wonderful and proud British nation spouting on about the loss of ancient freedoms. We no longer live in the Magna Carta era, etc etc. The present, and increasingly the future, danger is from fanatics who stop at nothing to destroy civilization, such people exist without doubt and they will have the means at their disposal. You’d all better believe our police can distinguish a fanatic from a parking offender whatever. British culture is wrapped up in our man on the street policeman, not in some mythical ancient freedom. These fanatics are not criminals who could so easily escape via the many legal loopholes, they are a special case requiring special measures. What does Verity think?