The fault-line at the heart of Liberal Conservativism

Rhoda Klapp

"It has to be right that we should be moving towards a cross-party consensus on these issues. "

Nope. A consensus with no opposition is apt to be a mistake. You'd need to be a great deal surer when that consensus is in favour of limiting freedoms.

I thought I was supposed to be the right-winger here, and you were the fighter for liberty?

Naomi Muse

Party political divisions stop so much common sense coordination. Ban the Whips and more cooperation may happen without the cosh.

Tarka the Rotter

no fault lines at the heart of Labour then..?

Richard of Moscow

The 28-day detention without charge is not only cowardly, it is crass political posturing and totally unnecessary. The Police do not need any evidence to charge anyone with a crime; indeed, they frequently fail to provide the CPS with any evidence for months after charging an individual, and all this leads to is more adjourments until the CPS finally receive enough to prosecute.
Nothing sinister about this - the police just like to scour all the evidence before finally passing it on, so they can remove all the bits that make them look like incompetent pillocks.

BFM

faultine? is that like a saltine?

David Bouvier

Control orders (house arrest without trial of the would be used so well by some future regime to create our own Aung San Suu Kyi's) only exist because the judges have refused to balance the risk that other countries might violate the "human rights" of our enemies against the legitimate security needs of our state. I believe people subject to control orders are free to leave the country any time, but know they couldn't come back.

The solution is to challenge the core problem - which is to legislate that where the government judges security is seriously at risk they can deport or exclude foreign nationals regardless, and to preserve the liberties of us all. Then we can scrap control orders.

Dave

The primary enemy of any people is their own government. Admittedly some are worse than others, but when they put you in the firing line and then say they can save you by creating a police state, you know your in trouble.

cuffleyburgers

Of course there is a threat, but the subtlety of the islamists' approach is precisely that all they have to do is some incompetent and non deadly act and sit back and watch the government turn the ratchet another couple of notches.

There is nothing politicians love better than to go on telly adopting a grave expression and say in hushed tones that there is nothing in public life as difficult as ordering armed thugs to assassinate an unarmed man on a tube train/drunk in an apartment (delete according to the case), it is far more agreeable than trying to figure out how to save the economy from melt down induced by the purchasing of votes by the application of wheelbarrow loads of used other peoples' fivers as favoured by labour.

wrinkled weasel

The idea of information sharing with HM Opposition is wooly. The Opposition are the opposition by virtue of them not being elected to govern, and given their record over the last thirteen years, I wouldn't trust them with the secret of how to saw a woman in half, let alone sensitive terrorist data.

Hugh

Where does the Privy Council come in all this?

Edward McLaughlin

Have you started your Christmas holiday or is there nothing happening in the world worth mentioning?

Rhoda Klapp

Edward, please don't bait Martin. I regard it as my own province.

I for one am avidly waiting to hear about the future of left-wing thinking, as promised in the late spring. Can't be long now.

EC

Gardening Leave?

Herbert Thornton

David Bouvier is right.

The government should be completely free to -

1. Refuse entry to people whose presence in Britain the government considers undesirable;

2. Deport any such people as are already in the country even if they have acquired British citizenship; and

3. Deport to their ancestral countries of origin people whose presence is considered undesirable and who, though they may have been born in Britain, are descended from anyone who immigrated during the previous 50 years.

Herbert Thornton

Hugh (November 11th, 2010 1:42pm) -

You ask - "Where does the Privy Council come in all this?"

I don't think the Privy Council comes into anything much any more.

Roughly speaking it consists of selected people who are and who have been Cabinet ministers, but those who no longer are in the Cabinet have only a shadowy presence. It's functions are largely (but not entirely) formal & consist mostly of approving Orders in Council and some regulations. It can be thought of as a sort of committee of the Cabinet.

"Privy Council" can also refer to the court that has, or had, the full title of The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. It was roughly the same people as constituted as the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords but sitting with different caps on. In either case they were the final court of appeal - the Lords being the court that decided on lawsuits originating in Britain and their incarnations as the Privy Council being the court that decided on lawsuits originating in the Dominions and colonies.