‘If there’s a vote of no confidence on 42 days, we’ll win’

David

I'm stunned that the Spectator, supposedly a bastion of old fashioned liberalism, is giving such an easy ride to such illiberal proposals.

Cos

Slush. The Spectator can do better than this.

cuffleyburgers

I have no doubt the average west Midlands housewife can see through these proposals for what they are - naked macho posturing to try to divert attention from the shocking shambles they have made of this country. Oldest political trick in the book and one of the shabbiest.

Jonny

While we're about it, why not make her PM? Damn sure she'd make a spanking good 'un.

Chris

My congratulations to the "prominent conservative acquaintance". It's nice to read about someone standing up for what's right.

The Laughing Cavalier

It is shocking that the Editor of The Spectator should be supporting such an authoritarian regime.

Anthony Kenny

This is a badly written article. It is extremely difficult to separate the interviewee's opinions from the interviewer's. I feel that I have just read a piece of propaganda.

Nigel Barlow

Strangely this is the fisrt time that I have understood the motivations behind what the government is doing.However I disagree with Jacqui Smith.The basis for this seems to be what may happen rather than what will happen.Surely in the event of the nightmare atrocity situation,all political parties will come together anyway to sort out the necessary legislation.
Matthew,well done for writing the article,and its good that the Spectator is able to devote space to this issue.

Chris

Why are people pretending Smith could be the next Labour leader? She will lose her seat at the next election! Labour would have to be truly desperate to give her the job.

Hang on - they probably will make her leader now I think about it.

Tommy

Ah, The Spectator loves a little chat, eh? It would upset the tone, wouldn’t it, to mention that this 42 day thing (which I support) is, after all, only a pathetic fig leaf for the fact that this government has left our borders open to every Tom, Dick and jihadi to waltz in and do pretty much as they damn well please – until it’s all too late and Gordy comes out with this thinking we haven’t noticed who’s allowed all this to happen.

Cue the phoney cliché about ‘the impact upon Muslim communities’ – yeah, their ‘sensitivities’ come before everybody else’s safety. I keep forgetting.

Why is it that people only worry “an extension to 42 days might alienate British Muslims and act as a ‘recruiting sergeant’ for al-Qa’eda and its affiliates”? Why don’t the press fear that other groups of people will act this way. It’s not a law framed solely for Muslims, it’s a law that would apply to everyone.

Why is their special dispensation to suggest one group of people to feel aggrieved by this law?

Sounds like one rule for some and another rule for the rest of us to me. Mind you, that’s the long term goal of the Caliphate.

The truth is that it’s only when non-Muslims start blowing things up that they’ll get the same kind of kid glove treatment from Jacqui and friends. This government doesn’t give two figs for you and your ‘community’ unless you’ve tried to blow something up.

I do hope al Qaeda never attack Parliament. It would break my heart if the people who’ve given them the conditions in which to operate got hoist on their own appeasing petard.

Chin, chin.

jsfl

It's all irrelevent.

The legislation is now so watered down it is a toothless waste of taxpayers money.

The Euro Commissioner has indicated his opposition to it so no doubt it will be challenged in the ECHR and declared illegal.

Jacqui Smith will lose her seat at the next GE and that will end any consideration of her leadership potential.

Labour is terminally tainted, Smith is terminally tainted and so is 42 days.

Given that back in March Yougov showed that 70% of those polled preferred the Conservative proposals over 42 days (which recieved support from only 13%) all this achieves is to put another couple of nails in Labour's coffin and from that perspective their political stupidity is such is of benefit to the country because it brings us a little closer to their demise. The sooner that happens and the longer it remains the same, the better.

Lord Truth

The function of this measure has nothing to do with giving time to allow the intelligence services to follow up leads etc

It is to create a situation in which everyone -but Muslims especially-are forced to live in continuous fear-as in Nazi Germany.
For example, suddenly the police arrive and take you away. You are not told why or given any reason.
After seven weeks of terror for you and your wife etc., a friendly policeman opens the door of your cell with a nice cup of tea.
You can go now he says.
But what was it all about ?
Sorry cant tell you but off you go...
This is precisely the technique used in any dictatorship, though in Nazi Germany the policeman would probably give you a kick up the backside as you left.

The idea is to create an atmoshere of terror and thus nip possible terrorists in the bud-so why not say this instead of lying in this disreputable way?

Wol

"Let’s not forget, when we were elected in 1997, there were people at that point and probably for years since — including some of our own supporters — who had some pretty fundamental doubts about whether or not a Labour government could ever take the tough decisions necessary for national security."

Good Grief, she must think we are all stupid (or the products of Labour educational policies)!

Tough decisions? On national
security? This government?

Incredible.

Guy H

"... one has to remind oneself that the issue at hand is how to stop fundamentalists killing hundreds of people ..."

No it isn't. A plot is stopped by the initial arrest. The arrest is effected either by intelligence or by chance discovery - that has not chamged in centuries, never mind the last 10 years. The length of detention before charge afterwards has no effect whatsoever either in relation to those arrested - if there is evidence against them warranting an arrest in the first place - or the further intelligence to be recovered by search.

The only plausible practical functions of lengthy detention periods without charge are to permit fishing expeditions or intimidatory policing.

The plausible *political* function, only achieved by a constant struggle for 'tougher' measures, is a form of terrorism itself - the promotion of public fearfulness for political advantage, to persuade us we need those who are currently in charge. This has been the present Government's strategy pursued consistently since 2002/3.

Roy Roebuck

Ld Goldsmith was not a member of the Cabinet. He outrageously attended most Cabinet meetings, the first Attorney General to do so since the first Lord Hailsham. It is clear from your attitude why Ms Smith was jolly pleased to be interviewed by you.

Chingford Man

What a lazy, schmoozing load of rubbish. Mr d'Ancona should be embarrassed at putting this agitprop in his mag.

Anyone who saw David Miliband on Question Time being skewered by Douglas Hurd, Vince Cable, Shami Chakribarti (hope that's the right spelling) and the excellent Peter Hitchens, could see what this 42 day measure is all about. It's about saving Brown's neck. Shame on The Spectator for coming to Labour's aid at the expense of our liberties.

And bravo to the discerning "conservative acquaintance" who cares about our hard-won freedoms a damned sight more, apparently, than the Editor.

Cupcake

Guy H

“A plot is stopped by the initial arrest” Duh, yeah, and what if they can’t sort through the evidence in time to bring a charge before the custody time limit expires? This happens now in non-terrorist cases, in which people are released without charge and then picked up later. This cannot be allowed to happen, though, when the stakes involve mass murder. TIme won't wait.

Some of the cases we’ve already seen involved locating, retrieving and going through computer files in Australia for heaven’s sake.

42 days is the maximum. Not everyone arrested will be in custody for 42 days and then the police decide whether to charge.

The law is designed for particularly convoluted cases, in particular picking up the brains and assistants behind plots who may not have left much of a trail but whose may crop up in computer documents that have to be put together in jigsaw fashion with other bits of evidence to determine whether there is a case to answer.

If you want to see just how much work goes into these trials, go down to the public gallery at the Old Bailey or Woolwich Crown Court and you’ll see the acres and acres of box files involved in cases like this, and that’s only what they’re relying on in court. It doesn’t count what they had to get through to get there.

Looks like the lemmings of Britain need a load more body bags before they understand. The ghost of Neville Chamberlain walks on.

Pathetic.

Chingford Man

Yes, let's see how the "average West Midlands housewife" might view things. She'd be fed up with our invisible politically correct police, disorder on the streets, social security spongers, MRSA in her hospital, bad schools, expensive public transport and tinpot town halls. But most of all she might resent this wretched government of the metropolitan left which views her and her family as a milchcow.

And if the said housewife lives in, say Redditch, she has the opportunity to sack her Member of Parliament who boasts of safe streets whilst munching a kebab surrounded by bodyguards.

Speccie was my favourite Magazine

No wonder Oborne left. Shame on you d'Ancona, you really are just another member of the political class. I always found these puff articles strange - you know - the ones praising Brown's "titanic intellect" because he made a speech in which he referenced some names he'd probably never read. Now we have another, singing the praises of such an obvious third-rater as Ms. Smith, because she's prepared - in that shrill, hectoring way of hers - to foist this ghastly measure on a an unwilling British polity. Only in our wizened and emasculated Parliament - cheers Blair! - could she even hope of getting away with it. It doesn't help when she's given cover by the Editor of the Spectator. Maybe I'll take a leaf out of Peter Hitchens' book and return my subscription.

Haldane

This is a very sloppy and dangerous article.To avoid any doubt or confusion the Editor's views should be kept for the Leader not intermingled with a soft interview with an intellectual lightweight.
The article could have been so much more rigorous. What about a replay with Simon Jenkins or Henry Porter?

Kram Ekosum

Thankyou Haldane. What is this nonsense doing in The Spectator? Correct me if I am wrong - I thought under Common Law you don't need such legislation, in rare circumstances you ask a judge to grant extension for detention. Political point scoring with serious legal principles is a shame but also a sign of New Labour's vanity and stupidity. They can easily win the 42 day vote but does that endear them to their constituents? Will they sleep better at night? Will it actually help convict real terrorists? No, No, No. Do Labour MPs think that Joanna Public is so feckless? Yes, that shows us how little they respect the electorate. Where have the serious journalists gone to? Bring back Oborne!

Frank Pulley

The tsunami of negative critiques on this shameful piece of puffery is entirely justified. There would have been one more if either (a) the moderator had not been protecting the tender susceptibilities of the Editor or (b) the Editor had not told the moderator to spike it. Given some of the insults in the ones that were published, you can safely infer that mine was a little riper than most of them - mainly on the subject of the "humanity" and "twinkling blue eyes" of our "Home Secretary" and the "under-promotion" of her Minister Mc Dumpt; though I had suggested earlier that this must be a piss-take and that the author was invidiously praising the plotters against Brown to cause trouble in the enemy camp. Anyway it finished up in the cybermuda triangle (as will this one no doubt).

jon livesey

I feel a sense of despair over this one. Not just on the issue, but on the clear self-delusion - to be charitable - of the main players.

Here is a Home Secretary getting a clear run as she openly claims that part of her motivation is to prove that Labour can take "tough" decisions on security. Not "right" or "wise" you know, just "tough".

Then I see the author of the piece bewailing a friend accusing him of favouring arbitrary detention, when that is exactly what he does favour. There's no "accusation" here; it is a plain fact.

And then there is the confusion - to put it kindly - over the technology. There are lot of "disks", are there? Poor dears. I copy disks in tens of seconds, not tens of days.

And do the disks need to be decrypted? Well, so do all the millions of signals that the NSA and GHQ suck out of the air every day. Is Ms Smith really telling us that GHQ tell Cabinet that they can learn what Putin is saying in, well, how about 42 days time? Pull the other one, Ms Smith.

This whole argument is a mess from beginning to end. It veers back and forth between misleading technical points, to "being tough" rhetoric, to appeals to emotion, and finally winds down among the wisdom of "West Midlands housewives". Dear God.

And to add insult to our intelligence to injury, we are told that we have to have this "reserve" power just in case, when anyone knows that in an emergency Parliament could pass the required legislation in hours, as they did many times before in wartime.

I don't sit in Cabinet, so I am not privy to what's really going on here, but I know a bogus argument when I hear it. the Government's overt arguments smell to high heaven precisely because they are unwilling to tell us their real reasons for wanting these new restrictions on liberty.

I look forward to the day when a very embarrassed Ms Smith or a successor, explains to us that these regulations are no longer needed. If that day comes, what will be the reason? And if that day never comes, well, we let it happen, didn't we.

Frank Pulley

john livesey

Great post. Every paragraph a damning indictment of the Government's mendacity; a politicised management in the police 'service'; and an implicit reprimand to the apparently susceptible Editor of a Magazine that should be hounding this bankrupt Government out of office, rather than admiring one of its 'pin striped' (apparat)chicks with 'twinkling blue eyes.'

Perry

Who really cares? It’ll never be used. Well, not with those baddies the so-called Government takes as it’s bosom-buddies.

There again, might need to re-think that. A truly innocent person might get caught up in the nonsense.

Laura

I woke up this Sunday to Shami Chakrabarti on Adam Boulton's show. What's she doing on TV every time these issues crop up talking about "our" rights?

My right, madam, is to go about my business without ending up looking like I've been put through a mincer.

She wouldn't stop. At one point she even said something like: they shouldn't be arresting people and then letting them go in order to catch bigger players in conspiracy - "put up, or shut up" she said. And Buolton? Let all that go unchallenged.

This is basic, basic, law enforcement. It happens in white collar fraud, narcotics and armed robbery cases - anything with a conspiracy. The police always throw back the minnows into the water if they think they can use them to follow the trail to the sharks. Chakrabarti was sat there shamelessly arguing there should be special exemption against this normal practice in terrorist cases. Does Adam Boulton have a tongue in his head? Say something, man.

And she wittered on her usual guff about using intercept evidence in court. Yes, Shami, what you didn't say is that in every country that has adopted this policy, the level of information gleaned from telephone calls has plummeted. As if terrorists aren't going to cotton on to their being listened to once transcripts of that stuff ended up all over the papers in court reports.

And is Ms Smith surprised the public seee through Labour's weakness on terror in today's poll? Yoo hoo, Jacqui. It's called the Human Worngs Act. It's behind you every time you open your mouth.

What a shambles.

Paddy Briggs

Excellent article - fair and balanced. What we buy The Spectator for.

NimrodTroyte

I'm a little puzzled about all this.

The police can charge an offender with any vaguely relevant offence after a crime has been committed and then ask a magistrate/judge to deny a suspect bail.

This is called a 'holding charge', for example those at Glasgow Airport last year could have been charged with 'reckless driving' and remanded in custody on a number of grounds.

Once a suspect has been remanded in custody the police can then go about their business of searching for evidence, with ever more efficient use of technology.

The benefit is clear - our system of justice allows the suspect the opportunity to make representations in open court in an attempt to secure his/her liberty.

Does Smith wish to turn Long Lartin into Abu Ghraib?