The system overreach must come to an end

You don’t need a cat-stroking authoritarian to damage democracy and erode liberties. You just need to sit back and talk as if the system is a law unto itself. I believe Gordon Brown is being honest when he denies knowledge of the Damian Green arrest. No10 knows there will be an inquiry, and it will come out who knew what. But ignorance is no defence. System overreach is one of the gravest possible threats to democracy, and it is precisely by tolerating it that we lose the open society which a couple of generations ago so many died to defend.

In my News of the World column today, I say the Green arrest is an allegory for what has happened to Britain. It’s not just the police, but the local authorities which use anti-terror power to spy on the people they’re supposed to serve – always seeking ways to justify their salary and staff levels.