Brakes applied to a police state
Blair was “quite rightly” defeated last night in his attempt to allow 90 days detention without trial. His reasoning was spurious. He said afterwards
When the police say they are fighting mass-casualty terrorism and they provide examples of why they need the powers, I think you need powerful reasons to turn round and say no to them.
But they didn’t provide examples; they provided explanations. They did not demonstrate why 90 days was needed, but 89 days or 88 days or 28 days or 14 days was useless. The 90 day figure was random. Tony Blair forgot (or ignored) the fact that politicians do not represent the police. They should not do everything the police ask for. They must understand the needs of the police and of the citizens and balance the two. Tony Blair looked like he was running a police state because he considered the wishes of the police without attention to the needs of the people.
He looks even more foolish if you believe Frank Dobson when he said
I think the police asked for three months thinking they would get six weeks, and if the government had kept its promise and come up with a compromise, that vote might have gone through.
He’s saying the police knew it was a punt and didn’t take the figure literally, either. This makes Blair look like a voluntarily dumb instrument of the police.
It echoes, too, Simon Jenkins’ description of “the prime minister as a star-struck wimp”, as described in Sir Christopher Meyers’ memoirs. In this case he’s been dazzled by the uniforms and hard stories of the police.
Tony Blair needs to remind himself of what his job is really about.
