JohnBM:Liberal

For the last month something hasn’t seemed quite right about politics in the UK. For a while I have struggled to put my finger on what is out of place.

It started with the expenses row and crescendoed during the McBride smear e-mail story.

It was not until I saw the distorted image of  “Uncle Joe” Brown on the Number10 website, that it began to dawn on me what had been niggling in the back of my mind.

Whilst Uncle Joe was telling the amassed peoples of the world how he was going to completely reform politics with his previously undiscussed “pay-as-you-go” expenses scheme (RIP silly scheme), I cruelly chuckled at his forced grimaces. It was at this point that the penny dropped.

What I was witnessing were the last gasps of the New Labour machine trying to circumvent the old media and set the news agenda through the Number10 website.

Labour had lost control of the media and there was no going back.

Since the early 1990s the Labour Party had attempted to morph the news agenda through Mandelson, Campbell et al. Of course this had not always been fully successful but at least there was a feeling that there was someone behind the scenes massaging the shoulders of hacks, editors and producers or sticking the knife in.

On Tuesday evening last week I realised that Gordon’s grimace was a symptom of the death of the New Labour media machine. There was no longer anybody in the government or party able to tell the Dear Leader that what he was doing  was “a very bad idea”.

At no point on Budget Day did Captain Darling and the Government control “the message”. All day the “invest today” and “tax the rich” message was drowned out by the “huge debt” and “tax hikes tomorrow” story.

For about a month now, the Government has failed to seize the news agenda at any point, either in relation to the budget or any other policy announcement.

There is only one point in recent political history can I remember this occurring to the same extent.

1997 and the last days of the Major Government.

We’re in the end game and I can smell the stench of death.

I say “No shinola sherlock”

Stella Rimington is absolutely right when she talks of  people in Britain feeling as if they were living “under a police state”.

42 days detention without trial, ID cards, CCTV, dubious arrests under terrorism laws, your emails and txt messages spied on, Guantanamo, rendition by and torture for UK and US secret services, house arrest without trial…

In seven years the Labour Government has torn up the liberties of the British citizen and replaced them with a hotchpotch of pseudo-totalitarian knee jerk reactions aided and abetted by the gutter press.

The initial reaction of Tony Blair (remember him) following the attacks on September 11th 2001 was that we would stand up to terrorism and the British way of life would not be changed by terrorism.

Since then, the government has introduced legistation, statutory instruments and policy which has impacted on the British way of life and liberty more than ever before.

The biggest problem with these kind of laws is that once they are on the statute books they are incredibly difficult to repeal without the Mail and Express screaming “WEAK ON TERROR…TERROR SUSPECTS ARE LOWERING OUR HOUSE PRICES!!!!”

It was said by Lib Dems at the time that if we must have liberty curtailing legislation it must always be subject to a sunset clause to ensure it either lapses or has to be renewed after a few years.

Stella Rimington’s comments echo yesterday’s publication of a study by the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) that accuses the US and the UK of undermining the framework of international law.

Now is the time to roll back these draconian laws and policies.

Lets fight terror with democracy and freedom not more terror.

QI fact: Stella Rimington’s father-in-law wrote a biography of my great-grandfather.