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Thursday | 12 June 2008 | 09:34 PM
Who do you think you are kidding, Mr Braun?
I'm tired.
I have been up in London for most of this week, interviewing various people for a report on the way civil liberties in the UK are being restricted.
So I watched the 42-day detention vote in Parliament yesterday with even more interest than usual. I followed the debate from PMQs all the way through to the final, despicable result and it was all I could do not to get blind drunk afterwards to drown my sorrows.
The debate was, though it might sound ridiculous, inspirational. It restored my faith in MPs, and it restored my faith in Parliament. They demolished the bill. Completely tore it to shreds. No-one watching it could have failed to see and be deeply worried by the fundamental flaws in the principle and the practice of the government's proposals.
That the government won was bad enough. The manner of their 'victory' was truly, gut-twistingly awful. Diane Abbott was spot on when she called it a 'grubby bazaar'. Gordon Brown has bent over backwards to trade fundamental civil liberties for his own personal ambition, and he didn't even manage to achieve an effective anti-terror measure along the way. I don't think there's any way he will ever escape that. It may take a while, but this is the end of him, and the end of New Labour.
It can't come too soon.
Posted by slowdown at 9:34 PM
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Tags: Brown, civil+liberties, free+speech, liberties, politics, protest, uk
