{"id":972,"date":"2008-06-13T17:36:51","date_gmt":"2008-06-13T16:36:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/wordpress\/?p=972"},"modified":"2008-06-13T17:36:51","modified_gmt":"2008-06-13T16:36:51","slug":"has-british-politics-taken-leave-of-its-senses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=972","title":{"rendered":"Has British politics taken leave of its senses?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Roy Greenslade thinks so &#8211; as he explains <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.guardian.co.uk\/greenslade\/2008\/06\/kelvin_will_fight_and_kelvin_w.html\">here<\/a> &#8211; and it&#8217;s hard to disagree with him.<br \/>\nFirst, we have the absurdity of a Labour Government making an outrageous attack on our civil liberties by forcing through Parliament provision for detention without charge for up to 42 days by bullying its MPs and even bribing some of them and the Democratic Unionist Party. This is in spite of the fact that the measure is not necessary according to many knowledgeable observers; it won&#8217;t get through the House of Lords; and, if somehow it did, it would probably be challenged in the courts; and, if it did manage to be implemented, it would very rarely be used and, given all the concessions, its use would have no real effect.<br \/>\nYou would think that Gordon Brown has enough problems at the moment. So why is he doing this? Does he want to look as tough as Tony Blair? Does he want to make the Conservative Party look weak on terrorism? Both would be ignoble motives.<br \/>\nThen, we have the farce of the Shadow Home Secretary resigning from Parliament to the fury of his leader and his colleagues because he wants to fight a by-election on a single issue &#8211; very, very hard to guarantee &#8211; on a matter on which his party in Parliament is in agreement with him but on which many Conservative votes probably disagree with him. Only to find that neither Labour nor Lib Dems intend to co-operate with this charade by fielding a candidate but a Right-wing hack is going to enter the fray with the support and funding of no less a figure than Rupert Murdoch.<br \/>\nAll that will happen is that the public purse will fund a totally unnecessary by-election in which there will no serious opposition and a very poor turnout. Davies will destroy his career, the Conservative Party will look divided and stupid, and Gordon Brown will be grateful for some diversion from his multiple troubles.<br \/>\nAl-Qaeda leaders must be laughing all the way to their caves in Waziristan.<br \/>\nIf it wasn&#8217;t for the Irish blowing the new EU Treaty out of the water to the chagrin of 26 other Member States, we might look the nuttiest nation in Europe just now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Roy Greenslade thinks so &#8211; as he explains here &#8211; and it&#8217;s hard to disagree with him. First, we have the absurdity of a Labour Government making an outrageous attack on our civil liberties by forcing through Parliament provision for detention without charge for up to 42 days by bullying its MPs and even bribing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-british-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/972\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}