The ThunderDragon

The former head of MI5, Baroness Manningham-Buller, told the House of Lords that she objected to the bill to enable the security services to hold suspected terrorists for 42 days without charge because:

I don’t see, on a principled basis, as well as a practical one, that these proposals are in any way workable.

She also pointed out various other obvious home truths - that Labour don’t appear to get - that there is a “balance between the right to life”, that “the fact [is] that there is no such thing as complete security” and that “the importance of our hard-won civil liberties” massively outweighs any potential benefits of this law.

This intervention may well mean that Garbo’s declaration that “David Davis has failed“, well, fails.

This isn’t something I expected to read in the Guardian. But it is a brilliant piece:

Whether David Davis makes of himself a public hero or a popular buffoon by his plunge into notoriety, he stands for me as an allegorical monitor of our times. His behaviour has been quixotic, but like the great mad progenitor of the condition, Don Quixote of La Mancha, he is fighting a cause in a truly fateful battle - a battle for liberty of the human spirit…

The ubiquitous CCTV cameras are the emblems of this malaise, not because of their existence but because people accept them as necessary for the public good: the police tell them so, councils tell them so, statistics proclaim it, and so they believe it, and are perfectly willing to be spied upon, night and day, wherever they go, by unknown, invisible strangers out of sight…

The public has been gulled into acceptance of the supervisory state, with all its paraphernalia of surveillance and identity cards, DNA databases, armed police and arbitrary search, by the mantra: “If you don’t do anything wrong, why worry?”…

Today the whistleblowers are our guardians of the spirit, and I like to think that Davis is one of them - a true successor of the grand old knight of Castile, but alas, tilting at windmills that are all too real. (The Guardian)

David Davis is fighting to save us all from the tyranny of the State. And for a Guardian contributor to realise and applaud this is really quite remarkable.

David Davis’ resignation from the Shadow Cabinet and Parliament shows the fundamental differences between Westminster politicians and commentariat the people.

Whilst they appear to look at it solely through the eyes of party politics - asking questions such as “how will this affect the Conservative party” and “how will this affect David Davis’ career” - the people, whilst suspicious of his motives, are generally supportive of him and glad to see that a politician is putting his principles in to practice.

They are glad to see a politician who, firstly has principles - a rare thing - and, even rarer, a politician who is willing to put his job and career on the line for his principles. A politician who is willingly subjecting himself to an election. Asking the people to make a choice themselves, rather than dictating to them from a parliamentary bench.

And this is why, rather than Davis’ resignation causing a backlash against the Tories, it has seen a shift in the polls in their favour. This shift will increase over time as Davis demonstrates his reasons in full, and his integrity is made clear.

Wow. What an unexpected outcome of the lost vote over 42 days detention. Not something I was expecting to see when I clicked on to the BBC website at lunch time!

The resignation of the Shadow Home Secretary, not just from the Shadow Cabinet but as an MP. But only so that he can take the question directly to the people, and with any luck win the people of this country over to the idea of freedom from the creep of the Big Brother state.

David Davis made today a very courageous decision. And a very important one for us all. Yesterday our freedoms were taken away from us; today a very senior, well-known and well-respected politician is fighting to get them back to us. A very refreshing scene.

Even though it will very much be a walk into the unknown. He may not win the by-election, despite Haltemprice and Howden being a pretty safe seat. But it is a massively rare move. A politician doing something on a principle? Especially when it means actually resigning his own seat and position?! He would have been Home Secretary if the Conservatives won the next general election, so it’s certainly not just to do with getting some publicity, as he’s not getting his old job in the Shadow Cabinet back - if any.

What David Davis has done is firmly nailed the flag of the Conservative Party to civil liberties. He has made it party policy, and this is not the sort of thing that can be quietly changed at a later date. The new Shadow Home Secretary, Dominic Grieve, has already made it clear that a Conservative government will repeal the 42 days legislation. And, even more successfully, he has managed to do the same to the Liberal Democrats who are not standing against him in this by-election.

He is fighting for us. For our rights, for our liberties. For our future. And for our freedom from an ever-more-intrusive state. We can stop the “insidious, surreptitious and relentless erosion of fundamental British freedoms” if we make it known that we support Davis, that we want the government to back off from us.

We do not want to live in surveillance or police state. We want to live in freedom, as is our birthright as human beings. And we must make this very very very clear. Or they will keep on chipping away. And then, suddenly, we’ll find ourselves with any freedoms left at all. Too late to do anything about it. So David Davis must be praised for making the stand for us all.

Davis has also done the impossible and united people from across the political spectrum in support.

You can watch David Davis’ barn-storming speech here, or read it here.

And who could possibly disagree?

If a CCTV camera is there and watches my every move but, should I get mugged under it, if it is of no use in identifying and bringing the criminal to justice then it is utterly pointless and infringes my right to privacy.

If CCTV is used, it must be of high enough quality, in terms of positioning and video, in order to be used as incontrovertible evidence in court. Otherwise, why waste our money on them?

Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, put spin before the safety of the public. Despite knowing about illegal immigrants being employed by the Home Office - as security staff, of all things - in July she did nothing. Well, nothing to protect us anyway. She was far too busy spinning to save herself. In August, a Home Office memo read:

So she knew, but did nothing about it.

How can they possibly justify knowing about it in July, yet doing nothing about it until November - five months later?

Can the first female Home Secretary survive much longer, or will David Davis claim yet another Home Secretary scalp for his collection?

So now you just assume everyone’s guilty of smething?

It is indefensible and biased - but it would not be fairer to include everyone, guilty of innocent. Why not instead remove from the DNA database of everyone who hasn’t been convicted - or at least not even prosecuted - for a crime? That would be fairer. They haven’t committed a crime, or even been suspected of one enough to get to court, so why should their DNA be kept?

Since the number of DNA samples and kept in the database were taken from those who were not convicted of a crime amounts to around 10% of the total, the DNA database should be all rights be significantly smaller than it is now. Especially considering that they can’t even seem to be able to keep up with the number they’re taking already, how can they be able to get DNA from everyone else?

What they are trying to do is enact true Orwellian policies. Big Brother in action. They can see us, listen to us, and speak to us via CCTV cameras now. And they want to know our genetic make-up now! My DNA is my DNA, not theirs. And I don’t want it in a national database.

What is worst thing about Lord Justice Sedley’s outburst? The response from Tony McNulty, Minister of State for Security, Counter-terrorism, Crime and Policing:

McNulty also suggested that in future DNA could be taken “as a matter of course” after any encounter with the criminal justice system. This is also joined by the PMS, who said:

But what about the innocents whose DNA is already on the database? Surely that has to be morally wrong, if not illegal. Where’s Brown’s “moral compass” now? The only politician who has replied to this issue with integrity is David Davis:

The only acceptable thing to do with this sort of DNA database is to only permanently keep the DNA of those who have been convicted of a crime. A case could be made for keeping those who were prosecuted but acquitted by a jury for a limited period, depending on the severity of the charge. But for those who are not even charged with a crime, their DNA should not even be added to the DNA database. Once that investigation is over, their DNA should be removed from all records. Anything else is a perversion of justice.

UPDATE: Something I forgot to include in the original post, reminded to me by a post on this issue at Liberty’s Requiem.

For once, I can have nothing but admiration for the SNP. It’s a very strange feeling for me to have, since normally they are just utterly stupid. Now I’m going to write words I never thought I’d type: Well done SNP!

Sources: BBC, The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent, The Times

In response to a post of mine yesterday, James Higham at Nourishing Obscurity has written this post:

Certainly yes on Boris for London, but Cameron is the Leader of the Conservative Party, and should stay in that position. During the leadership election, I voted for David Davis, but since two thirds of the members disagreed and preferred David Cameron he is, and should be, leader.

The leader of the party deserves loyalty as a whole. It is fine - and beneficial - to disagree on bits and pieces, such as on particular policies, over political strategies etc. But by in-fighting we harm no-one but ourselves. We all have the same very basic core beliefs and ideas - that is why we are all members of the Conservative Party. There are always going to be differences of opinion within large political parties. It comes from the nature of having lots of opinionated people together. To win, and to be able to enact them, we have to cast aside, or at least not shout about, our differences but stress the things we do agree on and work together to achieve them.

I think Cameron’s not doing a bad job overall. He’s done good things and bad things, but he is currently still in the positive by my point scoring. No matter what, he is the leader, and deserves the support of all Conservatives. We could in-fight and end up with another four years of Labour (mis)government, or we can pull together properly and have a Conservative one. No matter what anyone can claim about “Cameron not being much better than Blair” or any other such crap, he is and will be a better PM than Brown.

David Cameron is the leader we have. He was elected by the members by a comfortable margin. Whether or not you supported him, we must get behind him now. The choice is simple - unite and have a strong fighting chance of ousting Labour and re-establishing good government in Britain, or fighting within and suffering a deserving defeat. Unite and win, in-fight and die.

There is no doubt that David Davis has scored a significant goal against Home Secretary Jacqui Smith with this open letter [extract below]:

There is just nothing I can add except to say go and read Dizzy’s post on the issue and watch this amusing video: Labour: Tough on crime, tough on manipulating the statistics of crime.

Video hat-tip: Daily Referendum
Source: The Times