Monday 23 March 2015

The Party of Law and Order

Of course Labour is tougher on crime than the Conservatives are. That is not "triangulation". It is just fact. I am trying to think when last it was not the case. I can't, to be honest. Perhaps it has always been so?

Public perception may be different. But, as on defence, that is no more than one electoral cycle away from catching up with simple, factually indisputable reality. If it is the case at all.

As Home Secretary, Michael Howard arranged Royal Pardons for associates of his drug-dealing cousin so that they could go back to terrorising Liverpool. Those associates are now back in prison, for having set up the weapons finds that earned them their release.

Almost the entire media refused to report that story even once Howard had become Leader of the Conservative Party and was therefore presenting himself as a potential Prime Minister. Even now, hardly anyone knows it. But it is true.

Imagine what they would have done if a Labour politician had done that. But then, it is impossible to imagine a Labour politician's ever doing that, or anything remotely like it.

Where the last Labour Government did err was in failing to recognise that there was no law and order without civil liberties. But even there, this lot is even worse.

Banning Orders? The very term used? To forbid pubic speaking by the British Citizens who were subject to them? Theresa May wants to turn some Walter Mitty into Steve Biko.

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