The Mail is full of powerful articles on this scandal
It is becoming clear that Brown's vindictive streak has now permeated
the police forces of Britain and has corrupted them. They are now
little more than oppressive arms of the state.
This makes it all the more shameful that a well known blog has given
up in despair. Just because we've lost a lot of liberties already is
no reason for giving up, NOW is the time to take a stand and FIGHT
and, what's more, with a good chance of winning.
xxxxxxxxxxx cs
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DAILY MAIL 29.11.08
1. .Damian Green's arrest is a monstrous abuse of power by the same
gangsters who hounded Dr David Kelly to death
An Opposition spokesman is arrested without warning on trumped-up
conspiracy charges and thrown into jail. His home, constituency and
parliamentary offices are simultaneously raided by 20 anti-terrorist
officers.
It sounds like Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe, or East Berlin before the
Wall came down. But this happened in Britain, in the past 48 hours
- the most terrifying manifestation to date of Labour's Stasi State.
The shadow immigration minister, Damian Green, was taken from his
home in Kent to a Central London police station, where he was
interrogated for nine hours by officers investigating the leak of
sensitive information from the Home Office.
Or, as a Met spokesman put it, in classic Plodspeak: 'A 52-year- old
man has been arrested on suspicion of conspiring to commit misconduct
in a public office and aiding, abetting, counselling or procuring
misconduct in a public office.'
This risible, catch-all indictment could be levelled at just about
any member of the Government, from the Prime Minister downwards, any
day of the week. Labour spent all last weekend leaking details of the
emergency Budget. Gordon Brown's early career was built on leaked
documents.
Green's 'crime' was to expose the deceit and incompetence of this
government's shambolic immigration policy and make public a
confidential Home Office memo, which revealed that an illegal alien
had been working as a cleaner in the House of Commons.
The information made mockery of the Government's claims to have
introduced tough new border controls and laid bare the lies of the
past ten years. Which, I suspect, is the reason the inoffensive Green
had to be humiliated in such draconian fashion. If there's one thing
this government, in general, and this Prime Minister, in particular,
hates more than the truth, it's being ridiculed.
They have become so accustomed to living in a virtual one-party state
since 1997, that any counter-argument or even the mildest of
criticism is treated not merely as legitimate dissent, but as an act
of treason.
Interviewed by Adam Boulton on Sky News yesterday, the Prime Minister
gave not the slightest inclination that he was in any way troubled by
this outrageous arrest of a fellow Honourable Member or the invasion
of Parliament by the heavy mob.
He merely denied any 'prior' knowledge and repeated ad infinitum that
this was solely a matter for the police. I'm surprised he didn't add
that this raid began in America.
Denial of 'prior' knowledge was clearly the 'line to take'. Jacqui
Smith, our gormless Home Secretary, said much the same thing.
Frankly, I refuse to believe that Smith wasn't consulted before Green
had his collar felt. The investigation was mounted on her orders into
a leak which occurred in her office. Is she really expecting us to
swallow her claim that Scotland Yard kept her out of the loop?
And armed with the information that a senior member of the
Conservative Party was about to be arrested and treated like a common
criminal, Jackboot Jacqui wouldn't have been able to resist sharing
this juicy nugget with her boss, the Prime Minister.
Blaming the Old Bill is typical of the innate cowardice of Gordon
Brown. Believe me, he is a vindictive man who would have savoured
every last detail of Green's embarrassment.
As for this being purely a matter for the police, pull the other one.
Imagine the scene at Scotland Yard, as they pore over the latest
reports of stabbings, shootings, armed robberies and terrorism alerts
and decide which heinous crime to prioritise. 'What do we do next,
guv?' 'Bring the motor round the front, Bill. We're going to nick
Damian Green.'
Of course, it may be no coincidence that the arrest took place on the
outgoing Met Commissioner Ian Blair's last day on the job. The man
who put politics into policing was Labour's favourite copper and had
been forced to resign by incoming Tory Mayor of London Boris Johnson.
This whole business smacks of payback time - and not just for
Commissioner Blair's unceremonious dismissal. Ever since Labour was
embroiled in the cash-for-honours inquiry, ministers have been
desperate to find something criminal to pin on the Tories.
You don't have to be a cynic to suspect that they decided to use
Blair's swansong to even up the score. It's no coincidence, either,
that the investigation into illegal donations to Labour was also
quietly shelved last week. Deputy Commissioner Paul Stephenson
certainly knew about Green's arrest, since he phoned Boris Johnson to
tell him.
But why call London's mayor? This was a national, not a local,
matter. Surely the obvious first call was to the Home Secretary,
especially as she's not only directly responsible for the Met, but
will also appoint the next Commissioner.
Stephenson has been running the Yard in the hiatus between Blair's
effective sacking and his leaving-do on Thursday night. The permanent
job was widely considered to be his to lose.
If there is any evidence that there was collusion between the Yard
and the Home Office in the arrest of Green and that it was ordered to
impress Smith, Stephenson should be ruled out of the contest and sent
to spend the rest of his career in Elstree, directing traffic.
After Blair, everyone is looking for his successor to be a 'safe pair
of hands'. What's safe about mounting a heavy-handed operation to
arrest a senior MP on the flimsiest of evidence? I'm not a lawyer,
but it would appear that no crime has even been committed.
At a very minimum, Stephenson should have told the investigating
officers that arresting Green was unwise in the extreme and advised
that if they wanted to talk to him they should invite him for a quiet
chat at the Yard.
What is of equal concern is that the Speaker agreed to let the police
search Green's office at the Commons, declare it a 'crime scene',
confiscate his files, mobile phone and laptop.
Gorbals Mick is probably too thick to understand the historical duty
of the Speaker to protect the independence of Parliament and its
members. This dates back to 1642, when Charles I entered the House by
force in an attempt to arrest five MPs and was repelled by the
Speaker, who refused courageously to hand them over.
Eventually, Charles paid with his head. Gorbals should pay with his job.
Conspiracy theorists could point to the fact that the raid occurred
when Parliament was not sitting, so that no awkward questions could
be asked in the Chamber and the traditional protection of MPs'
property had temporarily, technically, been suspended.
It's difficult to know on which level this affair is most outrageous.
Is it the indifference of the Prime Minister and the culpability of
Gorbals Mick in the violation of the sanctity of Parliament? Or the
over-the-top police operation, which involved not only confiscating
Damian Green's bank statements but also forcing him to submit to DNA
and fingerprint sampling.
So the shadow immigration minister's biological details join millions
of other innocent people on this government's sinister, if insecure,
DNA database.
There are 6.5 million people on the fingerprint computer system; the
health department is spending £12billion on a NHS database, which
will put all our medical records on the internet; another £20billion
is being blown on a useless ID cards scheme, which will be open to
forgery and abuse; and the children's commissioner has warned about
the dangers of the increasing amount of data held on every child from
birth.
Britain leads the world in cradle-to-grave surveillance. Labour has
spent the past decade collating, spying, monitoring and carpeting the
country with CCTV and speed cameras. Even the Stasi didn't think of
putting microchips in dustbins or using anti-terror laws to mount
undercover operations against those suspected of living a few yards
outside a school catchment area.
We've had protesters arrested for exercising their right to free
speech, attempts to all but abolish habeas corpus and now we've had a
member of the Shadow Cabinet dragged from his home by counter-
terrorism officers, simply for doing his job - namely exposing the
venality of the Government.
And never forget, this is the same bunch of sadistic gangsters which
hounded scientist Dr David Kelly to his death, for telling the truth
about Iraq's non-existent nuclear weapons.
Millions of our forebears died in a ditch over centuries for freedoms
which have been comprehensively trashed in the blink of an eye by a
control-freak government - currently run by a quasi-dictator,
elected by neither his party nor the country - with no respect for
ancient liberties.
Never again will we listen to their pious preaching about Robert
Mugabe's tyranny. This is Gordon Brown's Morgan Tsvangirai moment.
Frankly, I found it difficult to contain my rage when I read of
Green's arrest in yesterday's Mail. I know I wasn't alone.
It's not enough that 'lessons should be learned' and heads should
roll. This monstrous, abominable abuse of power shouldn't just bring
down ministers, or police chiefs.
It should bring down this callous, rotten government.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
2. ANALYSIS: This is a declaration of political war
The next election campaign started last night, and it promises to be
one of the nastiest, dirtiest and hardest fought in modern British
political history.
The arrest of Damian Green, almost certainly with the prior knowledge
of Michael Martin, the Labour MP who is Speaker of the House of
Commons, and probably with the tactic support of Labour ministers,
marks a fundamental break with the political Geneva Convention, the
unspoken terms on which parties do business in Westminster.
Yes, it was the act of a totalitarian state, but it was also a
declaration of political war.
When Tony Blair was Prime Minister, the two parties in the Commons,
although at odds politically, enjoyed cordial relations.
The policy differences between the two were not that great,
especially after David Cameron became Conservative leader, and many
leading New Labour figures knew their Tory counterparts socially.
Sometimes the situation even resembled the phoney war of 1939-40.
When Gordon Brown took over, however, that all began to change. The
Prime Minister - and his circle of hard-nosed Scottish socialists -
do not like Conservatives, not just politically but personally.
When Mr Brown was Chancellor, he fell out so badly with George
Osborne, his Conservative opposite number, that he was almost
incapable of saying hello.
And this visceral dislike came to be reflected on the Conservative
side. In Prime Minister's questions, David Cameron goaded Mr Brown in
a way that he wouldn't have considered with Blair.
His - and his party's - anger at both the policies and the
personalities of the Government went on growing.
There was a brief hiatus this autumn, when the Tory party conference
coincided with the height of the financial crisis, and the two sides
enjoyed a brief cessation of hostilities.
But matters warmed up again around the Pre-Budget, as the political
divide between high spending, high borrowing, high taxing Labour and
the Tories who oppose all three, widened by the day.
And now comes Damian Green.
The irony is that the Tory immigration spokesman was given the job by
David Cameron because his dripping wet liberal credentials would
allow him to speak about this thorny subject without being labelled a
racist.
Green is a pro-European, socially liberal former journalist who
probably has more in Common with many Blairities than with the Right-
wing of his own party.
That he should have been arrested by counter-intelligence officers
and held for nine hours is an act of political brutalism worthy of
that oft-overused phrase, a police state.
There are those in the Conservative Party who might be tempted to fly
close to the wire in a bid to undermine Labour, but Mr Green is not
one of them.
On the contrary, although he retains the investigative instincts of
his journalistic past, he's a mild-mannered, careful individual who
has many friends on the Labour side of the House.
But he wouldn't for a moment have worried about using material leaked
to him by a Home Office source, because for Opposition politicians to
use such documents is part of the time-honoured conventions of
British politics, a tactic which politicians on both sides of the
House employ whenever they can.
It's how they do their job as Her Majesty's Opposition, by holding
the Government to account.
In the days when Labour was in opposition, constant leaks by
disgruntled civil servants drove John Major and his team wild with rage.
And numerous Labour spokesmen made their reputations using leaked
material with devastating effect.
A brief look back sees David Blunkett using a confidential Inland
Revenue circular to embarrass Michael Heseltine, Gordon Brown
deploying leaked papers about regional aid to undermine John Major,
Jack Straw attacking Michael Howard over leaked crime figures, and
John Prescott brandishing a leaked internal memo from Heseltine to
Major.
And of course not one single one of these Labour grandees was dragged
off to Paddington Green police station by heavy-handed coppers.
So Damian Green would have believed he was on safe ground.
But he failed to reckon on what at the moment appears to be an unholy
combination of a politicised Metropolitan Police, Home Office civil
servants who have got used to the idea that whatever ministers want
they must get, a weak and politically partisan speaker of the
Commons, and Labour politicians determined to win power again at all
costs.
Even if it turns out that ministers were not actually involved in the
decision to make the arrest itself, they must have known all about
the investigation, and indicated that they wanted it pursued in the
most aggressive way possible.
There is no way that civil servants would have authorised such a
provocative act if they didn't believe that their political masters
would support them after the event.
For voters, it's a reminder of one of the eternal truths of British
politics - that long periods in office corrupt both the political
party in power and the Whitehall machine under their control.
Ministers who spend too many years riding around in chauffeur driven
cars being toadied tend to inevitably lose track of the proper way to
behave in a parliamentary democracy.
And for the Conservatives, it's a wake-up call if any of them needed
it, that this election campaign will be a bloody struggle to the
line, and they are going to have to fight every inch of the way
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