Sunday, November 30, 2008
Davis: Charge Damian & Subpoena Blair & Brown
Iain Dale 10:24 AM
AND SEE HIM SUBPOENA THE WHOLE DAMN LOT OF THEM
- FROM BLAIR TO BROWN
"When it comes to vigorous opposition, if this approach had been in place in the 1990s, then Gordon Brown would have spent most of his time under arrest. He made his career from passing on Whitehall leaks. And he’ll be guilty of hypocrisy if he doesn’t speak out. On the right to publish information in the public interest, people are asking valid questions about where this will all lead. After all, if they arrest a politician for passing on information, will they next arrest the journalists who publish it?"Jacqui Smith Appears to Give Police Carter Blanche
Iain Dale 9:51 AM
Indeed, her attitude was that the Police had carte blanche to do as they liked if it furthered an inquiry. If that isn't the sign that we live in a Police state, I don't know what is. If she can't see that things have gone too far in this case, I cannot see that she is fit to remain in office.
Jacqui Smith rightly said her Department and the Cabinet Office should investigate a series of "systematic leaks". Of course they needed to. No one denies that. But she failed to convince anyone watching about the need for an Opposition politician, who was doing his job, to be arrested.
She also refused to confirm or deny whether she had signed a warrant enabling the security services to bug Damian Green's phone. If it turns out she did, then the consequences are clear.
If she genuinely didn't know anything about the Police investigation until after Green's arrest, if she genuinely thinks she shouldn't have intervened at that point and told the Police they had overstepped their operational freedoms, one has to ask, what is the point of her being Home Secretary? If she genuinely believes the Police have the operational freedom to act as they see fit, and thinks it is perfectly reasonable for nine counter terror officers to ransack a Member of Parliament's home then we live in very worrying times indeed.
The Home Secretary is accountable to Parliament. In this case, it seems the Police are accountable to no one.
PS Carol Vorderman was brilliant in the paper review on this issue, calling the arrest "disgusting". She laid into Jacqui Smith - such a shame she didn't carry out the interview with Smith rather than Andrew Marr. Catfight!The Police Are the Worst Leakers of All
Iain Dale 9:28 PM
Remember how a phalanx of photographers appeared at Ilford Police Station, waiting for Neil and Christine Hamilton to arrive to be questioned over an alleged incident of rape? Remember how reporters just happened to know about a Special Branch operation against possible terror suspects in the West Midlands a couple of years ago? We never quite found out whether it had been leaked by a Ministerial Special Advisor or by the Police themselves.
I am sure readers can quote a zillion other examples.
Funny how these leakers are never identified, isn't it? One law for them, one law for the rest of us...
Sunday, 30 November 2008
David Davis has an absolutely superb article on the Damian Green affair in the Mail on Sunday today. This is the headline...
SO LET THEM CHARGE DAMIAN, PUT HIM BEFORE A JURY,
David Cameron has a trenchant article in the News of the World.
I have just been watching Andrew Marr's interview with Jacqui Smith. At the end of the Major government, many Cabinet Ministers appeared on TV and were seen as totally out of touch with public opinion. The interviewer would say something was white and they would say it was black. Perfectly decent human beings were seen as tired and out of touch with the people they were governing. Jacqui Smith exhibited all those signs in this interview. She had a line to take and she stuck to it. She refused to apologise to Damian Green and his family for their treatment and said it would be wrong of her to make any operational comment on the Police action.
I wonder if the Police would like to conduct an investigation into their own leaking habits. Haven't you always wondered how odd it is that press photographers and TV networks happen magically to appear at the scene of an arrest just as it is about to happen? Amazing, isn't it?
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