I USED to think ID cards were a good thing. Along with CCTV cameras and DNA databanks. Even, at a pinch, 90-day detention.
What law-abiding citizen could object to these new weapons against terrorists, rapists and murderers? Nothing to hide, nothing to fear.
Not any more.
Not after the death of innocent Jean Charles de Menezes or the pointless shooting of drunken barrister Mark Saunders by two police marksmen.
Not after the inexcusable bugging, strip-searching and futile £1million vendetta by police against journalist Sally Murrer for revealing officers had lost the keys to the local nick – a case which was rightly dismissed last week.
And certainly not after the Stasi-style raid by anti-terror police on an MP I know to be above reproach.
Damian Green’s “crime” was to make Home Secretary Jacqui Smith look even more foolish than she is by exposing the chaos in her department over illegal immigration – surely a matter of national interest.
If Damian Green can be banged up for nine hours for telling the truth, what hope for you and me?
Indeed, if Westminster is not a sanctuary for an elected MP, what hope for any of us?
Parliament may at times be a disreputable bear pit, but it is the core of our democracy for which many fought and died. It is unforgivable for Labour Speaker Michael Martin to abdicate his role as guardian of those privileges and wave the cops in.
His partisan surrender symbolises the way blinkered, insensitive authority now tramples over the rights of people it is supposed to protect.
Arrested ... Damian Green was locked up for telling the truth
Police chiefs are a law unto themselves. And they are out of control.
The Government’s kneejerk abuse of anti-terror laws as a political weapon is increasingly sinister.
Pygmies
It uses them on any pretext – even freezing the economy of friendly Iceland recently when its banks went bust.
Faceless town hall officials use counter-terrorism as a pretext for spying on our garbage bins and school runs.
Soon, unelected snoopers will be able to pry into our mobile calls, text messages and emails.
These are the alarming consequences of an authoritarian regime that sees the state as paramount and the people as pygmies.
Labour’s Stalinist attitude to dissent became shockingly apparent when they manhandled an 82-year-old heckler out of their 2005 conference for daring to shout “nonsense” at Jack Straw. This bullying has seeped into a bureaucracy that purports to represent the human face of the welfare state while presiding over the torture and tragic death of Baby P.
Public sector managers see their first duty as covering each other’s backs while paying lip service to hospital patients, school pupils, crime victims and children at risk.
And the only response from the likes of Haringey children’s welfare supremo Sharon Shoesmith and sulky Jacqui Smith is a glare with resentment – as if THEY are the victims.
In an ill-judged outburst yesterday, the Home Secretary disgracefully smeared Damian Green by hinting there was more to the terror raid than we knew. If so, we must be shown the evidence.
Labour likes to portray itself as the caring party – in contrast to the “nasty” Tories.
But imagine if the events of recent weeks had happened after 12 years of Tory rule.
There would be screams of “fascism”, violent protests and street marches by civil libertarians.
What we are seeing today is the arrogance of a buck-passing, secretive political class who see criticism as tantamount to treason.
That’s how the Home Secretary justifies her department’s anti-terror squad rummaging through the love letters of an innocent man whose “crime” was to expose her ministerial incompetence.
This raid, seen initially by gleeful Labour as an embarrassment for the Tories, has blown up in their faces.
Now it threatens to overshadow the Queen’s Speech to Parliament on Wednesday and could signal the end for Speaker Martin.
Gordon Brown should apologise quickly – before voters decide he is a ruthless control freak willing to accept any abuse of power to harm his opponents and stay in office.
AS the nation slides into debt and depression, cash-strapped voters are beginning to ask if we can afford the bloated bill for the 2012 Games.
Others say it will be a spectacular way to celebrate the end of the slump.
But will the recession be over by then, as Gordon Brown promises?
Olympics minister Tessa Jowell seems to have her doubts.
She has taken the career-threatening step of asking the PM to promise the new 45p top-rate tax hike is the last. Fat chance.
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