Desperate Brown scrapes through

So, in a grubby deal with the Ulster Unionists, Brown succeeds in getting his 42 day terrorist detention bill through parliament, officially strangling freedom in order to save it.

Before the vote there were 40 Labour backbenchers threatening to vote against the government - only 36 were needed for the bill to fail - and in the end 36 Labour MP's did vote against this illiberal legislation, but Brown had promised the Ulster Unionists God knows what in order to get them to back this disgraceful attack on civil liberties.

Brown was accused of trading civil liberties in a "grubby bazaar", accepting a shopping list of demands from the Northern Ireland unionists and offering a range of promises on backbenchers' pet projects, such as compensation for injured miners, increases in rail investment, the accountability of the intelligence services and lifting EU sanctions on Cuba.

The Tories claimed the vote had cost the government £1.2bn. No 10 denied any deals, insisting Brown had not known how the DUP would vote. But backbenchers claimed Brown's backstage bargaining handed peers an excuse to vote the measure down in the summer.

This bill will now limp towards the House of Lords, who will know how unpopular it is amongst the Tory party and many Labour MP's, and the chances are they will devastate it before sending it back to the Commons essentially castrated.

Why in God's name did Brown put his entire authority behind this legislation? I suspect that Brown remembers that this was one of the few votes that Blair ever lost in the Commons and that he is still essentially fighting to beat Blair's legacy, to prove that he can win battles that Blair lost.

Whatever his reasons for doing so, it is Phyrric victory. His bill will not survive the House of Lords and there are many of us who will never again view Brown as the Labour leader we were waiting for.

He has outdid Blair by managing to lurch the party even further to the right than Blair did. Well, whoopy fucking doo Gordon, apologies if I find myself unable to join you in your victory lap around the Commons.

No 10 said Brown had shown himself in tune with the country and demonstrated political courage by standing firm on an issue of national security, even if it endangered his premiership.

What a pile of nonsense. In order to be "in tune" with the country he would have to be doing something that the country was crying out for. There is almost no-one in the country calling for this scandalous attack on civil liberties. Even the former Tory leader, John Major, has gone into print to decry this as "scaremongering":

There is no proof that an extended period of 42 days would have prevented past atrocities. There is no evidence it will prevent future atrocities. No example has yet been given of why the police need more than 28 days to frame a charge. This is a slippery slope. Assertions that it “might be useful” simply will not do. If we are to curtail the liberty of the individual, we must have more certainty than that.

The Government has been saying, in a catchy, misleading piece of spin: “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.” This is a demagogue's trick. We do have something to fear - the total loss of privacy to an intrusive state with authoritarian tendencies.

This is not a United Kingdom that I recognise and Parliament should not accept it.

As Major also points out, "pre-charge detention in Canada is 24 hours; South Africa, Germany, New Zealand and America 48 hours; Russia 5 days; and Turkey 7½ days."

Gordon never actually won the argument as to why the government needed to give police these extraordinary powers to detain citizens without charge for such an incredible amount of time, he simply cut a deal with the Unionists to circumnavigate those in his own party who remained unconvinced.

The saddest thing in all of this is that Gordon will be feeling pleased that he has managed to win in the only territory where Blair ever suffered a Commons defeat.

What Gordon's failing to realise is that the people who ensured Blair's defeat on this subject were his most natural allies. And Gordon has just pressed our faces into the mud. Again, from John Major:

I understand - and sympathise with - the complex dilemmas of security and crime that face the Government. But, while I understand their motives, their remedies are too stringent and not wise.

No one can rule out the possibility of another atrocity - but a free and open society is worth a certain amount of risk. A siege society is alien to our core instincts and - once in place - will be difficult to dismantle. It is a road down which we should not go.

And that is the point. In London we have, for years, lived with calculated risks. In the days of the IRA and their bombing campaign we understood the risks of shopping in central London, just as today we understand the risks of traveling on the London underground.

Were this bill to reduce these risks I would still argue that I would rather take the risks than endure this attack on civil liberties. But the real scandal here is that this bill will not reduce the risks at all - it will still be risky to travel on the London underground - but we will now be doing so in society where police powers have been greatly increased in a way that will not prevent future terrorist attacks.

It's a stupid, immoral, illiberal bill and Brown staked his reputation on it. On paper, he's won. But, in reality, he's lost far more than he's gained.

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Tags: Gordon Brown, 42 day detention, Labour party, Tories, terrorist suspects