Sunday, November 30, 2008

On the Damian Green affair

We think the police dropped a clanger with the arrest of Damian Green. However, David Cameron can hardly talk.

Excellent piece by John Rentoul in the Independent on Sunday. We've never been the biggest fans of the ultra-Blairite columnist. However, in the wake of the 'Damian Green Affair' (the Tory immigration spokesman was arrested for nine hours on Friday, read here for the details) his article today speaks some truth. We're not going to join the ranks of all the liberal blogs who are celebrating the arrest of a Tory as if they'd won the blogging World Cup and we agree with Rentoul that the police were heavy-handed and their the deployment of counter-terrorist officers was just a tiny bit OTT. Any Orwellian show trial is bad news for a liberal democracy.

Yet, Rentoul nails it on the head when he writes: "what did Cameron say when the Metropolitan Police came knocking for Ruth Turner, Tony Blair's adviser, at 6.10 in the morning? Nothing. What did he say before that when Sir Ian Blair, the Met Commissioner, decided, on the basis of no more than a press release put out by a Scottish National Party MP, to investigate the allegation that peerages were sold? Again, nothing".

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