witanspeaker on "Have the rules of the game changed?"

witanspeaker — Thu, 22 May 2008 13:54:41 +0100

This sort of debate is really quite tedious. Most right thinking people in this country know full well that the reason many speak about changing rules of the game is because these very same people: first, refuse to recognise why we are at risk, second, refuse to recognise their culpability, and third, because it excuses them and pretends that we are simply being exposed to 'uncontrollable' international forces.

Islamic terrorism is a threat to us in the UK because the very concept of nation defined in its people has been abolished. We now have no right to control who comes in to the country and so after many years we now have competing cultures residing in the same land space. If you want a reference for the turmoil this causes just look at the Balkans, Sudan, Iraq and Israel-Palestine.

And what is more there is not a damn thing we can do about it so we can expect little more than growing state control and interference to control these ever more divergent and competing cultures and traditions. Well done the politicians.

Have the rules of the game changed?, Anthony Barnett

Anthony Barnett — Thu, 22 May 2008 11:44:35 +0100

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): I went to the 4th annual Bindman debate last night. Its theme was ‘Have the rules of the game changed?’ a reference to Tony Blair’s notorious declaration on 5 August 2005, just before setting out to spend the rest of the month in Cliff Richards' Barbados villa, that, “What I'm trying to do here… is to send a clear signal out that the rules of the game have changed” . After praising the other parties who were working with the government on a joint post 7/7 response, Blair set out a plan that shattered the parliamentary consensus. He was greeted by the country’s largest selling newspaper the following morning with the immortal headline: “VICTORY FOR SUN OVER NEW TERROR LAWS”.

Despite the Moscow final, a large audience listened to Robin Lustig chairing a panel that opened with David Blunkett. He told us that the rules had not changed but… terrorists now presented a new threat, the electronic complexity of evidence is now hugely greater, terrorists don’t mind being detected after they have committed a crime, they don’t fear prosecution, indeed they “just don’t give a damn”. To protect our nation without destroying our liberties we needed debate and disagreement but we also needed the judges to be more "helpful".

Blunkett was followed by Professor Conor Gearty who warned us against “helpful” judges doing the executives work for them (as they did during the IRA campaign endorsing terrible miscarriages of justice). But he could not bring himself to support the judges who, perhaps having reflected on this, are currently “nervous” of assisting the government. He also warned the audience of a new situation where arrest is now the starting point of an investigation not its culmination.

After Gearty we heard Lord Carlisle, the Lib-Dem peer selected to be the “Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation”. His bullying piety, transparently partisan 'sincerity' and stereotyping of his opponents was a sad demonstration of why so many reach for the sick bag when they hear politicians at work. At least Blunkett said that he wanted policy to proceed “step by step” and, in his concluding remarks, that “exaggeration is the enemy of reason”. Carlisle made Blunkett appear a moderate, as he denounced “pragmatic incrementalism” and called for all anti-terrorism legislation to be consolidated into a single body of law that would set its stamp for a generation. Read the rest of this post...

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witanspeaker on "Have the rules of the game changed?"

Have the rules of the game changed?, Anthony Barnett