Flickr/ Ray Forster. Some rights reserved.If the Labour Party is indeed now a ‘threat to our national security’ and to ‘your family's security’, as David Cameron tweeted following Jeremy Corbyn’s election to the party leadership last month, we would expect a complete reversal of the tough stance towards criminal justice issues that characterised the New Labour years and beyond. Yet, there is much to suggest that a considerable degree of continuity may mark Labour’s policy under Corbyn.
Lord Falconer, Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, Lord Chancellor and, briefly, Justice Secretary under the Blair administrations from 2003 to 2007, has remained in his post as Shadow Justice Secretary (assumed in May 2015). Falconer notably supported Blair’s counter-terrorism policies and defended the government against judicial criticism of tough legislation in this area. He also defended control orders, the creation of a new offence of indirect incitement to terror introduced by the Terrorism Act 2006, and he refused to contemplate reforming the mandatory life sentence for murder, much criticised by the Law Commission.
Similarly, there is unlikely to be much radicalism from Andy Burnham, another veteran from the New Labour era, who now occupies the post of Shadow Home Secretary. Burnham repeatedly voted in favour of counter-terrorism legislation, notably the indefinite detention of terrorist suspects provided for in the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Bill 2001, and, more recently, supported the coalition government’s legislation permitting the mass retention of communications data.
