Photo credit - Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

So whilst Labour peers have spent the last couple of weeks filibustering^Wcarefully scrutinising (including asking searching questions about why the proposed number of MPs in the new Commons of 600 does not correspond to any product of prime numbers – that’s important for democracy, I’m sure you’ll agree), what is the difference between what they are doing now and what the Tory peers did during the debates on the fox-hunting ban legislation?

The government, irritated at the possibility that the Labour peers might actually talk the legislation out of time rather than back down at the last minute – as is traditional – is talking about introducing a guillotine, for the first time in Parliament’s history, much to the outrage of the Labour side. But again, what might the difference be between that and, from the same fox-hunting bill, the Labour government’s invoking of the Parliament Acts to achieve the exact same result?

And politicians wonder why the public continues in its spiral of disengagement with party politics; when party politics too often is reduced to petty politics.

Now, of course, there is information which the police have which us in the general public don’t have, which may be relevant to this story.

But looking at what we have been told, we have a Home Office whistleblower who apparently revealed:

• in November 2007 that the home secretary knew the Security Industry Authority had granted licences to 5,000 illegal workers, but decided not to publicise it,
• in February 2008 that an illegal immigrant had been employed as a cleaner in the House of Commons,
• a whips’ list of potential Labour rebels in the vote on plans to increase the pre-charge terror detention limit to 42 days, and
• a letter from the Home Secretary warning that a recession could lead to a rise in crime.

And Damian Green was the conduit through which this information was brought to the public knowledge.

Although technically the Official Secrets Act applies – as indeed it does to the information about what brand of tea is served in the Cabinet Office – the items which were leaked were far from being issues of National Security, and everything to do with being issues in the National Interest.

In this instance, Damian Green was clearly performing his public duty, a duty he was elected, as an Opposition MP to perform – to act on information received about areas where Government was clearly failing, to publicise it, and to oppose it.

The Government denies involvement in the arrest – during which, apparently, his home was turned over by eight anti-terrorism officers, presumably all donning riot shields, battering rams, and machine guns – although it did take place following a complaint made by the Cabinet Office. On the Today programme it was vehemently denied that ministers were aware of the arrest before it was on the news broadcasts, although it is a fact that the Tories themselves called an evening briefing in the House of Commons well before it hit the news.

The words ‘Orwellian’, ‘Stalinist’, and ‘Fascist State’ are of course well overused; usually when they’re used in the context of Western politics you’ll always find at least one apologist who will jump up and say “look at Zimbabwe! Look at North Korea! Look at Stalin!”.

But when we’re increasingly moving to a state of being where criticising the government becomes an arrestable offence, what other words can be used?

Unlike most of my friends of the left-liberal persuation, I’m not automatically against the principle of ASBOs – there’s no denying that there are some people who make the lives of other people a misery through behaviour which isn’t actually illegal, and there should be a mechanism for dealing with them which has more legal weight than a stern talking to. If the mechanism is being abused in its implementation, that’s another issue.

But what this new ‘initiative’, branded as ‘Foetal ASBOs’ by the media, is planning on doing is looking at parents, and deciding in advance that their children are ‘bound to’ grow up as problem children – before they’ve even been born. Some people have branded the idea as verging on genetic determinism.

Back in the old days of usenet, it was always considered bad form to compare somebody, or an idea, to Hitler – basically it meant the discussion had run out of useful things to be said. In this instance, I think a comparison with the behaviour of the Nazi regime in 20th century Germany is not too wide of the mark.