Bit of a backlog here after a couple of weeks of cinematic overload so you'll have to forgive me for being slightly less than up-to-the-minute and topical. So Blair recently suffered his first ever defeat in the Commons after eight years of having his every wish granted, no questions asked.
There was a time when it might have been tempting to take some pleasure in this, but things just seem so knackered now that it's hard to raise a smile. Yes Blair's on his way out but it's beginning to occur to people that what comes next won't necessarily be any better.
As always when laws are debated and passed, or not, in our Houses of Parliament, there are many, many delicate and complex facets of the law and the issues to be considered. Also true to form, the whole thing was presented to the public as being about one single, controversial issue.
Now we could talk about the pros and cons of locking people up without charge for 90 days, or even the effect on parliament and society of MPs now voting purely to punish Blair but there's one particular element of this whole thing that I want to focus on.
Maybe he was trying to spread the responsibility, maybe he was trying to appeal to the instincts of the centre right; whatever the reason, Blair tried to justify the 90 day measure by insisting that it was the police's idea. To reinforce this we then had the dubious spectacle of high ranking regional police officers personally lobbying their local MPs to support the bill.
My point here today is not only to highlight just how tenuous Blair's argument was but, more significantly, the fact that, even though the bill fell, many people accepted the argument as being valid. Let's work this through step by step:
at first glance:
If the police say they need 90 days we should give them that power, after all they're the people on the ground, they know the situation better than anyone and are in the best position to make such decisions. Also, everyone, whatever their profession, is entitled to lobby their MP in the hope of swaying their vote, this is a democracy after all.
Initially this seems both logical and compelling, it also has the advantage that anyone disagreeing can be accused both of thinking they know better than the police and of denying individual police officers their democratic rights.
Now obviously this didn't work, the bill fell and Blair was defeated, but those who voted against him were inspired to do so for a variety of reasons. No-one took this argument head on which is a shame because, from the first moment I heard it, it seemed patently flawed and ripe for destruction..
look again:
When drafting legislation it is obviously vital to listen to those people on the ground and make the most of their valuable experience, the point here, however, is that we have systems in place to do this. Of course the police should be consulted on such an issue but if theirs is to be the definitive and overriding opinion then what exactly is the point of the Home Office? If things are as simple as presented by Blair then why don't we just let the police write the laws?
Of course police officers have the right to lobby their own MPs, but if their professional opinions are to have political consequences the only way to do this fairly is to a have a structured system of lobbying so as to ensure that all the police's views are accurately represented. The alternative is that the views of police officers with more free time, strongly held political beliefs or the most articulate will have a disproportionate impact.
Basically for those who dare to run the risk of falling into one of the PM's 'branding traps', ie. if you disagree with me you are a racist, or a communist, or a terrorist sympathiser etc etc. there are holes in this argument big enough to drive a truck through.
What concerns me is how few people seemed to take that second look and how common these situations are. The Bush administration have raised this practice to an art form and the Democrats have given in it to so many times that they don't even know who they are anymore.
Have we actually reached a point now where we value convenience over truth and justice? Are we now so intellectually lazy that we'll accept any argument as long as it's simple and comes with some kind of ethical cushion, rather than have to actually think about something?
This certainly would explain a lot but the picture painted, accurate as it may be, is not a pretty one. Once more however, look again, isn't there some hope at the back there? Surely identifying the problem is half way to solving it.
If we could somehow spread the practice of critical analysis, of just thinking about things, these guys would lose all their power and the bar for politicians would be raised so high as to change the whole game. No, no, no come the croaking voices of pessimism, people are just too lazy and self interested.
Well I say look again, that argument just suggests the method, ie. make it in people's interests to use their brains. How to do this? Who knows, so far, but then what's the alternative, wait for these losers to get us all killed? And hell, with all the thought recently given to the sacrifices ordinary people made during WWI & WWII, since when did something being hard become a reason not to try?
