One can at least say that the Dear Leader is con­sis­tent. Con­sis­tently hyp­o­crit­i­cal that is: launch a war on ter­ror to defend our free­doms while hit­ting the civil lib­er­ties ‘delete’ but­ton to help the fight. The para­dox seems to elude him.

With The Dear Leader cast­ing his rheumy eyes towards a lucra­tive retire­ment on the US speak­ing cir­cuit, and the uncrit­i­cal adu­la­tion of our less dis­crim­i­nat­ing cousins, one would hope the mis­er­able dog would have the good man­ners to shut the fuck up as the retire­ment clock ticks down the days.

But oh no. Now the courts are con­sis­tently putting civil lib­er­ties above the fight on ter­ror in a “mis­guided judge­ment”. Blair has instructed the Police Min­is­ter Tom McNulty to tell him what he wants to hear: the police want more pow­ers in their fight on ter­ror. And so he will give them what ‘they want’: the power to stop an inno­cent man abroad on his law­ful busi­ness and not merely demand that he account for him­self and his activ­i­ties, but to do so on pain of a crim­i­nal offence for not being ade­quately coop­er­a­tive and deferential.

This will assuredly amount to a new ground for the police doing what they have done in the past: stop­ping young black asian men on phoney pre­text of crim­i­nal sus­pi­cion and inves­ti­gat­ing ter­ror­ism. This will be the intro­duc­tion of a newer aggres­sive ver­sion of the reviled sus laws that led to Brix­ton riots and the alien­ation of youth and minori­ties from the community.

Geeklawyer is try­ing not to use the words ‘police state’ — honest.