Monday's speech

'Thank you very much to Kate Allen, Director of Amnesty International, and to all the Amnesty team for the invitation to speak tonight at this protest against the government's latest counter-terrorism bill which includes the plans to detain terrorism suspects for up to 42 days without charge. It's a privilege and an honour to be here, and it is great to see how many people have come out on a cold Monday night in their dressing gowns to show that they are passionate about defending their liberties and to show that they will not sleepwalk into giving up essential rights and freedoms.

We have a long and honourable tradition of freedom in this country - an idea of freedom and democracy that we have shared all over the world. One of the most important freedoms we have is the ancient right of habeas corpus; the right not to be detained without being charged, and to be brought before a court who have the authority to say whether you are being lawfully held and why you are being charged.

Over the years, millions of men and women have made great sacrifices to preserve our freedoms against enemies who wanted to destroy them. Older generations have fought and died in terrible wars. Not so very long ago, hundreds of thousands of people said goodbye to their loved ones and friends, not knowing if they would return alive or badly injured. Parents evacuated their young children to live with strangers, hoping they would escape the dangers of aerial bombardment from the weapons of mass destruction of the time. People undertook war work – usually hard and boring, sometimes dangerous. The fight to defend our nation's freedom from our enemies' threats was something that was an inescapable part of everyone's daily lives.

Why am I going on about the second world war in 2008? To make the point that the threat we face now is not anything like the daily threat our grandparents and great-grandparents faced. It is shameful that when others risked so much and gave so much to preserve our freedoms, we seem to barely notice as they are taken away.

Many of the men and women debating the terrorism bill in the House of Lords today are old enough to remember a real war of terror, very different to a 'war on terror'. They remember that out of the horrors of that war came the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Convention concerning the treatment of prisoners of war and prohibiting torture and inhumane treatment. The nations of the world came together after that terrible war to focus on human rights; to say 'never again'.

Human rights are precious. History teaches us what happens when a political party, or a charismatic leader begins to spread the lie that not every person deserves human rights...that some kinds of people are 'different' and the normal rules do not apply...
We all deserve the right to be treated as fully human and accorded full human rights. Yes, even the suspected terrorist. Especially the person suspected of terrorism, in fact.

These last few days in America, we have seen a politician giving a speech to a large and excited crowd of people, and we have heard voices in that crowd begin shouting 'Terrorist! Kill him! Behead him!'
The person that crowd suspected of being a terrorist is the Democratic Presidential nominee, Senator Barack Obama. Meanwhile, also last week, the government of Iceland were very surprised and upset when they found out that the UK government were using terrorism laws to seize the UK assets of Icelandic banks last week.
Do you see my point? Look at who is being suspected of terrorism. A potential President? An Icelandic banker? Is this what 'suspected of terrorism' really means? In fact, UK terrorism laws have recently been used to arrest pensioners and protesters, parents and poets and priests – all sorts of people – people like you and me. Terrorism laws have been used by councils to spy on barking dogs and noisy children and muddled recyclers and people parking in disabled spaces without the right badges and even people 'selling unauthorised pizzas'. It's crazy. It would be funny, except it isn't funny at all.

Since 9/11, 1228 people have been arrested under UK terrorism laws – only for 669 of them to be released later as entirely innocent. That's more than half of them.

We can be sure of something. If you give State officials powers, they will use them.

We can also be sure of another thing: giving up freedom doesn't make you more free. Nor does it make you particularly safe.
In fact many distinguished people whose entire career has been about keeping us safe from criminals and terrorists, and prosecuting those who mean us harm, have said that legislation like the 42 days clause is counter-productive and actually dangerous.

Here's another thing we can be sure of in uncertain times. Giving up your freedoms does give the State a lot more power over you – not just now, but in the future as well. And we do not know what the future will bring. We can only, as I said, look to the lessons of recent history.

Over the last week, we have seen 'suspected terrorist' be used in a very strange way. It has been used to mean 'someone we, the party in power don't like the look of, doing something we don't approve of.' It has been used to ratchet up fear for political reasons. It has been used to look tough.

Well, we know politicians find it useful to look tough and in control, especially when events are changing fast and they are not in control as much as they would like. Events can change things very suddenly, as we have seen with the recent pandemonium in the world economy. Politicians can come and go, financial markets can be gripped with panic and spiral out of control and none of us can predict the future.

What we can do is protect the human. We can protect ourselves and each other by choosing to focus on our freedoms, not our fears. We can stand up, as we did today, shoulder to shoulder, and show that we will not sleepwalk into a very different future. We can learn the lessons of the past about our better and worse natures, and remember how a war-torn world came together to say that human rights must be protected and preserved for all time, that the dignity of all human people is the foundation of justice and peace in the world; that freedom of speech and belief, freedom from fear and want are proclaimed as 'the highest aspiration of the people'.

Nothing has changed in the last sixty years to change that. Nothing ever will.

Human rights and freedoms remain something worth cherishing, worth loving. Worth living for. Worth dying for.

Thank you, all of you, for standing up to protect and preserve freedom today, tonight, and always.'

Secret inquests dropped as well.

Hurrah! Hurrah!
Hurray! Hurray!

42 days: government loses the argument

Hurrah for the House of Lords who threw out 42 days last night. Resoundingly, and thumpingly, in one of the biggest votes against the government ever. Normally this would be big news, especially after all the political capital invested in it by Gordon Brown but Bankmageddon drew the fire.

UPDATE: Great piece from Shami who has done more than perhaps anyone else to nail this.

I was up in Leeds with Kate Allen and the campaign team from Amnesty when I heard, at the launch of their new film. On the train back, Davide from Blairwatch filled me in on Jacqui Smith's live reaction, holding the phone close to the TV so I could hear her.

It sounded like a lot of petulant squawking to me. We toasted the 42 days demise with relief.
On closer examination, the Home Secretary's speech was even more awful than it sounded.
It is ludicrous to say that people like Eliza Manningham Buller, recently-retired head of M15, the director of public prosecutions Ken McDonald and the former Labour attourney general Lord Goldsmith are people who are 'prepared to ignore the terrorist threat'. In fact it was their extremely detailed knowledge of the terrorist threat that led them to point out that the bill was dangerous and counter-productive.

And to prove that this is all about using fear to play politics, now there's a one-pager to be whipped out if there's another terrorist attack, described by the shadow home secretary as 'one of the most bizarre things I have ever read'.

42 days won't go through when people are calm and rational and have time to think about it, so we'll stuff it away for now only to shove it through when everyone's in a highly emotional state instead. Classy.

Guardian's timeline of 42 days detention and editorial
BBC 'have your say' reaction (most recommended)
BBC - Campaigners hail 42 days defeat
Spectator - 'a good day to bury bad legislation'
Chicken Yogurt '42 days: Stick a fork in it'
Times

However, 42 days is not the only dodgy and disturbing part of the counter terrorism bill.
See Marcel Berlins on secret inquests.

When I enquired about this, I was told by an insider that the motivation for this part of the bill is so that wiretap evidence or evidence which could not be used in public court because it would endanger, or identify, say, a security services officer working undercover could be shown to the family of the deceased, privately.

I can see the point of this, but unfortunately good intentions are no excuse for bad law. The Lords will debate the rest of the bill on 15th and 21st October.

I was against 28 days, by the way. Hopefully we can get some traction to repeal that next.

SLEEPWALK AGAINST 42 DAYS

BBC news, Yorkshire Post, Independent, Indie leading article, InTheNews
Amnesty press release and see also PROTECTTHEHUMAN.COM
The ‘mass sleepwalk’ starts at 7.15pm on 13 October at the Unitarian Chapel on City Square, Leeds and the film screening is at the Hi Fi Club, Central Road at around 7.45pm.Wear pyjamas/dressing gowns/carry pillows. More detail on march here. Sign the petition here.
Blog recommendations: Richard Wilson, Chicken Yogurt.

Freedom reading

Tomorrow, 42 days and the anti-terror bill is to be debated in the House of Lords. Liberty asked 42 writers, including Philip Pullman, Julian Barnes, Monica Ali, Ian Rankin, Alain de Botton, Ali Smith and AL Kennedy for their thoughts. See 42 authors slam 42 days ( Observer) , Huffington Post

You can read all 42 contributions here on the Liberty site.

Meanwhile over at the Telegraph, Shadow Home Secretary, Dominic Grieve says 42 days is unworkable and unnecessary. I wonder if he has signed the Amnesty petition against 42 days yet? It only takes 5 minutes. Pass it on.

Links: Vanessa at Fidra Books, Huffington Post

Are we all suspected terrorists now?

This week we learned that if you've ever had professional contact with someone who had a radical past - such as a direct-action anti-Vietnam-war protester who used explosives to attack government buildings in the 1960s - then you can be called a 'terrorist' yourself and an angry mob can call for you to be beheaded, blown up or otherwise killed, whilst someone who is running for the position of US President or Vice President smiles and says little, or nothing at all.

Even if, when the explosives were set off, you were eight years old, and the guy they're talking about as a 'terrorist' is now a middle-aged professor who used to sit on an education board with you at the start of your career. Yes, this week we learned that to large swathes of people, Senator Barack Obama, the likely next President of the US, is a suspected terrorist.

(Hmmmm, angry mobs, right-wing 'country first' political rallies, economic downturns, hateful and false propaganda - should we be concerned? Any historians in the house fancy a crack at that one?)

So, Senator McCain and lying religious extremist Governor Palin have been inciting hate and violence this week against someone whose politics they don't agree with. (Which, ironically enough in this country would make them suspected terrorists.) Meanwhile, the UK Government has been invoking anti-terrorist legislation against an Icelandic bank whose (admittedly awful) fiscal behaviour they don't agree with.

Seems like the unlikeliest people can be painted as terrorists ,and terrorism laws can be used against the wierdest targets these days. And every week that goes by, the meaning of suspected terrorist seems to get a little stretchier.

Hmmm, you think. Well, I'm solvent, and I'm not running for US President. I should be ok. I'm just an ordinary British person, with a normal everyday life.

But terrrism laws are already being used to spy on ordinary people.

Such as people with barking dogs and noisy children. People who drop burger wrappers and don't scoop up their dog's poo.

Well, you might say to yourself, I'm not antisocial. In fact, if there was a neighbourhood demonstration against tearaway youths and litterbugs and dog poo, I might very well pop along. The local park is becoming a right mess. In fact, I support several environmental campaign groups which are against dumping waste - on a small or industrial scale.

Careful. If you've ever wished you could 'seriously alter a country's political, economic or social structures', as an individual or a group - or thought about attaching a protest sign - or even yourself - to the park railings - you'd better have a read of the new EU law on terrorism before you consider any protest or dissent to that effect.

What about if you were quite happy with the UK's political, economic and social structures - but your friend sent you something suspect by email? Like an Al Qaeda training manual, that he was looking at as part of his studies for his politics PhD, and wanted you to print out for him?
A manual that is available as a free download from a US government website, by the way.
A document you didn't even know he'd emailed to you.

Well, you might find yourself being arrested, repeatedly interrogated and detained in solitary confinement without knowing why, whilst your home is raided and your friends and colleagues questioned about every aspect of your professional and personal life and your parents become frantic with anxiety.

It's distressing, scary, and unfair to be labelled a suspected terrorist when you are a completely innocent person. But at least, in this country, at the moment, under the current government, the police let you out eventually, if they can't find something to charge you with. They have to, after four weeks. You might have lost your job, your relationship, your reputation, your solvency and your sanity, but at least you'll still be alive to pick up the pieces and start again.

As you probably remember, the UK government wanted the power to hold people without charge for 3 whole months, but they weren't able to get enough votes in the Commons. They're currently trying again, this time for 6 week detention period. They did manage to get just enough Commons votes this time, but the House of Lords is fighting the bill on Monday. (The noble Lords had better be careful that they're not all labelled 'suspected terrorists' in a few years' time. After all, no-one elected them and they're arguably being very disruptive at the moment.)

Of course, if the Bush administration thinks you are a suspected terrorist, and manages to catch hold of you, you can be locked up without charge and tortured - even into madness - with no legal protection at all, for as long as the US government want to keep you locked up.

Over here in the UK, if the latest anti-terror laws go through, it will be the case that if you die at the hands of the State - by accident or design - the inquest into your death can be held without a jury, without a coroner, presided over by someone appointed by the government, and closed to the public and the media. Secret inquests. That's a complete violation of open justice, but with so many other basic rights being shredded, without much public reaction, who cares anymore?

Yes, its starting to look as if almost anyone could be a suspected terrorist these days.
It's almost as if being a suspected terrorist is starting to mean 'someone we in power don't like the look of', doing something we don't approve of.'

Like owning a naughty or incontinent dog. Or having the wrong kind of political acquaintances. Or looking like you might win a popular election on a more liberal ticket by a landslide.

Or being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Being annoyed about the terrorism laws being misapplied and protesting about it might, one day, make you a suspected terrorist. At this rate, who knows where that will end?

Fortunately, there's still time to do something about all this lunacy.

If you have a seat in the House of Lords, you can vote against the latest anti-terror bill.
If you live in the UK, you can talk to your friends and family, write to your MP, sign and pass on the petition and generally exercise your right to protest about it.

If you're Barack Obama, you can ignore it and carry on campaigning to get yourself elected.

I can only wish everyone the very best of luck in their endeavours.

42 days - Liberty film 'Imagine'

LIBERTY has more information. See also post below for the SLEEPWALK protest in Leeds organised by Amnesty. Petition here.

42 days - get ready for Monday - SLEEPWALK

42 days has been reported as, if not a dead parrot, certainly a very poorly one.
Monday sees the House of Lords, our unelected saviours of democracy, debating the bill. And ripping it up into little bits and jumping on it, one hopes.
However, it is not dead yet and it is both a moral duty and a pleasure to point out to the government what a disgraceful thing it is, that they should even think about trying to lock up men and women for six weeks without charging them with any crime.
And it would well behove us as proud British citizens if a mighty roar could be raised in protest at this undemocratic, appalling erosion of our rights and freedoms in the name of 'terrorism'.

Amnesty is encouraging you to come to Leeds to show that you do not want to sleepwalk into a very different world, where you are no longer free - or protected from human rights abuses.
I'll be there, making a speech, and if you can make it, it would be great to see you there too.

‘MASS SLEEPWALK’ LAUNCHES NEW AMNESTY FILM AND PETITION AGAINST 42 DAYS PRE-CHARGE DETENTION
A “mass sleepwalk” will take place through the streets of Leeds on Monday (13 October) as Amnesty International launches its new film, ‘Sleepwalk’, heralding the next phase of the organisation’s campaign against UK government plans to extend detention without charge to 42 days. The film, by Oscar-shortlisted directors DarkFibre, features an exclusive new soundtrack by The Orb and a voiceover by actor Christopher Eccleston.

Amnesty is concerned that civil liberties are still under attack in the Counter-terrorism Bill and warns that people in the UK may be sleepwalking into an assault on their basic human rights. Political rumours that the plans will be dropped cannot be relied upon and the 42-day proposals must be defeated once and for all, Amnesty says.

The film accompanies a new online petition at www.protectthehuman.com/42days , urging MPs to oppose the 42 days proposal. Amnesty is specifically calling on MPs who did not support previous proposals for 90 days pre-charge detention, but did vote for 42 days in June, to oppose 42 days this time round.

The ‘mass sleepwalk’ starts at 7.15pm on 13 October at the Unitarian Chapel on City Square, Leeds and the film screening is at the Hi Fi Club, Central Road at around 7.45pm.

Wear pyjamas/dressing gowns/carry pillows.

If you can't march, please SIGN and pass on.

More news on 42 days fightback coming soon....

PS. If you haven't read this already, please do. It's terrifying. And it shows you what we are up against and why it is important to make a fuss about liberty and freedom now, whilst we still have it.

42 days is toast (probably)

Sean O'Neill, the crime and security editor at the Times has been on a bit of a roll recently - breaking the story of Sir Ian Blair's departure a month before it happened.
Today he broke the story about 42 days being dropped as 'unworkable', which has been picked up by Nick Robinson, the BBC's political editor and by several other newspapers.
The jig was well and truly up when the loquacious Andy Hayman, previously assistant commissioner for special ops at Scotland Yard wrote in a column for today's Times

'the Government's current proposals are not fit for purpose:

they are bureaucratic, convoluted and unworkable'

which has been blindingly obvious for several months. Hayman makes the point about 'playing politics' and 'games' several times. And of course that is exactly what all this was always about.

The government have already denied that they have dropped 42 days. They will drop it of course - they'll have to, next week, when the Lords absolutely savage it. It stank from its inception and the way it was bribed and bullied through the Commons was not only dishonourable but a complete waste of time. I was very pleased when my MP, Diane Abbott made a thunderous speech decrying it and when David Davis resigned as Shadow Home Secretary in protest at it.

The coup de grace to 42 days was administered by the previous head of M15, the newly-minted Baronness Eliza Manningham Buller, in her sensational maiden speech in the Lords. She was, let us not forget, in charge of M15 during the 7/7 bombings and served 33 years in the security service - so can hardly be accused of being a dewy-eyed idealist in denial about the true nature of the threat from terrorism. At that point, it was dead in the water, and rightly so. Just for good measure, another former spy chief Stella Rimington poured cold water on it last week as well.

However, the bad news is that the 'secret inquests without juries' clause is still in the counter -terror legislation, and with recent news that the government wants to spend £12 billion
on a database to store every email, phone call and text we send, plus the
insane waste of money that is ID cards, it is very clear that the fight to
preserve our freedoms is more important than ever.

Worth bookmarking....

Liberty
Amnesty
Inquest
Theyworkforyou

UPDATE: It turns out that that the Council of Europe ( click here for an explanation of what they are) have pointed out this week that locking people up for six weeks in a police cell without actually charging them with any crime at all is quite possibly incompatible with European human rights legislation. Meanwhile, the Council of Europe's Committee for the Prevention of Torture also published a damning report.
Still think it's a fuss over nothing and you can't be too careful? A 23-year old student detained under the anti-terror legislation confirms 'it really is psychological torture'

Remember this: More than half of the people in the UK arrested for terrorism offences have been innocent and later released without charge, by the way. Yes, really. Go and look at the Home Office website if you don't believe me.
From September 2001 to March 2007 1,228 people were arrested under the terrorism laws.
669 were later released without charge.
Of those charged, only 41 were actually convicted under the terrorism act, and 183 were convicted under other legislation. ( murder, firearms, fraud, conspiracy to cause explosions and so on. Laws which we've had kicking about the statute books for a very long time)

And 114 people are at, or still awaiting trial.
It's probably more by now.

42 days is back. Sign the petition

Amnesty has a petition which takes 5 minutes to sign.

Go here

Liberty has some good detailed info and more suggestions about how you can get involved.

Stand by for more ways to get involved coming soon.

Thanks to everyone who has joined the fight-back so far...

That speech

Yesterday I went up to East Riding with the irrepressible Bob Marshall Andrews and Shami Chakrabarti to take part in a debate about liberty on the eve of the by-election hosted by David Davis. This is the speech I made. Minus the Leeds United opening gag.

UPDATE: Now on The Guardian's Comment is Free

Three years ago I was on the way to work when a 19 year old British man detonated a suicide bomb in the carriage I was travelling in, killing 26 innocent people and wounding over a hundred more. So I understand first-hand how terrifying terrorism is. But I now know that the real aim of the terrorists is not to kill hundreds but to terrify millions. To terrify us so much that we forget who we are and what we stand for and become like frightened children begging only to be kept safe. To use our own nightmares against us and to amplify them through the media and news cycle's endless feedback loop of fear. But as any parent knows, it is not always possible to keep those you love safe, and a person who is always safe is a person who never knows freedom - and who has no life.

Tony Blair once said that the freedom not be to be blown up on the way to work was the most important freedom - and that sounds temptingly true, until you unpack it. For no government can keep us safe, even if they watch over us and film us and listen to us and check our emails and internet use and hold our most intimate data and fill hundreds of prison cells with people who are merely suspected of - but not charged with - any crime at all.

When terrorists attack us, they try to divide us. They want a panicked reaction and a divisive, draconian response. It plays into their propaganda machine and by deeming them our terrible enemies against whom we must wage all-out endless, limitless war, we dignify and glorify their hateful - and hopeless - cause.

But what I learned on 7 July was that we are each other's best security. We are the guardians of each other's liberties and lives. I learned this when the bomb exploded and on each carriage of the train, trapped underground, despite the terrifying darkness and choking dust and screaming, men and women still took each other's hands and comforted and calmed each other, shared water, passed tissues, whilst other men and women ran into dark tunnels, into unknown danger, to rescue the injured. Further horror and injury was only prevented by people's calm and altruistic response. And in the darkness, you could not know if the person who reached to touch your hand was male or female, or what race or religion or sexuality they were. Just a stranger in the dark on whom your own sanity and survival depended.

I have held on to that lesson ever since.

I expect terrorists to attack our way of life and to try to use fear to divide us and change our behaviour. I do not expect our government to do the same, nor do I expect us to collude in giving up our ancient liberties and thus to do the terrorists' work for them.

Make no mistake, this is not about being soft on terrorism. I have no empathy for terrorists and I will cheer loud and long when one is convicted by a jury of his peers of plotting murder and mayhem and is locked up for a very long time indeed. But it is simply not right that we should support laws where people merely suspected of terrorism should be locked up for 42 days and nights without being charged with any crime at all. More than half those arrested for terrorism so far have been found to be entirely innocent, and terrorism laws have been used to harass and harry ordinary people: poets and protesters, chefs and pensioners, students and parents and priests. Ordinary people like you or me.

The Director of Public Prosecutions, the ex-Director General of M15, in office during 7/7, many senior police and the ex Attorney General, and numerous others whose job it has been to protect us, and prosecute those who mean us harm say 42 days is not needed nor is it workable, and I support them. How can I not?

Sometimes an issue is so important that it transcends politics and party lines. We have a choice: whether we focus on our fears or our freedoms. To defy the terrorists by standing together, strong in what we know ourselves to be, looking at what unites us. Not to tolerate political posturing and base attempts to cajole and frighten us. I pray that we have the courage to stand up for the freedoms our enemies want to destroy, and older generations died to protect; whatever our party politics, whatever our background. To say that our liberty is our security and our freedoms the key to unlock our fears, and so let us breathe and live and love and work as we want to, as humans, as is our right. Our birthright, our human right.

I am not a Tory, but I am passionate about the debate that is playing out in David Davis' constituency and all over the UK. They say if you don't stand for something, you will fall for anything, and I am glad to stand shoulder to shoulder with people from all across the political spectrum, knowing that freedom is something worth standing for, worth fighting for, worth dying for. I stand today asking for freedom. I ask you to stand up, and stand for it too.

Tomorrow I am debating with Kelvin McKenzie on Sky at 10.20ish

...which should be quite interesting( !) We're talking about whether the by-election was a waste of money or a good thing for democracy. What do you think?

I'm also doing BBC Radio 5 Live at 7.10am on the same subject, with Iain Dale as the other guest.

Campaigning about liberty with David Davis and friends

Yesterday I went up to Yorkshire on the eve of the by-election to support the civil liberties debate opened by David Davis. I spoke with the irrepressible Shami Chakrabarti and Bob Marshall Andrews QC and afterwards there was a Q&A in a packed room of constituents followed by a round of interviews. We were boosted by two great pieces of news, firstly, a new poll showing that two thirds of the public were not behind 42 days, and secondly, by ex-Security Services Director Dame Eliza Manningham Buller's maiden speech on Tuesday in the House of Lords, where she savaged 42 days. (Dame Eliza was DG of M15 during the 7/7 attacks.)

The turn-out for the by-election is expected to be badly hit by 5000 students in the area being home for the holidays and the Yorkshire County Agricultural Show being on and drawing huge crowds, but I am crossing my fingers and I am delighted that the debate has stayed in the news for over three weeks - this can only be good for the state of democracy and politics to have people all over the UK discussing our civil liberties. It remains a disgrace that New Labour did not field a candidate - where is the courage of their convictions? As they are so fond of telling us, if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear. Ho hum.

UPDATE: The local paper reports, OpenDemocracy was there, and so were some young people from the UK Youth Parliament who I had the pleasure of talking to. The Green party candidate was being pretty rude, and I see that she is now trying to make out that she was excluded from the meeting. The plain fact is that it was a meeting for 100 constituents, including local councillors businesspeople, and youth councillors, and it was clearly advertised as such, and she does not live in the area so she is not a constituent. She was making mischief.

The previous day there had been an open meeting which she had attended along with all the other candidates. Two candidates who were constituents attended the meeting and asked long questions, got long replies and had the opportunity to say who they were and why they were standing as part of their question.

Shami and Bob and I had great fun travelling up and back together and talking all the way, though we missed the train back and had to wait in a hostelry allegedly frequented by Dick Turpin and eat crisps for an hour. When I eventually got back to London I rushed off and did Newsnight, where I had been asked to come in and comment on a film Shiraz Maher had made about jihadis in Saudi Arabia being rehabilitated through a regime of kindness.

Not one of my better performances as I was knackered after talking all day. There was a funny moment where straight after the studio discussion, I was then fleetingly spotted in the next item, a package about the Davis by-election, which must have confused the viewers.

Priceless

From today's Financial Times

'The tantalising prospect of an election battle between Rupert Murdoch and David Cameron mesmerised Westminster yesterday, before the media tycoon moved last night to kill off the idea.

The genesis of a "Sun versus the Tories" by-election was a 40th birthday party thrown for Rebekah Wade, the tabloid's editor, on Thursday night. The Sun, the principal media cheerleader for Gordon Brown's contentious 42-days detention proposals, was outraged by David Davis's resignation. A characteristically unrestrained leader in the tabloid yesterday, headlined "Crazy Davis", fulminated against the former shadow home secretary's "shabby act of treachery" and "petty grandstanding".

Ms Wade and her team had on Thursday afternoon already been discussing a cunning plan to convert this print attack into a full-blown campaign battle, by approaching Rachel North, one of the survivors of the July 7 bombings, to stand against Mr Davis.

As journalists and politicians - including senior Tories but not Mr Cameron - mingled and gossiped at Ms Wade's party, the idea gathered momentum. Mr Murdoch was among those captivated by the concept of a Sun campaign...'

I mean, what the hell? I wish that I had found an answerphone message from Ms. Wade or one of her assistants on my mobile. I would have been quite tempted to put it on youtube, perhaps remixed. I can't believe they were discussing this at a fortieth birthday party. Mind you, I've come up with some madcap ideas at parties myself, that seem deranged in the sober light of dawn.

The back-peddling then starts and the rest of the article is quite funny.

Why on earth would I stand against Mr Davis? I'm not a politician. And I don't support 42 days. (As I thought I had made rather clear, by writing this, for example, in The Sunday Times, which is published by Mr. Murdoch. And by going on and on about the subject for the last two years on my blog and elsewhere.)

Why isn't a Labour politician standing? There's enough of them voted for it. If they are so sure that the public is mad for 42 days they should have no problem convincing them, should they? They were all keen enough on it when I watched them debating it last week on TV. They were all delighted to vote for it and were not whipped or cajoled or encouraged or bullied or 'incentivised' at all, oh no.

I have never voted Conservative, because I am not a Tory. I usually vote Labour or Liberal Democrat. I'm really struggling to support Labour these days for reasons which are well-known to my regular readers.

Personally - and this is my personal opinion expressed on my personal blog - I would support a cross-party alliance of people who campaign to raise the single issue of civil liberties, and if Mr Davis can summon up such an alliance, great. I expect lots of people would support it. Judging by the public reaction on blogs, message boards, and in the readers' comments on newspaper sites, there are a great many people of all sorts of political persuasions who are very excited by the idea of a debate and pleased about Mr Davis' stand. The debate about freedom and fear, liberty and security is a very important debate, and one that is of significant relevance to everyone, not just people who were randomly involved in a terrorism attack, such as Locherbie, or Bali, or the London 7 July bombings.

Mr Davis is a senior and serious politician with many year's experience. What is the point of putting someone who is not a politician nor experienced in the ways of political campaigning, up against him, just because their life was blighted by a bomber, by chance, three years ago? How is that fair? How is that a debate?

In fact, the idea of using a symbolic 'terror victim' to do the government's heavy lifting was first floated on Hackney Labour councillor Luke Akehurst's blog...and got a huge kicking from bloggers of all political persuasions, who said, quite rightly, that it was wrong. And a lot of other things besides (sensitive readers beware: high-velocity swearing in many of the following links)

42 Days. Crushing Civil Liberties ,

Might the Westminster village have the politics of 42 days ...

Nu Labour prat applies for leave from being a member of the human race

Rachel and Luke

Luke Akehurst's idea on how to respond to David Davis - moral ...

Terror victims as a resource

Will New Labour Sink To This?

They Just Don’t Get It

David Davis and the need for clear heads

Lower Than A Rattlesnakes Belly

Luke Akehurst: "Repellent Idea", Rachel North London

Lift a stone, find a Labour activist

David Davis Resigns

Meanwhile, it is interesting that the Westminster village has been chuntering so much and been so negative about what Mr Davis' decision to raise the issue of civil liberties and resign his position to do so. Neither journalists nor politicians like being completely surprised, and Mr Davis surprised them.

To put it mildly.

Matthew Parris has some musings on the subject, in The Times

I thought this week had been mad but it just keeps on getting madder and more bonkers.