Via Slate:
"On Wednesday, the British Parliament humiliated the prime minister, Tony Blair, by solidly rejecting his proposal to let police keep someone in custody for up to 90 days without bringing charges. Although the political interest was in how many members of Blair's own Labor Party deserted him, it was the overwhelming opposition by Conservatives that killed the thing. To an American, it takes a bit of effort to wrap your head around this: The prime minister, who leads the rough equivalent of the Democratic Party, said that the sacrifice of freedom was necessary to the war on terror. But the rough equivalent of the Republican Party said that individual rights are more important.
We need not leap to the assumption that this was entirely a matter of glorious principle. No doubt opportunism and the yin/yang of politics played a role: Blair became a ferocious supporter of George W. Bush's war in part to show that a party of the left could be hard-nosed about this sort of thing. And once the war became the dominant issue of British politics, it became only natural that the Tory opposition would find reasons to oppose it. But even if opportunism is what led Conservatives to oppose 90-day detention, there was a language and a set of values available to them to make the case seem at least principled and sincere. It has to do with the traditional conservative suspicion of government and respect for the individual—even the individual accused of terrorism."
Posted by Alan Allport at November 14, 2005 08:05 AM