In 2003, two people were stopped and searched outside London’s Excel Centre and prevented from attending a peaceful protest against the arms fair taking place inside. Journalist Pennie Quinton was forced to stop filming despite showing her press card, and Kevin Gillian was stopped for 20 minutes when riding his bike.

Together with pressure group Liberty, the pair refused to accept this horribly commonplace police interference and challenged the government over the legal basis for this stop and search – Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000.

The case went through several defeats in the domestic courts, but in January 2010 the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the use of Section 44 violated Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights – the right to privacy.

...according to this Labour attack ad:

So much for the right having a monopoly on anti-crime populism. As for the actual merits of the attack - where to start? Well...

1) 'Even the Daily Mail' concedes that "just one in 350, or 0.3 per cent, of the 1.3 million crimes solved by police" can be credited to the DNA database.

An OurKingdom conversation: Michael Wills > John Jackson > Michael Wills > this post

I can quite understand why Michael Wills is upset about John Jackson's note on his struggle to move the democratic agenda forward with a government which is alternately hostile and indifferent and under a Prime Minister who blows hot and cold, hot and cold, on all the issues. My guess is that he is a genuine democrat who has been given a very uncomfortable and impossible brief.

However, the whole enterprise was flawed from the very beginning. In the July 2007 governance paper the spelling out of the problems was ducked which weakened the proposals for dealing with them. I said as much in a meeting Michael Wills - held with reformers in an attempt to get us on board and support the initiative.

It is no good saying that progress is slow and incremental on constitutional reform in the UK - my god, we know that too well - when nearly all Labour's reforms since 1997 have been predicated on preserving the power of the executive more or less intact.

All right, freedom of information has largely escaped the built-in safeguards for executive hegemony and Scotland has proved to be an evident model for reform at work. But Wills draws attention to the disgraceful pledge for a referendum on the two majoritarian electoral systems on the assumption that it is a good thing. I differ from that view; the public are not being offered a genuine choice which should be the principle of all referendums. The government has simply controlled it by fiat and offered only the prospect of straight AV because its leaders believe that the parliamentary party can live with it at a pinch (though my guess is that those MPs who fear AV are being quietly reassured that it will never happen).

How can any democrat possibly favour a referendum which denies the people a full choice of the alternative systems that exist, including AMS as in Scotland and Jenkins's AV Plus? It is an abuse of power that would be all the more serious if it were not also a botched stitch-up.

Power2010's campaign to bring change to UK politics is stepping up a gear.

With just a few weeks left until a general election is announced, it's time to call out those MPs who have consistently stood against reform of our democracy preferring the corrupt, top-down politics of the past.

If we want a reforming Parliament and a new politics out of the next election we need to ensure the people who want to represent us take seriously the need for change.

That means identifying who the main culprits are amongst sitting MPs.

You know the ones. The dinosaurs in Parliament who tell us reform isn't needed, whilst clinging to their perks and privileges; the MPs who never miss a chance to vote away our civil liberties, whilst telling us it's for our own good.

Apologies to those of you who have commented in the last twenty four hours and seen your comments disappear. We have had a rare site-wide technical mishap which means that many of the comments from the last day have been deleted. Commenting from now on should be fine so please do continue to leave comments. Many thanks for your patience.

Tom Bingham, The Rule of Law, Allen Lane, £20.00 (available from Amazon.co.uk for £12)

In the second review of the book on the rule of law by Lord Bingham, the former lord chief justice, Keith Ewing argues that far from being crusaders for the rule of law, our judges regularly fail to protect human rights. See also John Jackson on Tom Bingham in Lord Bingham’s Footsteps.

I.

In one of its first ever decisions, the new Supreme Court declared that the government's far-reaching provisions freezing the assets of terrorist suspects were ultra vires. The court did not, however, provide that these illegal measures were to be invalid with immediate effect. Rather, it gave the government 40 days and 40 nights to change the law to make lawful that which had been declared unlawful.

True to form, the government did just that. The short and little noticed Terrorist Asset-Freezing (Temporary Provisions) Act 2010 of only three sections declares retrospectively that the unlawful provisions of the asset freezing Orders "are deemed to have been validly made", and that "the prohibitions and obligations imposed by [them] have legal force".

So much then for the rule of law and parliamentary sovereignty, matters both addressed by Lord Bingham's new book. It is not clear who is most at fault here: the Supreme Court in failing to annul unlawful government action with immediate effect, or a craven Parliament willing to rush through unconstitutional legislation at high speed. Let's call it a draw, but ask also where was the press to comment on this constitutional outrage?

Roy Hattersley told a packed hall at the Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge that he had changed his mind on proportional representation. He was scornful about the term “electoral reform” - no one electoral system was better than the others - but he now believed that elections to the House of Commons should be proportional – and critically that the Labour Party’s underlying cause would be best served by such a shift.

Hattersley is a great one-man show. He was on stage for nigh on three hours, speaking first – without notes – and then answering a host of questions. His theme was that the Labour Party had to adopt a firm ideological position based on equality, arguing that it was only through equality that people would enjoy true freedom (he once wrote a book on this).

His argument was that Labour fudged its basic commitment to equality and other public goods because the party felt the need to appeal as widely as possible in its search for a parliamentary majority under first past the post. Hattersley illustrated this theme at one point with a pointed anecdote. He told us that he had received a memo from Patricia Hewitt when she was Neil Kinnock’s publicity chief congratulating him on the speeches he had been making (a brief contemptuous harrumph here), but saying that she noticed he had given continuous emphasis to equality. Could he instead say “fairness”?

‘He looks my age,’ says my nine-year-old son. ‘He looks sort of like me.’

There’s a picture on my screen: a small, slight boy who, for legal reasons, we’ll call M. He’s being cuddled by his 17 year old big brother Z. Both boys are smiling. They have been reunited after a long, hard separation.

Back home in war-torn Afghanistan their parents and a sister were killed. Big brother Z was first to come to Britain, traumatised, in November 2008. He has refugee status, studies for his GCSEs at school in Leicester.

This past October little brother M made his way here. Despite M’s size, his vulnerability, his boyish looks, officials said, you’re not 14, you’re an adult.

Instead of being taken into care, M was bounced around between three different adult hostels and a house-share with older men — and refused asylum.

Welsh Refugee Council staff were baffled and concerned. To them he looked every inch a traumatised boy.

Across the Afghani community and Red Cross networks, word rippled out: a boy called M badly needs to find his big brother Z.

An OurKingdom conversation: Michael Wills > John Jackson > this post > Stuart Weir

The circumstances in which Lord Ashcroft, deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, was secretly able to remain non-domiciled for the nine years in which he has been in the House of Lords, despite promising as a condition of his life peerage that he would become a full UK taxpayer, bring to light the hidden incentives and systemic problems involved in the format

Sunny Hundal has started to prepare Liberal Conspiracy for the Conservatives taking power (even if the leading Conservative in power should prove to be Mandelson). He wants to build the site with more political strategy, activism and news. But it is not just content that he is after. What Sunny is attempting is ambitious, important for British blogland and on-line publishing and for OurKingdom, as we prepare our new approach. He’s written three posts. I commented briefly on the first.

The current crisis of the British state, politics and democracy should be a golden moment for radicals, constitutional reformers and campaigners. It should also be an era in which left and liberal publications have the opportunity to engage and involve a wider audience about the state of the nation and democracy.

One of those publications is the London Review of Books, which sees itself as urbane, cosmopolitan, liberal minded, addressing British concerns and global issues in a challenging and open-minded way. In particular, LRB has made a name for itself addressing such issues as the nature of the Israeli state and power of the Israel lobby, which most mainstream media would not touch. It is all the more interesting that the one area in which it has consistently failed to find an authentic radical voice is in its coverage of contemporary British politics.

Michael Foot was a fine and inspiring man who stood for significant radical values throughout his life and whose personal qualities rightly won him wide affection and respect.  A far cry from the unsavoury New Labour politicians, their mealy-mouthed evasions and ‘attack dog’ tactics who have run the party he ‘saved’ for the past 20 years. 

Is an English Backlash emerging? the IPPR asked in a report out this week. The answer provided by Professor John Curtice was heavily qualified, but it suggests that the English question is moving up the political agenda:

In England public attitudes towards devolution may be beginning to be linked a little more to people’s sense of national identity and their views about how well Scotland is funded. Support for the idea of an English Parliament may be beginning to find some roots in English national identity and perceptions of England’s material interests. If  this trend continues too, then politicians may indeed no longer be able to assume that it is safe to ignore England in the devolution debate.

The party leaders had proclaimed it as a wake-up call. They were united in their calls for urgent and far-reaching reforms. Yet, until yesterday, the only reforms achieved in the wake of the MPs expenses crisis were those establishing new rules and regulations concerning MPs expenses.

So, the votes in the House of Commons on Thursday afternoon which pave the way for reforms to the Commons itself are a highly significant development. They arise from the work of the House of Commons Reform Select Committee, established by Gordon Brown at the height of the expenses crisis, and chaired by Dr Tony Wright, the long-standing MP for Cannock Chase.

I was interested to see this letter by Tory MEP Daniel Hannan, head of the UK's new anti-tax "Tea Party" campaign, in today's Guardian:

You describe me as "Daniel Hannan, the hard-right Conservative MEP". Well, OK. Just for the record, though, I opposed the invasion of Iraq, argued against section 28, supported civil partnerships, and backed Barack Obama. The context in which you mentioned me was my praise for Michael Foot, whom I liked and admired: we were both, I wrote, inspired by the radical-democratic tradition of the Levellers.

If the Levellers were around today, I doubt they'd be planning to vote Labour. They'd support withdrawal from the EU, an end to quangos ("Crown placemen") and democratic local control of the police and judiciary. I'm pretty sure they'd also want referendums. Michael Foot was, in many ways, their heir; Gordon Brown is not.

Daniel Hannan MEP

Con, South East England

The Digital Economy Bill now before the Lords is a matter of grave concern. The concern centres on two questions: what rights we should assign to ‘intellectual property’, and how we should protect such rights. Watch out: corporate interests are claiming the natural sympathy you have for artists, and inviting you to Orwellian excesses.

Intellectual property

Start by remembering copyright and patents were devised to ensure artists and inventors get paid for their work. No artist feels violated if his work is copied. He’s delighted: the more people read his novel or hear his song, the better he likes it. He just wants to get paid for his work. If money is being made he wants some of it.

The huge sums paid in the 20th century to some writers and musicians was a side effect of copyright law and broadcast media: a few channels broadcasting to large audiences produced huge audiences for top acts. The wealth of the Rolling Stones, bless ‘em, is a side effect of the distribution system, not a natural right of talent. That distribution system is changing fast with new technology. It is, and should be, an open question whether the new system produces such winner-take-all effects. Do not legislate to protect it.

Gordon Brown’s role in the Iraq war will come under focus today when he gives evidence to the Chilcot inquiry.

The Iraq war is the point where Tony Blair lost his political touch, and became ‘Bliar’ in the eyes of many voters. Despite four previous inquiries into the war, none of them as comprehensive as this, a sense of anger, frustration and lack of trust now pervades how the public view politicians and the conflict.

Much of this anger is addressed personally at Tony Blair, his role in making the case for war, the ‘sexed-up’ dossiers, the dissembling and spin, and the relationship with George W. Bush. Gordon Brown faces questions about what his views were in the crucial months leading up to war, why he didn’t oppose it, and when it was set to happen, the contentious issue of funding it.

However, the Iraq war did not happen as an isolated event, or just because of the perfidy of Blair and acquiescence of Brown. It happened in the context of where Britain sees itself in the world, how it understands its past, and its strategic interests. In particular, if we examine the two British foreign policy disasters of the last century, Munich and Suez, we can throw wider light on the Iraq war. I am drawing in my understanding of these episodes from John Darwin’s magisterial text, The Empire Project: The Rise and Fall of the British World System 1830-1970 (Cambridge University Press 2009) which addresses the carefully nuanced way the British created an elaborate system of networks, lines and bases which gave succour to the empire at its peak.

An OurKingdom conversation: Michael Wills > this post > Michael Wills > Stuart Weir

‘They do not like it. If Michael persists it could be the end of his political career’.

I think that Michael Wills is a decent, highly principled, loyal, hard working and thoughtful politician with strong egalitarian and democratic instincts. Since Gordon Brown, for whom Wills has been a speech writer, became Prime Minister in 2007, Wills has been a Minister of State at the Department of Justice charged with the development of the tentative proposals for a start on constitutional reform set out in the Green Paper ‘The Governance of Britain’ issued shortly after Brown took office. We all know what that Green Paper has led to – very little - and it is clear that Michael Wills has had a difficult and deeply frustrating time. He has decided to retire from Parliament at the next election and, given our bizarre convention (it is only a convention and one with a murky history) that no-one may be a member of the government unless they are also a member of one of the two houses of Parliament, it is unlikely that he will ever serve us again as a minister.

What can we expect by way of a swan song from Wills? It seems that we may have had it already in a personal overview of Accountability under Democratic Constitutions delivered by him at the start of a conference in early February and published on OurKingdom very recently. Mythology tells us that the song of a swan before its demise is of great sweetness. Sadly, that personal overview comes over as a hoarse, tired and somewhat authoritarian croak.

Gordon Brown is due to appear before the Chilcot Inquiry today. In case the point fails to be made, we cross-post from the Guardian's Comment is Free of last week, this cool, clear and authoritative summary of what is now an established fact: that Britain's participation in the invasion was illegal.