We are not living in a police state. Not even a remotely authoritarian one. In fact we, all of us, have never enjoyed so much liberty—personal, political and legal. Yet to assert this view sets one at odds with a large part of liberal opinion in Britain.
In the run up to February’s Convention on Modern Liberty, the liberal press was filled with cries of anguish from leading writers and intellectuals—Philip Pullman evoked “sleeping Albion” as new laws sup-posedly strangled old freedoms, Anthony Barnett talked about a “system crisis,” Henry Porter claimed we had only “two years” before it is too late.
When I read the actual litany of complaint against the government, I felt unmoved. Forty-two days detention without charge and control orders (which apply to just 17 people)? True, 42 days (which was rejected by parliament) is a long time but suspects are under constant judicial review—and both measures were a response to a real threat, something that never seems to feature in the liberty lobby discourse. Then there is the surveillance state—CCTV cameras and DNA databases. Nowhere have I heard of innocent people suffering injustice as a result of either technology and, as the father of four children who often travel on their own around central London, I find the cameras reassuring (on some estimates half of all British transport police convictions are won thanks to CCTV evidence).
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