The well-worn path from Liberty to being a Labour hack

When I was a teenager and had already decided I was a Liberal, two of the big names in civil liberties campaigning were Patricia Hewitt and Harriet Harman of Liberty - or the National Council for Civil Liberties as it then was.

Twenty years later they were both impeccably on-message New Labour ministers, sharing Tony Blair's exasperation with "libertarian nonsense".

Another 20 years on and I find Shami Chakrabarti is set on the same path. As one viewer put it last night:

It's incredibly sad to see Shami Chakrabarti the former head of Liberty, whose aim is to protect rights, actively supporting the removal of people's Freedom of Movement. Such a disappointment. #bbcqt #PeoplesVote

— You Broke It Mate (@YouBrokeItMate) December 6, 2018

The moral, I suppose, is that you should be wary of having heroes - or heroines.

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"Britain is the most centralised country in the Western world. Its political system is weighted overwhelmingly towards Westminster, with few institutional safeguards against the writ of Parliament, itself increasingly in thrall to the executive." Tom Crewe on the decline of local government.

Lion & Unicorn considers the decline in Shami Chakrabarti's reputation in 2016.

Donald Trump is shining a light on how much of the American political system is encoded in custom and how little is based in the law, says Annie Karni.

The rules for electing the President of the United States are deeply flawed, argue Eric Maskin and Amartya Sen.

"You must pass through several layers of security, dress appropriately and use only 'non-propelling' pencils. Disconcertingly, visitors must expect to be escorted to the bathroom and searched before departure." Julia Baird on the Royal Archives and what they don't want you to know.

Paul Newton and Brigitte Timmermann uncover the trade in fake penicillin that inspired Graham Greene’s film The Third Man and highlight a continuing problem.

Tim Farron slams Shami Chakrabarti's intention to abstain on Snooper's Charter

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I am more and more puzzled by the actions of Shami Chakrabarti, who has junked her reputation to serve under a leader of the opposition who gives every indication of being on course to lose the next election horribly.

True, it is a well-worn path - when I was a teenager the leading lights of what is now Liberty were Patricia Hewitt and Harriet Harman - but Chakrabati risks becoming a figure of fun.

The latest blow to her reputation is the news that she is to follow other Labour peers in abstaining on the government's Snooper Charter this week.

Tim Farron, as quoted by the Sunday Mirror, is suitably outraged:

“Shami sold her principles to get a peerage. 

“She has sold the final bit of her credibility by accepting a shadow Cabinet role in a party which plans to sit on its hands and wave through this illiberal and intrusive Bill.”

And:

“What really smarts is that she has spent her whole career attacking others for the craven thing she is about to do. 

“Shame on her. I actually thought better of her.”

Shami Charkrabarti goes to Eton

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The latest episode in the slide in Shami Charkrabarti's reputation came on Newsnight yesterday evening when Michael Crick put it to her that she had tried to get her son into Eton.

Her non-denial denial - she just said Crick had "spent too long reading the internet" or something like that - suggests the charge is true.

The story turns out to come from Heat Street a month ago:

A source has told us: "I took my son to Eton to sit the entrance exam a couple of summers ago and was very surprised to soo Shami Charkrabarti there accompanying her son. There is no question it was her. I had assumed Shami was so Left-Wing that Eton was possibly the most offensive four-letter word known to her, but obviously I was wrong."

Heat Street has tried to contact card-carrying Labour member and Corbyn ally Chakrabarti on several occasions to discuss this but she either isn't available or won't return calls.

I had assumed that Charkrabarti was a liberal, which makes her embrace of Corbyn and the regressive left all the sadder.

And she is, of course, free to send her son to school where she likes. It's just that politicians who urge egalitarianism on the voters without practising it themselves are always going to be problematic - see my recent post on the grammar school debate.

What this story reminds me of is one of the SWP activists at York when I was a student there. He was never seen without his donkey jacket and cut quite a figure at student union meetings.

Then someone recalled he had seen him in a suit and tie when they had been trying to get into the same Oxbridge college. We saw him differently after that,

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"The mood wasn’t defensive, but confident, even swaggering. Corbyn had claimed on stage that he ‘wasn’t going to get down in the gutter with anybody’, but his fellow speakers were much less scrupulous." Tom Crewe has been to some Corbyn rallies.

Anya investigates Shami Chakrabarti: "I don’t think the peerage was a reward for writing a report that concluded that the Labour Party is not overrun by antisemitism (it’s hardly a ringing endorsement if you think about it.) But I do think Chakrabarti should not have been asked to conduct an independent inquiry when she had already agreed to accept a Labour peerage. And she should not have agreed to do so."

"After brutal spending cuts, rural bus services have reached the end of the line," says John Disney.

Freddy Mayhew mourns the departure of the last reporters in Fleet Street.

Sam Kriss is fed up with people who cite their own children to back their own political opinions.

"Much of the success of the show was down to the spot-on casting and the chemistry between the performers. Michael Praed’s charismatic-yet-otherworldly presence as Robin was the perfect match for the show’s aesthetic." Llinos Cathryn Thomas looks back at Robin of Sherwood.

No Sandi Toksvig on Cambridge shortlist

It seems it was just press speculation. The shortlist to be the next Liberal Democrat candidate for Cambridge is:

• Tim Bick
• Belinda Brooks-Gordon
• Rod Cantrill
• Julian Huppert
• Sian Reid
• Julie Smith

Cambridge News has more about each of them.

The most enthusiastic press speculation came from the East Anglian Daily Times:

Casting their net to find a successor to one term MP David Howarth in Cambridge, starry eyed Liberal Democrats have alighted on broadcaster, comedienne and children's story writer Sandi Toksvig and human rights campaigner Shami Chakrabarti.

Probably because either would have made a better story as candidate than a competent local councillor.

There was, however, a certain wistful quality to the denial Toksvig issued in The Times earlier this month:

There has been some speculation that, with David Howarth departing as MP from the safe Liberal Democrat seat of Cambridge, Toksvig may stand: “Sadly, that’s nonsense,” she says. “But had it been in five years’ time, it might well be that I would have said, ‘Yes’.

I want to retire from showing off but I don’t want to retire from doing something useful with my life. So I’m not saying it’s out of the question that I may have a political career in the future. Or I might work full-time for a charity.”

So watch this space.

CCTV cameras in school lavatories

There has been a row this week over the decision of a school in Norwich to install CCTV cameras to monitor the sink area in the lavatories.

The Times reported that:

Shami Chakrabarti, the director of the human rights organisation Liberty, said that the measure would serve only to prepare children for a lifetime of intrusive surveillance.

I reported similar concerns in 2007 over a school that was taking children's fingerprints. The headmaster defended the practice on the grounds that it was "preparing pupils for a world in which terrorism was rife, and their privacy would be further invaded".

The defence offered by the head in Norwich is equally striking. Len Holman, the head of Angel Road Junior School, said that pupils had requested the cameras.

At one time the fact that an idea had been put forward by children would have been a reason for adults to reconsider it. Now it is taken as a knock-down argument in its favour. Odd.

Lib Dems announce membership of their privacy commission

Nick Clegg today announced the membership of the party’s Commission on Privacy. It will examine the use, abuse and retention of private data, and propose new safeguards to protect individual rights.

The members are:

• David Heath MP (Chair)
• Simon Davies
• Shami Chakrabarti
• Baroness Sue Miller
• Henry Porter
• Prof. Ross Anderson
• Richard Rampton QC
• Richard Allen

A very impressive list, particularly with the inclusion of Davies, Chakrabarti and Porter.

Further details on the party website.

Chris Huhne on Jacqui Smith's climbdown

My new friends at the New Statesman have just posted an article by Chris Huhne on the government's defeat over 42 days' detention for terrorist suspects:

In reality, the Counter Terrorism Bill was all about making Labour look tough on terrorism by reducing public debate to a number: those in favour of higher numbers are meant to be tougher than those in favour of lower ones. Our opposition will be thrown back in our face in the rhetorical aftermath of an atrocity. When parliament rejected 90 days, Kitty Ussher MP warned that opponents would be left with ‘blood on their hands.’ This time Jacqui Smith has accused us of ignoring ‘the terrorism threat, for fear of taking a tough but necessary decision.’

But this is nonsense, as history teaches us an entirely different lesson. Governments that go over the top by implementing disproportionate and repressive measures lose the sympathy and co-operation of the very groups they need to combat terrorism.

Now read Shami Chakrabarti on the same subject

Shami Chakrabarti celebrates the defeat of 42 days

Good stuff in the Guardian:

From Diane Abbott and Frank Dobson on the left to David Davis and Dominic Grieve on the right, democratic politicians came together to say "enough is enough". Let the misnamed, misguided "war on terror" that replaced law and ethics with permanent exceptionalism be over. Let a new anti-terror effort begin, based on the values that bind our society together and distinguish it from those where tyranny and terrorism are rife.

Make no mistake: their lordships were glorious – the cross-bench independents in particular. The home secretary's statement last night seemed to revive the discredited yah-boo of which party is really "serious" about public protection.

Lord West knew better than to try such nonsense in the Upper House where any suggestion that the likes of Lady Manningham Buller or Lord Dear might be soft on terror would be met with the derision it deserves.

Now read Chris Huhne on the same subject.

Chris Huhne on identity cards

From the Independent:

Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said cards were a "grotesque intrusion" on the liberty of the British people and would be regarded as a "laminated Poll Tax" if made compulsory.

That's the stuff to give them.

The paper also quotes the admirable Shami Chakrabarti from Liberty:

It's going to take more than pastel colours and flowery design to persuade us to surrender our privacy and billions of pounds to boot.

"Picking on foreign nationals first is the nastiest politics; as costly to our race relations as to our purses."

David Davis says:

"There is no justification for requiring every British citizen to have an identity card and for innocent citizens to be required to submit their fingerprints to a state controlled database, with all the risks that go with that."

Which makes it rather a shame that he had a rush of blood to the head and resigned as shadow home secretary.

I fear the authentic voice of Toryism is to be found elsewhere:

MigrationwatchUK chairman Sir Andrew Green said the cards were "essential" to tackle illegal immigration.