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Surveillance states don’t drop from the sky. They emerge alongside seemingly reasonable excuses that do not ring alarm bells for the ordinary citizen, piggybacking on genuine issues that are of concern to the public. In this case, with breathtaking cynicism, labour are using people’s justified concerns about immigration and the rise in crime to impose what Mahmood unironically describes as a panopticon state upon law-abiding citizens, whilst – typically for this government – doing nothing to address the root cause.
– Eve Lugg
We are only, here in the UK, at the very beginning of the process of descent into tyranny. But it is helpful to frame our thinking with this in mind: that is our trajectory if we continue to imagine that state authority can be founded in political hedonism, or the unity of desire. And it is also helpful for us therefore to imagine how things can be different: what is the proper grounds for the authority of the state, and how are states indeed properly constituted?
The answer, for those who know their political theory, is the antithesis of tyranny: the rule of law. But it is the rule of law understood in a special way. It does not mean the ‘rule of lawyers’ (which we are now highly familiar with). It means something much more specific than that.
– David McGrogan (£)
In response to a question about where the problem in British politics lies, I agreed with the questioner it’s “the system” as currently configured that’s the crux of the matter.
Britain faces a series of systemic institutional structural problems, not a problem of leadership or competence. The Civil Service doesn’t serve, it has its own agendas, and the QUANGO-ocracy is where the real power lies, not with Parliament and the elected government.
Reform understands they have to smash the blob rather than try to work with it. And even if for the sake of argument nanny statist Kemi Badenoch also understand that (just as Liz Truss now does), Badenoch’s party is riddled with people who either don’t understand that, or do understand but are actually on the side of the rotten institutions. That means the Tories are a key part of the problem, not the solution.
Reform on the other hand have much less baggage in that respect. Their ‘inexperience’ is a plus because much of the rapidly forming Reform apparatus are outsiders with no attachment to the status quo, or are former Tories who got their illusions beaten out of them when they tried to be, you know, conservatives when in power, only to get crushed by the blob.
That’s why I support Reform. It’s not the quality of the people that attracts me, it’s the fact Reform-as-an-institution isn’t just a wing of the Uniparty filled with people saturated with establishment assumptions.
By her own account, she was in a party that she no longer trusted, had no faith in, and could not defend. “I looked around and realised I was politically isolated and alone.” The problem, as she sees it, is not circumstantial but structural – and insoluble. “Most of the people involved in the great betrayals are the same people running the party today.”
The central betrayal, the one she returns to again and again, is immigration. “The truth,” she warns, “is that half of Conservative MPs are dead against leaving the ECHR. I know it. I sit in the tea rooms. I hear what they say under their breath.”
[…]
Why, then, does she believe that Reform can succeed where the Tories repeatedly failed? Braverman says that, when she tried to persuade the party that Britain must leave the ECHR, to cut visas, to end what she calls two-tier policing, she was left exposed. “None of my Cabinet colleagues stood up for me. Not one.” The Conservatives might respond that recollections vary, but Braverman is insistent that there is a zeal in Reform which she is convinced the Tories still lack.
– Annabel Denham writing about Suella Braverman’s defection (£) to Reform
Can someone explain to me why the Tories opened negotiations with Mauritius over the control of Chagos, which was never part of Mauritius and whose inhabitants have never wanted to be part of Mauritius? And can someone explain why Labour wants to pay Mauritius to take over territory it never previously owned at any point in history?
The highest* criminal court in England & Wales, the Court of Appeal, has come up with a judgment holding that what is called ‘jury nullification’ isn’t permitted, it’s called ‘jury equity’ by some here. The duty of the jury is to return a verdict on the evidence, jurors (who are compelled to serve and take an oath to deliver a true verdict according to the evidence) must follow the law and the judge’s directions. The proceedings arose from some environmental criminals who vandalised a bank and sought to defend their actions on the basis of something like that the bank’s shareholders would have consented to the damage if they’d known it would protect the environment. This is technically a defence in English law, but on the facts, none of the accused mentioned this in interview, all raised it in court and it may well have been found to have been a contrived defence, we don’t know why, because juries do not give reasons or discuss the case afterwards.
The case considered the landmark decision of Bushell’s Case from 1670, the juror who refused to convict Quakers William Penn and William Mead and his writ of habeas corpus was granted, after the trial judge fined and imprisoned him for not returning a guilty verdict.
Since Mr Bushell wrongly did porridge for saving Quakers, the law has moved on and in England, it is forbidden to mention jury nullification in court.
The Court of Appeal’s judgment held that whilst jurors have to give verdicts according to the law and the evidence, there is no mechanism to punish them if they do not do so (provided they actually follow the rules and are either split with no verdict, or acquit). The Court said this:
Bushell’s Case may be best understood as recognising an immunity from punishment in respect of their decision as to what verdict to return, rather than a right to return verdicts in defiance of the evidence.
A distinction that might be lost on some, but it means that the concept of nullification cannot be raised in court as part of a defence.
And would it be wrong to think that in the States, ‘jury nullification’ is seen as a pro-liberty stance as a check on an overly powerful State, whereas ‘jury equity’ in the UK is seen as a way to undermine property rights and allow socialist violence to go unchecked?
* The Supreme Court is based in England, but it sits as a ‘UK’ court. It could yet hear an appeal from this case if an appeal were brought.
The UK’s electricity crisis is not caused by “System Failure”. It’s caused by Net Zero
– Tilak Doshi
“When I was in justice, my ultimate vision for that part of the criminal justice system was to achieve, by means of AI and technology, what Jeremy Bentham tried to do with his Panopticon. That is that the eyes of the state can be on you at all times.
“Similarly, in the world of policing, in particular, we’ve already been rolling out live facial recognition technology, but I think there’s big space here for being able to harness the power of AI and tech to get ahead of the criminals, frankly, which is what we’re trying to do.”
– Shabana Mahmood (£), Britain’s Home Secretary, explicitly states she wants to turn the country into a panopticon, quite literally a prison.
Jeremy Bentham, an 18th-century philosopher and social theorist, promoted the Panopticon as a circular prison with a central inspection tower from which a single guard could observe all inmates all the time while unseen.
Britain is also eerily emulating a pattern of democratic backsliding; from India to Mexico, authoritarian governments “test-drive” what they can get away with at local level first. By conveniently delaying elections at a time when council tax is set to rise, Labour risks setting a wicked precedent for “taxation without representation”.
– Sherelle Jacobs, Daily Telegraph (£).
I can’t kid myself any more. The party hasn’t changed… and it won’t. The bulk of the party don’t get it. Don’t have the stomach for the radical change this country needs. In opposition, it’s easy to paper over these cracks, but the divisions – the delusions – are still there. And if we don’t get the next Government right, Britain will likely slip beyond the point of repair. Everything is on this. I cannot, in good conscience, stick with a party that’s failed so badly, that isn’t sorry and hasn’t changed. That I know in my heart won’t… can’t… deliver what’s needed. That’s why I resolved to leave.
– Robert Jenrick
As the i reported, Emily Darlington, Labour MP for Milton Keynes Central, ‘is seeking to make the Electoral Commission recommend enhanced DBS checks for candidates and then publish whether or not parties have agreed to the vetting. The aim is to ensure political parties justify whether their candidates are fit for office and name and shame those who refuse to participate.’
This is troubling when one considers that DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) checks include not just criminal history but ‘non-crime hate incidents’, which may even appear on the records of people who haven’t been contacted by police. These highly-political charges are far more likely to be directed at those with Right-wing opinions.
When western European countries do things like this, I try to gauge whether this is normal by asking the question: what if Hungary did this? In most of these cases, I imagine the assessment would be that it was an assault on liberalism and democratic norms. In which case, what if Britain is undergoing the sort of ‘democratic backsliding’ usually levelled at central European countries with conservative governments? What if Keir Starmer is actually one of these illiberal ‘strongmen’ we read about, just not a very effective one.
– Ed West
Nick Timothy writes in the Telegraph:
It was last summer when Aston Villa drew Maccabi Tel Aviv in the Europa League. Immediately, the local, “Gaza Independent” MP Ayoub Khan launched a campaign to cancel the match. His petition demanded the match be cancelled because Aston is, in his words, a “predominantly Muslim community”.
After police planning started for the match, due to be played on November 6, officers met Birmingham councillors and officials at the Safety Advisory Group meeting on October 7. Two local councillors present said the “community want it stopped”. They met behind closed doors, but the minutes now show the truth. Even in the “absence of intelligence” the “planning assumption” of the police was that no away fans would attend the match.
The chairman of the Safety Advisory Group contacted the police two days later asking for a “more clear rationale”. A position had been reached, but the police were asked retrospectively to drum up a justification. The chairman warned the police to make sure the decision did not look like “anti-Jewish sentiment”.
When the committee met again on October 16, the police magicked their “significant intelligence” about the supposed violence of the Maccabi fans.
The police thought they could get away with it. Instead, their case has utterly collapsed. The “intelligence”, which the Chief Constable said had “changed the assessment”, focused on disorder in Amsterdam in 2024. It said the Maccabi fans were “linked to the Israel Defence Force” and targeted Muslim areas, throwing people into the river. Their report claimed the Dutch police sent 5,000 officers to tackle the violence. But none of it was true.
The fabricated “intelligence” supposedly came from an unminuted meeting between West Midlands Police and Dutch commanders on 1 October. This meeting was held six days before the meeting when the police said there was an “absence of intelligence”.
Amsterdam’s mayor, local police chief, and chief public prosecutor have all contradicted the “intelligence” – even calling it “nonsensical”. The disorder in Amsterdam was in fact violence against the Maccabi fans, which was described as a “Jew hunt”. It was an Israeli who was pushed into the river. Only 1,200 officers were deployed.
And it gets worse. West Midlands Police received intelligence on September 5, before the Safety Advisory Group meetings, saying local Islamists planned to “arm themselves” and attack Maccabi fans. But this information was suppressed, seemingly because the police did not want to admit that the true source of the threat lay closer to home. Instead of confronting the mob, the police gave in and banned the Israelis.
In modern times, the British social contract was meant to be that we, the people, give up the right to use force to protect ourselves in exchange for the police protecting us. Cue Libertarian grumbling “I do not recall signing this contract”, but that is the Britain we used to live in. It wasn’t ideal but it wasn’t bad either. It was one of the better societies that have ever existed.
The social contract relied on the idea that the only people permitted to arm themselves were servants of the state such as police officers or soldiers. If the state got wind that members of any other group – a white nationalist militia for example – were preparing to arm themselves in order to attack their enemies, an armed response unit would be kicking down their doors faster than you can say “Terrorism Act 2000”.
Now that some sections of the police have acquiesced in other groups taking the right to arm themselves, and, worse yet, have covered up their shame by portraying the aggressors as victims and vice versa, what reason do we have to continue to grant them special status as the sole holders of the right and responsibility to bear arms? Without the majestic aura of the law around them, the police are just another gang. They are not even the dominant gang.
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