42 DAYS etc.

After the vote in parliament the other night, we can now, in Britain, detain terror suspects for 42 days without charge. Which, apparently, the majority of the British public and Rupert Murdoch (neither of whom I would be comfortable siding with), think is a good idea.

Of course it is. Internment works a treat with an enemy that fuels itself on martyrdom. On feeling wronged and sacrificing its children as well as yours to the cause. We've just emerged for thirty or forty years of peace and roses and cuddles and nursery rhymes in Ireland, after all, where similar policies existed.

The Labour Party now seems determined to abandon every principle that made it seem, in the Eighties, like the only hope the country had after years of Thatcherism had left England an almost unrecognisable, callous, uncultured, little plastic offshoot of the United States. Gordon Brown doesn't even believe in an NHS free at point of access anymore. He'd be severing the last remaining political links with the unions too, if Labour didn't still take so much money from union subscriptions.

Well, here's a suggestion. Perhaps the unions should sever them first and give the money to politicians or lobby groups who support the union cause. One union at least has talked about it, but given the traditional association of trade unionism with the Labour Party it's a big step.

The thing is, this isn't the same Labour Party anymore. At the top it's an ineffectual, morally compromised little cabal of bank managers and boardroom toadies who have no more connection to the working man than you or I or Donald Trump.