DRY YOUR EYES MATE

“Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself."
- US supreme court justice, Louis Brandeis

Let’s not get confused here. Blunkett resigned before he was caught. He’s responsible for the most draconian raft of legislation this century that no Tory would have got away with. History will recall his legislation not his fling with a publisher.

There’s been too many tears shed about old Blunkett, a ‘working class boy from a poor neighbourhood’. Well no doubt his life-story is fascinating but what’s more fascinating is looking at some of his key policy iniatives have been.

As the former New labour luvvie Helena Kennedy QC wrote: “Anti-terror laws cannot be vacuum packed; they seep into the policing culture and create new paradigms of state power. During a visit to India this spring, the home secretary suggested that governments may have to consider whether the burden of proof might have to be lowered from "beyond reasonable doubt" to the civil test of the "balance of probabilities" in terrorist trials. Two days later, the prime minister agreed that such a change should be considered, and he went further, suggesting that the lower standard might also apply to other serious crime.

What is introduced today for terrorism almost invariably enters general usage shortly thereafter. The right to silence was first emasculated in terrorism cases in Northern Ireland in 1988, but the erosion of the right was extended into all domestic law in the UK in 1994. The proposal to lower the standard of proof is now part of the new "pre-emptive" civil order proposals for terrorists, coming before parliament in the next session. “

Blunkett has already derogated from the European Convention on Human Rights to enact draconian "anti-terror" law and extended the Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIP) Act, known as the "Snoopers' Charter". His Criminal "Justice" Act has begun to dismantle basic legal safeguards such as the right to trial by jury and double jeopardy protection.

ID cards is next. And we’re in a position now according to Amnesty International: “Where the UK government has effectively created a shadow criminal justice system for non-UK nationals that fails to meet international standards for a fair trial.”