I know Smith was not initially responsible for calling in the police. But she is the senior Minister in the Department and she had the power to call the dogs off before this got out of hand. She should have assessed whether any of this stuff really was a breach of national security or whether someone was acting out of pique because so many leaks were taking place. It should never have been allowed to get to a situation where an Opposition MP, doing his job as he saw it, was threatened by the police with life imprisonment, as appears to have been the case. But as with other things she doesn't seem to have had her eye on the ball, doesn't seem to have seen the possible fall-out of such a dramatic step and did nothing about it. It seems to me she has no credibility left and simply has to go, sooner rather than later.
Even the police it seems were at odds on how to proceed. Sir Paul Stephenson, now head of the Met, clashed with Bob Quick who led the commons enquiry. Quick, who resigned last week over his own stupid security breach, was adamant that the full weight of the law be thrown at Green while Stephenson advocated a more informal series of steps, clearly aware of the danger of such precedent.
The government seems to be more than just error prone at the moment, it appears, in many key areas, to be downright incompetent and that starts at the top. Whatever my opinion of Tony Blair, particularly after Iraq, I think his judgment that Gordon Brown was not a natural leader of the party was spot on. Look at the Damien McBride affair. Brown appears not to have known what was going on despite the man being his policy adviser. He took ages to apologise for what was done and then did so yesterday in Scotland, clearly aware that his rather distant 'regrets' were not cutting it. But is Brown as innocent as he makes out? When Blair was Prime Minister, it was well known that Brown and his cabal plotted incessantly against Brown's enemies. Does anyone remember Charlie Whelan and the Mandelson home loan affair? Another enemy of Brown's was outed by Brown's spin doctor, presumably with his boss's approval. Has Brown the plotter really changed that much now he has the top job?
And as for the ludicrous misuse of the Terrorism Bill, there is a video on You Tube of Brummie film maker Darren Pollard filming the police from his front garden.
The consequence is that two worthies from the West Midlands Police knock on his door and demand that he stop filming them 'because it's illegal'. Pollard is made of stronger stuff and demands that they show him where in British law it is illegal to film policemen and eventually they walk away, tails between their legs. But the sting in the tail is that from this month, it will be illegal to film the police under certain conditions where, presumably they are involved in anti terrorist work. But you can bet your bottom dollar the police will interpret this as freely as they like.
And yesterday two Austrian tourists, a man and his young son, were stopped by police in London because they were filming a bus depot in Walthamstow, and told to delete the pictures as they constituted an offence of 'photographing transport' under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. The police took their passport numbers and hotel addresses. For Christ's sake...if it wasn't so pathetically sad it would be funny. But two keen tourists say they will never come to Britain again. The government is allowing us to slide into a situation where we will soon be policed like Albania and not the UK
I don't think the government necessarily intends this kind of ludicrous excess. But once again rushed legislation without adequate controls is allowing the police, once given an inch, to take a mile - again I'm sure believing that they are fulfilling their duties under the Act.
But we need to slow down. This government, instead of panicking in the face of Islamic extremism and continuing to bring in new laws (Over 3000 since 1997 and counting) seriously needs to sit down and assess the legislation we already have. And they need to strike a better balance between necessary control and the erosion of freedoms which we have long cherished. At present I see a frightening lurch into authoritarianism.
And Brown needs to be Prime Ministerial. We need to stop looking at appropriate quotas of women, blacks, asians or any other politically correct criterion which has so driven this Labour government , and pick the best Ministers for the job. At present they ain't there! Brown has a limited amount of time to make the Labour government even barely credible and if he continues to play Nero while his party burns around him, then he will deserve what he gets at the polls. The saddest part is that the alternative of a Conservative government sickens me to the stomach, maybe a nausea I could tolerate if I thought it had any likelihood of being more efficient, more competent, less error strewn than the shambles we have in office now. The pity is I don't..and they have an ethos which is total anathema to me.
If 'Respect' stands in my Constituency they may well get my vote and that's sad in a way, because it will be a disillusioned angry protest. I could never consider the idea of voting Conservative but to vote again for this Fred Karno's Army of incompetent amateurs currently trying to drive the country into an authoritarian abyss is more than I can stomach.
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