Because of the horrors unfolding in Libya, voices are again being heard calling for ‘humanitarian intervention’ by the west to protect the defenceless Libyan population from their deranged ruler. This activist climate seems to...
Three cheers for The Scotsman, the first of the mainstream media to publish an article that at last spells out some of the questions arising from the contradiction between the Libya-UK Prisoner Transfer Agreement...
It’s sad to have to record that on 10 February 2011 the house of commons debated and passed a motion[1] that asserted two indefensible propositions: that we should continue to deprive almost all prisoners...
The prime minister’s statement in parliament on 7 February about the report by the Cabinet Secretary (pdf) on the newly released documents in the Megrahi case inexplicably ignored the major unresolved issue revealed by...
Is there no end to the muddle and misrepresentations generated by the controversy over the release by the Scottish government in August 2009 on compassionate grounds of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, the Libyan...
As widely predicted, the coalition government’s review of the previous government’s counter-terrorism legislation has not had the cojones to recommend the outright abolition of the intrinsically flawed régime of control orders. Even more disappointingly,...
I am fast coming round to Ed Balls, now Labour’s shadow chancellor of the exchequer, finally pitted in one-to-one combat against the mad axeman and economic illiterate, George Osborne. The Tories and their little...
Like others on the liberal/Labour left, I’m saddened by indications that the Labour opposition is ready to reject the coalition’s plan to restore voting rights to most prisoners serving sentences of less than four...
At the end of 2010 the admirable Caroline Lucas, Green Party leader and sole Green MP, had a letter in the Guardian lambasting Labour for inconsistency: the former Labour government had introduced university tuition...
The Justice Secretary, Kenneth Clarke, introduced his proposals for reform of sentencing policy in the house of commons this afternoon (7 Dec 2010). These concentrated on reducing re-offending by more effective rehabilitation of offenders...