Conservative MP Damian Green, member of the opposition party and Shadow Minister for Immigration, was arrested and held for questioning for 9 hours by anti-terrorist personnel from the Metropolitan police while his home and office files (digital and print) were seized.  His crime:  revealing uncomfortable truths about the british government on the floor of the house of commons during debate, including:

* the fact that the home secretary knew that the Security Industry Authority had granted licences to 5,000 illegal workers, but decided not to publicise it.

* the fact that an illegal immigrant had been employed as a cleaner in the House of Commons.

* A whips’ list of potential Labour rebels in the vote on plans to increase the pre-charge terror detention limit to 42 days.

The London Telegraph says it all.

Anyone who thinks that this incident is being somehow blown out of proportion by opposition politicians and an excitable media had better think again. A senior opposition spokesman has been arrested and detained, had his personal possessions and confidential correspondence examined, and his family home occupied, without being suspected of any criminal offence.

The object of the exercise seems to have been intimidation and the flaunting of power. Short of an outright, totalitarian suspension of democracy, this is about as serious as it gets. Freedom is under threat in ways that we would not have thought conceivable a generation ago. The threat seems to be coming in various forms from a government desperate to save its own credibility and to be so convinced of its moral righteousness that it can justify the most blatant abuses of what we had taken to be the fundamental principles of a free society.

All together now, “IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE.”

-QC-