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Tabloid justice
Excerpt: Dave Hill has a good post on Comment is Free about the frenzy for tabloid justice. What he didn't mention was the extent to which this is bipartisan. At PMQs this week Cameron and Blair were competing to show who was better at listening to the redtops, rather than to voters. (Regular readers may remember that nothing in politics offends me more than this). Doing what the red tops want on judges and on sentencing is another of things Cameron and Blair have in common (like Iraq, the Education Bill etc).
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Blair seems to forget that innocent people are part of the "law-abiding majority". He's setting up a false dichotomy. Only a subset of "suspects" (probably a majority, but certainly not all) are guilty of a crime.
So when he says that the rights of suspects might not outweigh the rights of the law-abiding majority, what exactly does this mean for innocent people who are part of the law abiding majority and are also suspects? What does he propose for innocent members of the law-abiding majority who are suspected (wrongly) of committing a crime?
I think I was expanding on this while you were commenting, Martin. You're absolutely right.
But you should register: it takes about a minute and makes posting a comment easier.
Peter
http://pigeon-post.blogspot.com/
Hello and thanks for liking my CiF piece. It's interesting that the reaction to Blair's speech seems to have been almost wholly negative, including from The Sun which upbraids him today for not promising to build more prisons. The PM may be rather disappointed by this. No doubt he hoped that the speech would have the dual effect of pandering to the red-top whose support he longs for most and suggesting to those who accuse him of headline-chasing that he is thinking about criminal justice deeply and seriously. In the event, he's getting bollocked by all and sundry. Serves him right, I guess but it is still a depressing spectacle. Even though overall crime levels appear to be falling it is absolutely true that the system fails the public from the police at the bottom to the barristers at the top. Yet Blair's credibility is now so damaged that no one takes him seriously when he says he's going to do something about it. Will he take the hint and either step down a.s.a.p. or change his tack? Not a hope. Instead the 'tougher'-than-you bidding war with Cameron which you quite rightly mention seems set to continue on its present, pointless path. Happy days.
The tabloids now know that they've got a proper bidding war going on, so they feel free to push Blair further than ever, in the knowledge that Cameron will give them what they want if Blair doesn't.
What gets liberals worked up over things like this is the sense that the rule of law is taking second place to the rule of man; that is, that the tabloids are expecting politicians to intervene in the judicial process. Perhaps not directly (though they would if they could, I'm sure) but by putting pressure on judges and threatening to 'reform' the system.
The worst thing is that there are reforms which are needed, but Blair is not the man to do it. Neither, for that part, is Cameron. Both seem capable of talking only in terms of 'toughness', as if we can solve crime by ever-harsher judgements. The emphasis is all on the personal qualities of judges and politicians, and very little on the system. Tellingly, most of Blair's proposals involve scrapping procedures and practices and introducing more powers for individual law enforcers (summary justice). He just has no grasp of the importance of laws and procedures.
Martin Kettle made a imteresting comment (ie said something I agree with)
Thanks for the comments, Dave. I enjoyed reading your blog - worth going there for the press review on this speech.