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Welcome to Britain's Brave New World

LONDON -- A prominent, aggressive and ambitious Conservative politician here, David Davis, recently resigned his seat in Parliament to protest a House of Commons vote extending the time a citizen can be held in jail without charges from 28 to 42 days. A national newspaper poll says 57 percent of respondents support his crusade, but they are almost certainly not telling the truth about that.

In this day and age of terrorism and fear of terrorism, politicians and police control the electronic and chemical means to find out where you had lunch last Tuesday, with whom, what you talked about, and what kind of ice cream you had for dessert. That is to say nothing of the size of your tip.

And we love it!

We love the idea that other people are being spied on constantly, though some have trouble comprehending that they and you and I have become those other people. Both Britain and the United States are becoming police states with the consent of the governed.

Davis had aspired to the leadership of the Conservatives and was the party's "shadow" home secretary -- in their system, the opposition has a Cabinet, too -- and truly shocked Britain by resigning after Labor Prime Minister Gordon Brown pushed through the "42" law. Said Davis:

"Up until yesterday I took the view that what we did in the House of Commons, representing our constituents, was a noble endeavor because with centuries of forebears we defended the freedoms of the British people -- well, we did up until yesterday. ... I will argue in this by-election against the slow strangulation of fundamental British freedoms by this government. It must be stopped, and for that reason today I feel it is incumbent on me to take a stand."

Which means Davis will run for his old seat on the "42" issue. There is debate about whether his crusade is principled, quixotic, or a shrewd maneuver to win Tory leadership over the man who defeated him for that post, opposition leader David Cameron. It's too complicated for an American to explain, but the Tories were always against "42" and had already forced Brown to give up on 90 days of detention without charges. And, Davis may be unopposed in the by-election. Labor and Brown don't want to take the chance of being embarrassed, and Cameron and the Tories were against the bill from the beginning. One more complication: The House of Lords could defeat "42" in the coming weeks.

Whatever. At least someone has spoken up and taken some risk, in London if not Washington, as we move toward a brave new world where democracies trade freedom for "security" -- the quote marks are there to raise the question of whether pre-emptive invasion, illegal detention, rendition and torture really do make us more secure.

The question of whether the 57 percent or any other majority is willing to tell the truth about what they really think about all this was raised in the current issue of The Economist. The article begins: "Despite much stirring rhetoric about the mother of Parliaments and the Magna Carta, modern Britons have little real interest in their hard-won liberties ..."

The magazine took its own national poll between June 17 and 19, with these conclusions:

Almost 80 percent of respondents support the idea of the surveillance cameras that seem to be everywhere in the country; more than half support a universal police DNA database and a National Health Service database of all Britons; more than 40 percent want mandatory national identity cards; 60 percent support "42."

That, I suspect, is what they really think in a country where more than half of those already arrested and held without charges have been let go without being charged with anything and that has already seriously cut back freedom of speech, both in what citizens say and to whom they say it.

It is also a country, while promising to safeguard potentially dangerous or embarrassing information, that has "lost" 25 million computerized child-benefit records; and in which officials lost two sets of "Top Secret" records found on commuter trains, and a Cabinet minister lost his "confidential" laptop computer. Hail, Britannia!

Those who think about this at all know I will end by quoting Benjamin Franklin. And I do:

"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty nor security."

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Related Topics: civil liberties | islamic radicalism | united kingdom |

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