Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Public Safety is not the government's highest responsibility
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BBC NEWS | Politics | Opposition urge Clarke to resign
Charles Clarke damned himself this afternoon when he declared that public safety is the government's highest priority. And in doing so he damned the whole Blair programme. Menzies Campbell and David Davies were right in framing the charge that Mr Clarke had failed to protect the public. To have failed to take account of the position of 1,023 prisoners who should have been deported was gross negligence on the part of the Home Office.
In itself, that was an indictment of one department and one man. Clarke's response, that public safety was the government's highest responsibility was exactly suited to his contention that he shoud stay in office and sort the mess out. But in defending his own position, Clarke revealed the crucial failing which makes New Labour no longer fit to govern.
Public safety is indeed a very great responsibility, and should be very high in the government's agenda. But it should not be at the top. Very simply, accountability to the public should and must be the highest priority of a democratically elected government. Anything else at the top will ultimately lead to tyranny.
If we make public safety our highest priority, then we will indeed invest in more prisons, in ID cards, in withdrawing the right to trial by jury, in retrying people who have been declared innocent by the courts for a second time on the same allegation. We will arbitrary withdraw the rights of those who seem to pose a threat to the state, and we ultimately engage in a programme of detaining people because they are likely to one day commit crimes. Public Safety has been the watchword of totalitarians from Julius Caesar to Adolf Hitler and from Josef Stalin to Robert Mugabe.
Unless government makes accountability to the public its highest calling, it is simply unfit to govern. And Charles Clarke's position - supported, at least for the moment, by Tony Blair - makes it absolutely clear that something other than accountability is at the top of his agenda. If Blair, Clarke -- and, indeed, Prescott and Hewitt in this Teflon-testing week -- really believed in accountability, then Clarke would now be on the back benches, Prescott would have at the very least have switched job, and Hewitt would be considering her position. Not because they are bad people, nor indeed because they are unfit to be secretaries of state, but because the only way in which a minister can demonstrate true accountability is by resigning before their position becomes untenable.
We can applaud the many good things that Tony Blair's government has done for the country. History will remember them well in many ways. But, unless they can rediscover the simple truth that they are accountable to us, rather than merely to each other, they will demonstrate more clearly with every passing day that they are no longer fit to rule in Great Britain.
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