an even thousand

I’m currently reading Nick Cohen’s Pretty Straight Guys, which asserts that the government has created 661 new offences since coming to power.

Now we learn that this liberal consensus is coming to an end.

Ho hum. From the book:

“Between Blair’s victory in May 1997 and the June 2001 election, 31 law and order bills were presented to Parliament. The Queen’s Speech of 1999 presented nine in one Parliamentary session. Another 14 were enacted between June 2001 and March 2003.”

Maybe he’s going for the even thousand. Most of these laws were designed mainly for political purposes. They provide the government with a few welcome headlines in difficult periods. They cannot be enforced without massive prison building programmes and so often include either get out clauses such as the use of judicial discretion in the so-called three “strikes laws”, or community punishments. Now the itch to punish and the total commitment to political opportunism has been joined by that other New Labour fetish - new technology, in this case for surveillance purposes. It doesn’t work. No matter. The crime rate will continue to fall so long as the employment rate does, something I’m surprised Gordon Brown’s fans don’t make more of.

It looks like the government in general have taken the Hodge Hill by election strategy national. It’s interesting they have no other shots in their locker. I guess the real political outcome of this will be a turnout of under 50% at the next election. Not me. Personally, I will crawl naked over broken glass to find a place to vote against Labour.