The home secretary should be confronting her party's prejudices, not flattering them
It has been many years since a Conservative home secretary – or a Tory shadow home secretary – has had much to fear from the once terrifying annual ordeal of the party conference law and order speech. For years, the debate was an X-rated political event. It required the party's home affairs person to set aside any personal scruple and throw political red meat to the angry hang-'em-and-flog-'em lions in the conference hall. These days, the law and order session – they don't do debates at Tory conference any more – is a shadow of its former self. Yet it is still a tricky assignment even for a generally safe pair of political hands like Theresa May, as yesterday in Manchester proved. So there is something fitting about the fact that yesterday the home secretary was humbled not by a lion but by a pussy cat.
Mrs May has only herself to blame. She arrived in Manchester telling the Sunday Telegraph that she would like to scrap the Human Rights Act, a daft policy which discredits the Conservative party. She then used her conference speech yesterday to pander to the party's prejudices against the act – prejudices which are rooted in anti-European instincts at least as much as in opposition to human rights as such – in a passage of such shallowness that she should be ashamed of herself. "We all know the stories about the Human Rights Act … " she started, before proceeding to recycle a classic piece of anti-Human Rights Act mythology: the claim that the courts refused to deport an illegal immigrant because he had a pet cat. "I am not making this up," Mrs May assured the conference. But, unfortunately for her, this was exactly what she was doing. She was drawing on rightwing newspaper stories rather than the facts about the court judgment. It was an undignified episode. Doubtless some lowly speechwriter has already been handed a glass of whisky and a loaded revolver for embarrassing the home secretary. But it is Mrs May's misjudgment that matters in the end. At the very least, the woman who once bravely coined that phrase about "the nasty party" ought to learn her own lesson. She should be confronting her party's prejudices, not flattering them.
Mrs May's problems over the cat are nevertheless symptomatic of a wider disjunction in the coalition government's law and order policies. Thirty years ago, the Tory party's sole concern in home affairs was to dominate the political argument by reiterating authoritarian solutions and ever-higher spending on police and prisons. In recent years, though, significant parts of the party have gone on a different and often welcome journey. This has partly involved the rediscovery of the Tories' own liberal and libertarian traditions. But it has also meant facing up to the unsustainable financial costs of the strong state policies of the Thatcher and the New Labour eras. Sadly, this is a journey which Labour is still reluctant to make. In a politically skilful performance in the hall yesterday, the justice secretary Kenneth Clarke boldly told the conference that it was no longer possible to follow "the old brain-free policy of throwing money at the problem". It is not just the Tories, but Labour, who need to listen to that message.
The Tory party remains conflicted about many aspects of the justice and home affairs agenda. It likes the rule of law. But it dislikes the judges, especially foreign ones. It likes the idea of fundamental freedoms. But it squirms about conceding them to people it does not approve of. It thinks of itself as the party of the police. But it finds the police resistant to its reforms and cutbacks. It wants to be a more multiracial party. But it craves the stronger immigration controls which were at the heart of Mrs May's speech yesterday. Mr Clarke, quoting Iain Macleod yesterday, reminded the party that it had work to do. But, as yesterday in Manchester showed, the Tories remain deeply ambivalent about what that work should be.
Source www.guardian.co.uk/
Mrs May has only herself to blame. She arrived in Manchester telling the Sunday Telegraph that she would like to scrap the Human Rights Act, a daft policy which discredits the Conservative party. She then used her conference speech yesterday to pander to the party's prejudices against the act – prejudices which are rooted in anti-European instincts at least as much as in opposition to human rights as such – in a passage of such shallowness that she should be ashamed of herself. "We all know the stories about the Human Rights Act … " she started, before proceeding to recycle a classic piece of anti-Human Rights Act mythology: the claim that the courts refused to deport an illegal immigrant because he had a pet cat. "I am not making this up," Mrs May assured the conference. But, unfortunately for her, this was exactly what she was doing. She was drawing on rightwing newspaper stories rather than the facts about the court judgment. It was an undignified episode. Doubtless some lowly speechwriter has already been handed a glass of whisky and a loaded revolver for embarrassing the home secretary. But it is Mrs May's misjudgment that matters in the end. At the very least, the woman who once bravely coined that phrase about "the nasty party" ought to learn her own lesson. She should be confronting her party's prejudices, not flattering them.
Mrs May's problems over the cat are nevertheless symptomatic of a wider disjunction in the coalition government's law and order policies. Thirty years ago, the Tory party's sole concern in home affairs was to dominate the political argument by reiterating authoritarian solutions and ever-higher spending on police and prisons. In recent years, though, significant parts of the party have gone on a different and often welcome journey. This has partly involved the rediscovery of the Tories' own liberal and libertarian traditions. But it has also meant facing up to the unsustainable financial costs of the strong state policies of the Thatcher and the New Labour eras. Sadly, this is a journey which Labour is still reluctant to make. In a politically skilful performance in the hall yesterday, the justice secretary Kenneth Clarke boldly told the conference that it was no longer possible to follow "the old brain-free policy of throwing money at the problem". It is not just the Tories, but Labour, who need to listen to that message.
The Tory party remains conflicted about many aspects of the justice and home affairs agenda. It likes the rule of law. But it dislikes the judges, especially foreign ones. It likes the idea of fundamental freedoms. But it squirms about conceding them to people it does not approve of. It thinks of itself as the party of the police. But it finds the police resistant to its reforms and cutbacks. It wants to be a more multiracial party. But it craves the stronger immigration controls which were at the heart of Mrs May's speech yesterday. Mr Clarke, quoting Iain Macleod yesterday, reminded the party that it had work to do. But, as yesterday in Manchester showed, the Tories remain deeply ambivalent about what that work should be.
Source www.guardian.co.uk/
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