Sweeping Winds, Changing Brooms

The Prince in Waiting has reassured those already pining for Tony's joined-up, strong-but-safe, non-reversible government that they can look forward to more of the same. He proposes "an extension of the 28-day limit on detention without charge", which his reverence had to abandon when the parliamentary Labour party had one of its all too infrequent attacks of vertebratism. He proposes "making terrorism an aggravating factor in sentencing, giving judges greater powers to punish terrorism within the framework of the existing criminal law" and allowing police to interrogate suspects after they have been charged. "This would be subject to judicial oversight to ensure that it is correctly and sparingly used"; it is not clear whether the judicial oversight will be subject to oversight by one or other of the Ministries of Having Been Split in Two to ensure that it also is correctly and sparingly used. The Prince in Waiting also intends "moving towards allowing evidence from telephone-tapping to be admissible as evidence in court" and "increasing the security budget, which has already doubled to more than £2bn a year after 11 September 2001" when Britain was not attacked by terrorists.

The Prince in Waiting believes we must be vigilant. He believes that "anti-terror methods must be more sophisticated, with earlier intervention"; since Tony apparently believes that anti-terror measures should start in the womb, it is not altogether clear how early the Prince in Waiting intends his interventions to be. But he does believe that "the world has changed, so we need tougher security" and therefore "our security must be strengthened". However, he also believes that "the government needs to do more to assure people that civil liberties are not being trampled on", so he also plans to "place the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee, which reports to the Prime Minister, on a similar basis as parliamentary select committees, which are accountable to MPs" who, thanks to the revised and updated Freedom of Information Act, will soon be accountable to nobody.