Pledgebusters

The Liberal Democrats' principled opposition to the database state looks set to go the same way as their principled opposition to raising tuition fees. The Liberal Democrats promised to "end the storage of internet and email records without good reason", and this promise was retained in the coalition agreement which is now being torn up by mutual consent of the coalition partners because, thanks to the Mess Left By Labour, they were only kidding anyway. The political nuance in the promise (or, in Standard English, the codicil which makes the whole thing meaningless) is, of course, the phrase without good reason. If the police want to do something, that is a good enough reason for the Conservatives to let them do it; and if the Conservatives want to do something, that is a good enough reason for Daveybloke's little orange chaps to hurl themselves into line like true blue Big Society personnel getting ready to lynch an unmutual. When it comes to setting up a police state, it is at best naïve to expect any very strenuous objections from professional politicians who have gained power; and given the level of popularity which the Government is likely to attain once George's little pinking shears begin to leave permanent scars, some sort of resurrection for the recently dead and always fragrant New Labour snoop agenda was doubtless inevitable. The programme is expected to cost a minumum of two thousand million pounds, or about twice as much as Daveybloke's Cuddlies are prepared to pay for being the greenest government in history.