42 Days

It's a disgrace. A fucking disgrace. The idea that suspects can be locked up for six weeks without a charge needing to be brought is appalling. Comparable countries - Canada, the US , New Zealand and Australia - manage to get by with, respectively, 1, 2, 2 and 12 days. When the Labour Party came to office, the figure for Britain was 5 days. Not a single suspect has ever had to be released through lack of time. Laws are already on the statute book that could be used if a terrorist outrage compelled it. There is no justification for this measure.

But then, this wasn't really about policy. This was one more of Brown's squalid little party political games designed to make the Tories look bad. First he tried in his last budget, announcing a 2p cut in the basic rate of tax, to be offset by the abolition of the 10p rate. That turned out well, requiring an unfunded £2bn unsuccessful electoral bribe to be paid out shortly before Crewe and Nantwich. Then there was the 'anything you can do' manoeuvre over Inheritance Tax and non-domicile taxation. That one was so well worked out that it took nearly six months before it fell in a heap on its arse.

And now there's this one. The 'Tories are soft on terror' manoeuvre. Brought onto the list purely for party political reasons, it had to be pushed through solely to bolster Brown's tottering premiership. The bribes, assurances and crawling that was carried out by the whips, and by Brown himself, add an extra squalid note to a deeply unedifying spectacle.

The DUP should be ashamed of themselves, the Labour backbenchers who trooped timidly through the Aye lobby should have the satisfaction of knowing that this will be of precisely no help in saving their worthless jobs, and Bob Spink, UKIP's first MP, should, quite frankly, go and fuck himself.