Green arrest raises disturbing questions
Damian Green MP, Conservative front-bench spokesman on immigration, was arrested today, apparently by nine anti-terrorist policemen, in connection with home office documents allegedly leaked to him by a home office whistleblower.
His home and office have been searched, but he has not been charged and denies any wrongdoing.
I have met Damian Green on several occasions, and I like and respect him. I do not believe for one second that he would have put into the public domain any information he had received unless he was convinced that it was in the public document to do so.
For the police to arrest opposition politicians for releasing to the media documents critical of the government is not the way we do things in Britain.
All governments have people working for them who disagree with some of the things they do and leak them to the opposition. All oppositions make use of the information. All governments get cross about this, and order leak inquiries. But it is unprecedented in Britain for a senior opposition politician to be arrested for it. This raises disturbing questions.
When the Conservatives were last in power, many members of the then shadow cabinet, including Gordon Brown, quoted from leaked information. It was said of the late Robin Cook in particular, by one Conservative minister, that he seemed "to have an inexhaustible supply of stolen documents."
But I'll tell you this. If Robin Cook had been arrested for releasing leaked documents from the then Conservative government, I am absolutely certain that half the Tories who grumbled about him would have been on the phone to the then Home Secretary Michael Howard, demanding that charges be dropped before Britain was made to look like some sort of authoritarian banana republic.
And I am even more certain that most of the Labour politicians and sympathisers who have been defending the arrest of Damien Green would have accusing Michael Howard of running a police state if the same thing had happened to Robin Cook.
His home and office have been searched, but he has not been charged and denies any wrongdoing.
I have met Damian Green on several occasions, and I like and respect him. I do not believe for one second that he would have put into the public domain any information he had received unless he was convinced that it was in the public document to do so.
For the police to arrest opposition politicians for releasing to the media documents critical of the government is not the way we do things in Britain.
All governments have people working for them who disagree with some of the things they do and leak them to the opposition. All oppositions make use of the information. All governments get cross about this, and order leak inquiries. But it is unprecedented in Britain for a senior opposition politician to be arrested for it. This raises disturbing questions.
When the Conservatives were last in power, many members of the then shadow cabinet, including Gordon Brown, quoted from leaked information. It was said of the late Robin Cook in particular, by one Conservative minister, that he seemed "to have an inexhaustible supply of stolen documents."
But I'll tell you this. If Robin Cook had been arrested for releasing leaked documents from the then Conservative government, I am absolutely certain that half the Tories who grumbled about him would have been on the phone to the then Home Secretary Michael Howard, demanding that charges be dropped before Britain was made to look like some sort of authoritarian banana republic.
And I am even more certain that most of the Labour politicians and sympathisers who have been defending the arrest of Damien Green would have accusing Michael Howard of running a police state if the same thing had happened to Robin Cook.
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