.. Lord Hoffmann.. questioned not just the basis of [war] imprisonments but also the nature of the threat to which they were the answer. To him, a minister citing "secret information about a threat to Britain" cannot justify infringing civil liberty unless that threat is palpably overwhelming, as in war.. The most that modern terrorists might pull off is a Madrid-style killing, a threat needing the most assiduous policing but not a threat to the stability or continuity of the State.

.. Mr Blair's claim.. that [inmates] could not be brought to trial because to do so "could endanger Britain" is absurd. A threat to Britons is not a threat to Britain. Nor should such scaremongering become the standard justification for continuing indefinitely with the 2001 Anti-Terrorism Act.. .. the menace to Britain's collective liberty comes "not from terrorism but from laws such as these".

Opinion - Simon Jenkins

I never thought I'd say this, but thank you to the Lords, the Libs and the law
I MUST RETRACT a prejudice. The three strongest bulwarks against the abuse of state power in Britain at present are three institutions I most often deride: the law, the Liberal Democrats and the House of Lords..

We expect MPs to be guardians against [reich wing fascist] pressures. The present House of Commons is not. It must be the most supine in living memory. It is the first to have voted for an unprovoked and illegal war of aggression, the first to have voted for imprisonment without trial and the first to have voted for compulsory identity cards in peacetime. Only the Liberal Democrats, to their credit, stood out against the administration.

Meanwhile, the lawyers have raised their own challenge to the "9/11 changes everything" ethos. The law lords' judgment on the Belmarsh imprisonments was devastating, as was the contempt shown towards it by Tony Blair and Mr Clarke. Why, I wonder, did they bother to sign the European Convention on Human Rights? By a majority of eight to one, the Lords concluded that the Government had failed to make a case for the imprisonments. This conclusion was reinforced at the weekend when Mr Macdonald, QC, resigned from the defence team at Belmarsh, calling the arrangements under which he worked "an intolerable distortion of the rule of law" and "completely contrary to our fundamental notions of justice".

The crucial Belmarsh ruling came from Lord Hoffmann. He questioned not just the basis of the imprisonments but also the nature of the threat to which they were the answer. To him, a minister citing "secret information about a threat to Britain" cannot justify infringing civil liberty unless that threat is palpably overwhelming, as in war. Now it is not. Bin Laden is not so powerful as to threaten the life of the nation, as did Napoleon or Hitler or possibly the Soviet Union. The most that modern terrorists might pull off is a Madrid-style killing, a threat needing the most assiduous policing but not a threat to the stability or continuity of the State.

The Belmarsh inmates are not weapons of mass destruction any more than was Saddam Hussein. Mr Blair's claim on Monday that they could not be brought to trial because to do so "could endanger Britain" is absurd. A threat to Britons is not a threat to Britain. .. such scaremongering [should not] become the standard justification for continuing indefinitely with the 2001 Anti-Terrorism Act. As Lord Hoffmann said, the menace to Britain's collective liberty comes "not from terrorism but from laws such as these".

The Government's present exercise is political and, some might say, cynical. [Blair] is trying to exaggerate an ongoing threat to the State in order to accrete more power to the State with the support of the electorate. This is the oldest trick in the political book -- one for which the Tories appear to have fallen. It can be studied in the Weimar Republic and in McCarthyite Washington. It is, as Lord Walker remarked last week, national security as the last refuge of tyrants.

Which brings me to the House of Lords. It has shown itself a doughty champion of freedom against the executive, in cases as diverse as planning law, regional democracy, control of the police, foxhunting and judicial appointments. The Government hopes to use the 9/11 defence to introduce some half dozen measures on law and order between now and a possible election next year. All are to be introduced by Mr Clarke.

Charles Clarke, the new Home Secretary, produced not one good reason on Monday for Britons to be compelled to hold an identity card linked to a nationally accessible data register.. One MP after another stood up to parrot that "9/11 changes everything". Like Reds under the bed, this slogan has become a catch-all for any restriction on civil freedom.

... It was left to the Liberal Democrats to confront the new "9/11 authoritarians". Mark Oaten asked how the cards would forestall any known terrorist outrage, and got no answer. Simon Hughes asked how a card that need not be carried on the person could help the police during a manhunt. Critics demanded to know what real benefits would accrue from a register more intrusive than in any Western democracy. All they were told was that "the police say they want it". What the paranoid State wants it must apparently get. When a politician has abandoned the goddess of reason, he soon takes comfort in the demons of terror.

[Lobbysts and greed] are the same pressures that have given the Americans in Iraq the most advanced bombers in the world and the most unprotected and ineffective infantry. It is classic top-down counter-terrorism.