Tory Party is the bulwark of State secrecy, not paragons of the public’s ‘right to know.’

For David Cameron and the Tory party to parade themselves as paragons of the public’s ‘right to know’ is gut wrenching for any progressive to watch, for the Tories have been for centuries the bulwark of UK state secrecy. Not only has the party down the centuries opposed all attempts to introduce a far reaching freedom of information act, whilst in office they have enforced the secrecy legislation tenaciously, Sarah Tisdall and Clive Ponting are living examples of this fact. Still we all welcome a sinner who changes there spots, but I will not hold my breath in anticipation of the next Tory manifesto containing an extension of the publics ‘right to know’.

So what is Cameron up to, well a number of things and they are all opportunist to the core and pretty unsavory to boot; and not one is in the public interest. Firstly, no matter what ever way you look at it, Cameron and Osborne are demanding that Conservative MPs have legal rights over and above their fellow citizens. If a member of the public takes possession of a stolen document, either physically or via the Internet, she/he is receiving stolen property, if he/she encouraged the thief to steal it they are part of a criminal conspiracy. Now they may well claim a public interest defense and hope for the jury to show good sense, but under current law, into the dock they go, as wrong as I may believe this to be.

As Damien Green has not denied the aforementioned we must conclude this is what he has been engaged in here; and it looks like plod has him bang to rights as it is difficult to believe the police would have gone to these lengths without firm evidence. Could the leaker have touted on Green for a lesser sentence? we know Green had some sort of relationship with him as the man allegedly applied for a job in the MP’s office. 

David Cameron and his friends in the media clearly hope with all their huffing and puffing to put plod off the scent or get the government to pressurize the police to pull the investigation; or place it at the bottom of a very large pile. Some of the comments that have come from David Cameron and shadow Ministers of late, highlight just how far out of touch they are with ordinary life in the UK. 

It is nonsense to claim that it is an unusual occurrence for the police to arrest, search and detain a citizen who is presumed to have committed an offense, it goes on in the UK every day of the week; as to the manner of Green’s arrest being worthy of the Stasi or the Stalinist secret police, it is a direct insult to the millions who were actually arrested by these thugs. 

Such talk about police mistreatment would be laughable to most working class people, especially those who are black or members of the islamic faith and who regularly feel the sharp edge of the British police.  Members of the underclass would be in hysterics as such things occur within their communities with depressing regularity. Not for a potential major crime like conspiracy to rob, but for trivial offenses or fishing expeditions.

As a shadow government minister there was absolutely no reason why Green should need to act in a covert way when seeking government documents, once he was aware of their existence he could simply have asked the relevant minister to provide him with a copy. That he failed to set up a cut off, yet again displays the incompetence of Shadow cabinet members. 

Unless that is he was simply playing politics in the same manner as George Osborne was when he too came unstuck recently; and Green’s intention was to pass covertly a copy of the said document to a friendly journalist in the hope of discrediting the government. If so it tells us a great deal about how David Cameron runs his kitchen cabinet, Mandelsonese springs to mind.