State of Emergency

The Association of Chief Police Officers does not, after all, want indefinite detention without charge. I am not at all surprised by this, since the Police do have to live in mainstream society like the rest of us, and have no more desire than anyone else to live in what is conventionally called “a police state”.

But nor, I am afraid, am I surprised that Lord West does want such indefinite detention. The Armed Forces live, even if quite necessarily, very much in their own little world. There is nothing wrong with Ministers who have Forces experience, but we really should be very wary of Ministers who have never done anything else.

So a slight chill went down my spine when I heard of Alan West’s appointment, not even as a Defence Minister, but as Security Minister. And he seems to be living up to my fears. We’ll all be crying out for a mere police state if we are ever subjected to a military coup, which could happen at least as easily by stealth as by the dramatic deployment of troops on the streets of London (as happened last July, probably for the first time since the eighteenth century).

The appointment of a Security Minister who has never been elected and has only ever previously been a Naval Officer looks like another step in that very, very wrong direction.