Towards A Triple Alliance

David Davis has been saying this about university fees for over a year. He needs to make common cause with a comparable Labour figure, such as Jon Cruddas, and a comparable Lib Dem, such as either or both Simon Hughes and, less probably, Charles Kennedy, on a wide range of issues, making themselves the focal point for all-party backbench action.

Action on the understanding that light sentences and lax prison discipline are both expressions of the perfectly well-founded view that large numbers of those convicted, vastly in excess of the numbers that have always existed at any given time, are in fact innocent. We need to return to a free country’s minimum requirements for conviction, above all by reversing the erosion of the right to silence and of trial by jury, and by repealing the monstrous provisions for anonymous evidence and for conviction by majority verdict. And we need to return to proper policing. Then we could and should return to proper sentencing, and to proper regimes in prison. But only then.

Action, therefore, for the abandonment of the existing erosion of trial by jury and of the right to silence, of the existing reversals of the burden of proof, of conviction by majority verdict (which, by definition, provides for conviction even where there is reasonable doubt), of the admission of anonymous evidence other than from undercover Police Officers, of conviction on anonymous evidence alone, of both pre-trial convictions and pre-trial acquittals by the Crown Prosecution Service, of the secrecy of the family courts, of the anonymity of adult accusers in rape cases, of any thought of identity cards, of control orders, of Police confiscation of assets without a conviction, of stipendiary magistrates, of Thatcher’s Police and Criminal Evidence Act, of the Civil Contingencies Act, of the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act, and of the Official Secrets Acts.

Action to raise the minimum age for jurors at least to 21. To extend to the rest of the United Kingdom of the successful Scottish extension of the right to serve on a jury without compromising its restriction to those with a tangible stake in society. And to return to preventative policing based on foot patrols, with budgetary sanctions against recalcitrant Chief Constables.

Action to ensure Police Forces at least no larger than at present, and subject to local democratic accountability though Police Authorities composed predominantly of councillors, not by means of elected sheriffs, which, like directly elected mayors, have no place in a parliamentary rather than a presidential res publica, and are wholly incompatible with the defence, restoration and extension of the powers of jurors, magistrates and parliamentarians.

Action to restore the pre-1968 committal powers of the magistracy, along with the pre-1985 prosecution powers of the Police. To make each offence to carry a minimum sentence of one third of its maximum sentence, or of 15 years for life. And to create a single category of illegal drug, with a crackdown on the possession of drugs, including a mandatory sentence of three months for a second offence, six months for a third offence, one year for a fourth offence, and so on.

Action to return to the situation whereby a Bill which ran out of parliamentary time was lost at the end of that session. To restore the supremacy of British over EU law. To require that EU law apply in the United Kingdom only once it has passed through both Houses of Parliament exactly as if it had originated in one or other of them. To require a resolution of the House of Commons before any ruling of the European Court of Justice, or of the European Court of Human Rights, or of the “Supreme Court”, or pursuant to the Human Rights Act, can have any effect in the United Kingdom. To restore British overall control of our defence capability. And to remove all foreign forces and weapons from British territory, territorial waters and airspace.

Action to extend to Scotland the historic liberties, largely as set out above, which have never applied in that far more oligarchic country, where middle-class institutions and upper-middle-class power have been defined as the esse of national identity, a situation which has been made even worse by devolution’s weakening of the Labour Movement.

And action to require British Ministers to adopt the show-stopping Empty Chair Policy in the Council of Ministers until such time as it meets in public and publishes an Official Report akin to Hansard, to nullify in the United Kingdom any action of the European Parliament not passed by the majority of those MEPs certified as politically acceptable by at least one seat-taking member of the House of Commons, to reinstate the mysteriously vanished annual votes on the Common Agricultural and Fisheries Policies, and then to use those votes to demand the abolition of those Policies.

Among many, many, many other things.