More on Damien Green.

After reading today's papers, and watching the Home Secretary on Andrew Marr's Sunday morning programme, two conclusions have become implanted in this view from rural Wales. The first relates to the prospects for the next General Election. I thought Jackie Smith was frighteningly evasive and complacent this morning. The Government's Home Secretary cannot see anything wrong with using anti-terrorism legislation to arrest an opposition spokesman when he is releasing information that has been secured from a 'leaking' civil servant. And she cannot see anything wrong with the 3 police officers arresting a Shadow Minister in a car park near his home, another 9 police officers entering his home and removing his belongings in plastic bags, yet more marching into his House of Commons office and disabling his computer - for what seems to be 'embarrassing' the Government. And this from a Government which bases its entire behavior pattern on 'leaks'. Everyone should be required to read David Davis' article in today's Mail on Sunday. Combined with last week's still incredible decision by the Chancellor to mortgage the UK economy with the most unbelievable speech I'm ever heard by a senior British politician, the 'Nixonian' tendency of our Home Secretary should ensure that Gordon Brown, probably the worst Prime Minister Britain has had in living memory has a maximum of eighteen months left in office.

My second conclusion, as I sit here before heading off to the kitchen to carve the joint, is that our country is descending rapidly into the equivalent of a police state. The constant attacks on our liberties, the failure of our Home Secretary to even realise what's happening, and her view that the police can treat politicians as they would common criminals, in response to her department's concern about embarrassing leaks, shows just how far things have gone. If the police are going to be allowed to march in and seize private papers, emails etc from a politician's office in the House of Commons, there isn't much point in having one's office there at all.. What has happened is bad enough - but what's really scary is that our Home Secretary thinks its all OK.