Liberty Central

.... is now up and running.

You can read all about it here and I recommend, heartily that you do so.

For those of you who are little slow off the mark, here is a short but perfectly-formed extract of the raison d'etre of the project:

We already have, in the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, emergency powers accorded to Ministers which, if used, would permit them to make emergency regulations equivalent to an Act of Parliament or direct use of the Royal Prerogative, powers from which not even the provisions of Magna Carta are exempt and which would permit:

• the confiscation and destruction of property (without compensation),
  
• the restriction of movement,
  
• censorship of the free press
  
• and even the curtailment of habeas corpus;
  

... all by Ministerial decree.

To that we may shortly be adding the provisions of the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill, already dubbed the ‘Abolition of Parliament Act’, which again will permit legislation to the passed by Ministerial order with the minimum of Parliamentary scrutiny and with few exemptions – such orders may not introduce new taxes, create new criminal offences with a maximum penalty of imprisonment in excess of two years or increase the maximum penalty for minor offences beyond two years or tinker with arrangements for the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly but otherwise provides Ministers with a blank legislative cheque on which to write, amend or repeal laws. And again, there is no exemption from its provisions for core constitutional and civil liberties legislation; Magna Carta could be ‘reformed’, habeas corpus suspended, Christmas cancelled – and all by Ministerial edict.

That is a scary list of powers to grant, even to the most benevolent of rulers. It is pertinent to ask exactly why such powers are considered necessary, particularly as any legislator worth his salt knows that one must not assume that all future rulers will be so benevolent. Part, if not most, of the problem with this current government is that it does not appear to understand this fundamental dictum. Indeed, like all socialists, the apparatchiks of New Labour really do appear to believe that they alone hold the keys to "Social Justice" or whatever worthy, yet nebulous, cause may be invoked and therefore that any objection is an affront to their lofty motives and a direct attack upon the greater good.

This moron, as usual, is a case in point. He starts by denying that the "Abolition of Parliament Act" is totalitarian in any way. Then he rails against its detractors thusly:

One of the main arguments used against this government by the obsessive absolutist libertarians who run Liberty Central, is that, it is not that this government is necessarily going to abuse these new powers, but that some future government might. The major flaw in this argument is of course that, if such a government did get power, the last thing we would have to worry about would be what was currently on the statute book, but what they would add to it.

Errr.... No. We ensure that there is no mechanism for power to be abused in the first place. As we all know:

Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

This bill appears to be a step towards absolute power.

Time for a return to the constitutional settlement that we thought we had...