FLAWLESS PR AND THE LABOUR PARTY SYCOPHANTS


I watched the appearance of the heads of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ yesterday in front of the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee, [ISC]. To say that the questioning at times was soft would be an understatement. The tone of the proceedings can be summed up as:

 We all thank you  for the wonderful job you do of keeping us safe, and applaud the wonderful selfless and public spirited people who work for you. Do you think recent newspaper revelations have damaged the security of this country?

I exaggerate little. The really interesting questions were simply never asked. For example no one thought to explore something along the lines, you say you harvest the whole haystack so they you may bag the needle, what sort of things in the stack are you looking for that might lead you to the needle?

As a PR exercise though it was flawless and I am amazed that hitherto they have been so reluctant to hold such an event. The head of MI5 Andrew Parker appeared positively cuddly. I also believe that all were sincere and passionate, as when Andrew Parker spoke of his determination to protect Britain’s “way of life.” My only fear being that such passion and sense of righteous duty has the capacity to blind.

One thing that the event confirmed in me was that Labour politicians are simply not to be trusted to objectively provide oversight of spooks and eavesdroppers, and not for the reasons held my Daily Telegraph leader writers. Labour parliamentarians always bend over backwards to reassure that they are no soft lefties and demonstrate that they are more zealous than the spies themselves. Labour politicians are always the first to ‘go native.’

Thus yesterday on Radio 5 Live Kim Howells, once a left wing Labour MP and former head of the ISC stated that he simply didn’t want to know what the spooks were up to. Their job was to keep us safe and he trusted them. Whilst the truly awful Labour MP Hazel Blears, a woman perpetually in the state of being pleased with herself, was the most sycophantic member of the committee. Whilst Jack Straw’s record as Home Secretary in holding the security services to account was truly abysmal. He did not even request to see his own MI5 file.

Give me an old fashioned ‘an Englishman’s home is his castle’ Tory any day than converts from the Labour party. All the best questions, if not quite penetrating at least not sounding as if they had been written by the GCHQ press office, came from the right of the spectrum, Mark Field, Ming Campbell and Lord Butler.
Mark Field MP
Given the threat we face from Islamism and crooked regimes like Putin’s in Russia[1] or theocratic Iran, I am not blind to the need for some kind of intelligence gathering, a portion of which will need to be secret. That said it is essential in an open and democratic society that such services be held properly accountable. We have surely learnt enough from the Spy-catcher case, the spying on CND and other peaceful civil society groups and now the Snowden revelations, that spooks must always be kept under the closest scrutiny. From yesterdays performance I suspect we still have a long way to go.


[1] Both regimes think nothing of sending hit squads abroad to murder political opponents. Being granted British citizenship being no protection, as Alexander Litvinenko found out. Were I ever to ask a question of the spooks it would be what steps  it took to protect political exiles.


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