This entry was posted on
Friday, November 11th, 2005 at
1:04 pm and is filed
under Tony ‘King Blair.

Yahoo – Blair ‘Used Police For Politics’: The Prime Minister could face a Commons inquiry into claims of Government “politicisation” of police chiefs over new anti-terror laws. Tories are unhappy that chief constables lobbied and wrote to their MPs, urging them to support powers to hold terror suspects for up to 90 days without charge.

Guardian (Letters) – Police lobbying on the terror bill

Guardian – A failure of political judgment : No, the much more wounding conclusion from Wednesday’s defeat concerns Mr Blair’s judgment, rather than his authority. It was, after all, Mr Blair who first promoted the 90-day solution to MPs and who stuck to it relentlessly to the end. It was Mr Blair who, as things got more difficult, used every weapon he could grab to win sceptical MPs round – upsetting important conventions by dragging the police into the centre of the party political battle to support his case and insisting that no alternative perspective need be treated with respect.