If Americans want an idea of what America will be like when ruled by the Kenyan conman, read this report of Big Brother Britain, where the police are now agents of the government rather than protectors of the innocent. British police now protect shifty socialists with facts to hide! An amazing series of stories follows, about what happened after a leading opposition politician was arrested and held for nine hours. The Mail on Sunday newspaper has unearthed a new twist to this dreadful tale. It alleges considerable breaches of the law as the counter-terrorist police tried to entrap Damian Green, the arrested Conservative politician. They also appear to have got the original "whistle-blower" tucked away in semi-detention and under their control. The Sunday Times newspaper, in addition to the report second below also says Mr Green's opposite number, Immigration Minister Phil Woolas acknowledged he was not certain ministers were unaware of the action. If unaware, this would raise the question that if London Mayor Boris Johnson was told in advance of the planned arrest and expressed his displeasure, why was the Home Secretary NOT told ? It is quite literally incredible. This scandal has reached the point of constitutional outrage when the police act without any regard for the law and ministers appear tyo condone this. There is a remedy which I would suggest be used. On Thursday the Queen opens a new session of parliament and sends Black Rod to summon the Commons to the Lords to hear the Queen's Speech [ie Gordon Brown?s speech read by the Queen]. At this point the door to the Commons is traditionally slammed in Black Rod's face. He then has to hammer on the door to gain admittance. The Commons - or at least the Tories and LibDems - should prevent the door being opened until the Speaker accounts for his failure to protect them. This would make a major scandal, using traditional methods to protest, while being in no way disrespectful to Her Majesty. If anyone agrees with this please suggest it to your MP urgently. Even some Labour MPs might agree too. Christina Speight ========================= MAIL ON SUNDAY 30.11.08 Police accused of using phone calls from Home Office mole in bid to entrap Shadow Minister By SIMON WALTERS The police used a Whitehall whistleblower to try to lure Conservative frontbencher Damian Green into incriminating himself, it was claimed last night. The Mail on Sunday understands that the Shadow Immigration Minister, who was controversially arrested for allegedly leaking information embarrassing to the Government, may have been the victim of an entrapment plot. However, the allegations were denied by Scotland Yard last night. Senior Westminster sources believe that police tried to persuade the alleged whistleblower, Home Office aide Christopher Galley, to call Mr Green. The civil servant made contact with the MP on more than one occasion, but Mr Green declined to be drawn into conversation. The sources say they suspect Mr Galley's calls - made soon after his own arrest 11 days ago - were being secretly monitored by the police in an attempt to gather evidence against Mr Green. The claims come as The Mail on Sunday reveals shocking details about the affair, including: .Mr Green was arrested in a car park - in full view of the public - near to his home in Kent. .Mr Galley was arrested in a 5.50am dawn raid and is now being accommodated in a Home Office 'safe house' to prevent him talking to the media. .It was alleged that police intercepted Mr Green's mobile phone messages after Mr Galley's arrest. The disclosures raise disturbing new questions about the abuse of parliamentary privilege and the creeping growth of surveillance, adding to the existing outrage over Mr Green's arrest from MPs on all sides and prompting further questions over the conduct of the police, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith and Speaker Michael Martin. Mr Galley - a Conservative supporter who stood as a Tory candidate in the 2004 elections for Sunderland Council - was seized at his home in a 5.50am raid on November 19. Shortly afterwards, and, crucially, before Mr Green had been contacted by police, Mr Galley contacted the MP. The Mail on Sunday has been told that the call may have been an attempt by police to use Mr Galley to extract more information from Mr Green, without the MP being aware of the ploy. Mr Green declined to get involved in a conversation with Mr Galley, partly through fear that the police were bugging the conversation. Instead he advised the 26-year-old aide to obtain legal advice. Some sources say the police may have attempted to persuade Mr Galley to give evidence against Mr Green. Senior police sources last night confirmed that Mr Galley had called Mr Green shortly after his arrest, but firmly denied any suggestion that he had been forced to make the call. It is also believed police may have intercepted the MP's mobile phone messages without informing him. Laws governing the police tapping of phones are complex. Legal experts say officers need the Home Secretary's permission to intercept live messages - but not if they approach phone companies to check past messages. A Home Office spokesman said last night: 'As the Home Secretary has made clear, she has had no involvement in any aspect of this investigation.' Scotland Yard also denied monitoring Mr Green's messages. If Mr Green's communications had been intercepted it would be a breach of the so-called Wilson doctrine, named after Prime Minister Harold Wilson, who pledged that MPs' phones would never be tapped. Subsequent Prime Ministers, including Gordon Brown, have stated that the doctrine still stands. The row took another dramatic turn last night with reports that police had claimed privately that they already had enough evidence to charge Mr Green. Last night, Scotland Yard refused to discuss the case. An official said: 'This is an ongoing investigation and it would be inappropriate to discuss any details.' But she added: 'We strongly refute any suggestion that any officer has acted improperly.' Mr Galley had allegedly given Mr Green secret information about a number of Home Office scandals, many involving illegal immigrants. Police arrested Mr Green on suspicion he had broken an obscure law which bans the 'procurement' of Whitehall secrets. Among documents taken from Mr Green's home were bank statements, apparently in an attempt to find out if he had paid Mr Galley for information. The MP denies offering money or any other kind of inducement. As well as raiding Mr Green's home and Commons office, police seized his mobile phone and BlackBerry and froze his Commons email account, which was reinstated only yesterday. The Tories insist Mr Green has done nothing wrong and that he was acting in the public interest to expose Government incompetence and cover-ups. They have also raised questions about ministerial involvement in the arrests. A Tory insider said: 'The more we learn about this, the more disturbing it becomes. The police treatment of Mr Green has been a disgrace and the Government's fingerprints are all over it.' Mr Green's contacts with Mr Galley were approved by his former boss, ex-Shadow Home Secretary David Davis. Yesterday it emerged that Mr Galley had applied for a job with another Shadow Minister but was turned down. The Home Office is now paying for Mr Galley to stay in a 'safe house'. ]That is effectively keeping him in custody which is totally illegal -cs] A spokesman said: 'When it became clear that a large number of journalists would be camped outside his door, he was offered the chance to move somewhere else and accepted the offer.' Both Gordon Brown and Jacqui Smith have insisted that the police acted 'without either ministerial involvement or authorisation'. Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve has released more than 50 questions he said the Government had to answer, including who initiated the original leak inquiry and whether Commons Speaker Michael Martin authorised the raid on Mr Green's office. ========================= SUNDAY TIMES 30.11.08 Yard at war over arrest of Tory MP David Leppard SCOTLAND YARD was in turmoil last night after senior police officials criticised its new boss and admitted its handling of the arrest of a Tory MP had been "catastrophic". David Blunkett, the former home secretary, called on the cabinet to review the procedures that led to the police raids on Damian Green's home and Commons office. As the political storm grew, MPs and civil liberties groups questioned the role of Sir Paul Stephenson, who took temporary charge of the Metropolitan police when Sir Ian Blair left office last week. [But the officer authorising the mass raid was the Assistant Commissioner in charge of Counter Terriorism -cs] Stephenson was regarded as the favourite to succeed Blair, but one senior police officer described him yesterday as "easy meat". A senior official on the Metropolitan Police Authority, the Met's watchdog, said his oversight of the police inquiry into the leak of sensitive Whitehall documents to Green, the Tory immigration spokesman, raised important questions about his judgment and cast doubt over his prospects. The official said Stephenson should have told Sir David Normington, the Home Office permanent secretary who called in police, that leaks of nonclassified information were not a matter for a police inquiry. Normington will chair the panel that will interview and vet applicants for the job of Met commissioner. The deadline for applications is tomorrow. The police official said: "Why didn?t the Met just [tell the Home Office] to use discipline and misconduct rules instead of agreeing to a criminal inquiry? What this all hinges on is judgment and proportionality. Sir Paul has got a huge problem with this. "This is a big problem for the Met. They have managed to get every main political party and everyone in the media against them. For the Met it's catastrophic. I think this could damage Sir Paul?s prospects." The pressure on Stephenson grew as it emerged that the raids had not been approved by the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer. A spokesman for the Crown Prosecution Service, which will decide whether Green should face criminal charges, said Starmer had been told about the arrest only shortly before detectives moved in last Thursday. Calling for a review of "operational methodology in the light of Damian Green's arrest", Blunkett said it also would be prudent for the cabinet to consider reviewing the process by which the police have access to the offices and confidential material of MPs. It's clear that whatever process is currently in place is not sufficiently robust to give confidence either to MPs themselves, their constituents or the wider community". The civil servant said to have given Green the leaked Home Office documents was named last night as Chris Galley, who worked in the private office of the home secretary, Jacqui Smith. Speculation was rife in Westminster that his conversations with Green had been bugged by police. The Home Office insisted Smith had not known of the impending arrest and had not signed any warrant to tap Green?s phone calls. =========================== SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 30.11.08 Labour doesn't mind leaks - so long as it is doing the leaking By Matthew d'Ancona This time last week, Gordon Brown was still flexing his messiah's muscles, posing as the superhero saviour of the global financial system and preparing to unveil a pre-Budget report that would catch the Tory toffs off-guard, protect the needy and soak the rich. Seven days on, the Prime Minister has somehow contrived to look more like a cross between Mugabe, Charles I and Big Brother; and the Tories, rightly outraged by the arrest and detention of Damian Green, are less Bullingdon boys than Woodward and Bernstein. It takes a lot of work to secure the mantle of people's tribune and the PM must be seething that it has been wrenched away from him so speedily. Brown's recovery strategy has been to present himself as uniquely confident and qualified, an expert stretching out the hand of economic reassurance to a troubled electorate. Suddenly, his Government looks oppressive, cack-handed and deceitful: if any minister knew of Mr Green's arrest in advance, he or she should have stopped it. If none of them knew - which, frankly, is very hard to believe - then who is running the show, as counter-terrorist policemen charge into an MP's homes and offices? When the tough guy's tough guy, David Blunkett, accuses you of "overkill", you know you have overstepped the mark. The Conservatives, meanwhile, cannot believe their luck: without lifting a finger, they have been recast in the national political drama as plucky tribunes of truth, fighting the jackbooted shock troops of the Brown Terror. This may be an exaggeration, but it is no more of one than the notion, still current a week ago, that Gordon was personally going to save us all from economic perdition. Next time the Home Office and the police decide to pick on a Tory MP, I suggest they select someone other than Mr Green; anyone else, in fact. The shadow immigration minister is a sharp operator, but he is also one of the nicest human beings on the planet, what Wodehouse would have called a "wonderfully woolly baa lamb". It is precisely because of his reassuring and pleasant countenance that Cameron appointed him to the immigration brief. Nobody could plausibly accuse Mr Green of playing the race card or unleashing "rivers of blood" - not with a straight face, anyway. His opposite number in the Government, Phil Woolas, is much scarier. The arrest has turned Mr Green into the Andrew Sachs of politics, with Sir Paul Stephenson, the acting Commissioner of the Met, and Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, as the Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross of the saga. The public don't like radio presenters who leave obscene messages on an actor's answering machine. No more do the electorate like the 15-year-old daughter of an entirely respectable MP being reduced to tears by counter-terrorist police. And - boy - did the authorities choose the wrong issue on which to pick such a public fight over whistle-blowing. When the MoD official Clive Ponting sent documents related to the sinking of the Belgrano to Tam Dalyell in 1984, he excited little popular sympathy: the punters had pretty much made their minds up about that particular event and the Sun headline "Gotcha" more or less summed it up. Ditto Sarah Tisdall, the FCO official jailed for leaking information about US cruise missiles to the Guardian in 1983. Though the presence of American nuclear weapons on British soil was divisive, the realities of the Cold War gave the Tory government of the day the upper hand in managing public opinion. But this case is very different. Immigration is - and has long been - a high priority for voters, consumed by a growing suspicion that they are having the wool pulled over their eyes by a Government incapable of policing the nation's borders. Thirty years ago, public anxiety of this sort was indeed motivated mostly by fear of cultural change and ever-greater ethnic diversity. In 2008, ethnicity is no longer, I believe, the key issue: it is control. The voters simply do not believe that the Government is up to running the system, making it work. Consider two of the leaks at the heart of this case: in November 2007, internal memos indicated that the Home Secretary was involved in covering up the approval of 5,000 illegal immigrants as security guards; in February, our Deputy Political Editor revealed that an illegal immigrant had been working at the Commons using a fake pass. By any sane standards, the disclosure of this information was overwhelmingly in the public interest. Sir David Normington, Permanent Secretary at the Home Office, says that the leaks "risked undermining the effective operation of my department". On the contrary: what the leaks show is that Sir David and his colleagues had that side of things covered already. The effective operation of the Home Office has been undermined, not by leaks, but by its political masters, its officials and its inadequate or unenforced policies. Inevitably, the constitutional experts are being wheeled out to explain why this marks a deadly assault on the ancient liberties of Parliament, a return to the autocracy of Charles I (a "constitutional expert" being defined as a historian who gives journalists his home phone number). It certainly appears that this was a monstrous infringement of parliamentary privilege and one which Michael Martin, the Speaker of the House, should have opposed on principle. Yet the heart of this confrontation is not ancestral liberty, but the modern question of information and its control. When he was a spin-doctor - or perhaps one should say, only a spin-doctor - Peter Mandelson used to argue that the essence of communication was getting information out when, where and how you desired. That became the strategic foundation stone of New Labour, and the era of spin. Never again, the Blairites declared, would their party be savaged by the press. The media would be wooed and tamed, and the flow of information meticulously managed. What New Labour objects to is not leaking. What Labour objects to is other people doing it. For 11 years, the party has governed by pre-announcement, briefing, media manipulation and targeted leaks (often to drive unhelpful stories off the front page). But woe betide anyone - MP or newspaper - that threatens its monopoly. When this newspaper leaked the Macpherson Inquiry into the death of Stephen Lawrence in 1999, Jack Straw, then the home secretary, went ballistic and The Sunday Telegraph was injuncted. Ministers quickly faced the embarrassment of the ludicrous injunction being lifted. Why, I wondered at the time, had they been so irrationally furious? Because, momentarily, they had lost command of their beloved "grid": the matrix of information control and dispersal at the heart of the New Labour machine. Ministers deny that they knew in advance about Mr Green's arrest. [If they did NOT they should have done. If they DID, then they lie -cs] What they cannot deny is that, after 11 years, they have created a culture of expectation in the machinery of state, that stretches from permanent secretary to police officer, in which the control of information is the defining feature of power. These leaks were an intolerable loss of that control. The irony is that this fixation led to an inquiry and an insanely ill-judged arrest that will only foster the public's impression that nobody is in control at all. ----------------------------------------------- Matthew d'Ancona is Editor of 'The Spectator'