Which brings us now to Gordon Brown, the current PM and as determined as Blair to avoid being outflanked on security issues by the Tories. So he has attemptied to raise the detention-without-charge limit from 28 days, which is already the longest in the West by some margin, to 42. This gradual rise strikes to the heart of habeas corpus; the UK doesn't have a Constitution but the nearest thing we have is the Magna Carta of 1215 and the prohibition against detention without trial is central to it. So Brown he failed to learn the central lesson of Blair's defeat over 90 day detentions, the worm has turned and enough is enough.

Has there been any evidence such a raise is required ? Simon Jenkins in the Guardian says no;-

Unfortunately for Brown, 42-day detention has stuck in the throats of virtually every independent voice, far beyond the usual suspects. It is opposed by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat leaderships. It is unsupported by senior members of the security establishment such as the head of counter-terrorism at the Crown Prosecution Service, Sue Heming, who should know. The Metropolitan police chief, Sir Ian Blair, though reportedly in favour, could offer no evidence in support to parliament, nor can the government's spineless security adviser, Lord West, who was a sceptic on 42 days until leaned on by Downing Street.

The bill is opposed by the former attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, the former lord chancellor, Lord Falconer, the former lord chief justice, Lord Woolf, and the former head of the Met, Lord Condon. Lord Dear could not find a fellow police chief in favour. Brown's bible, the Daily Mail, is against it, as is the Daily Telegraph. As many as 52% of Labour supporters think the bill will aid terrorism and just 9% back it.

Steve Richards again (in a different essay);-

Last summer, when he was successfully portraying himself as the apolitical father of the nation, the debate over detaining suspects without charge must have seemed politically attractive. Probably, Mr Brown calculated that he could succeed where Mr Blair had failed, reinforcing another part of his pre-election strategy of appearing more Blairite than Mr Blair.

Right-wing newspapers would support him. The move was popular with voters. The Tories would look "soft" on terror and be in the "wrong position over this" (a favourite Brownite phrase in relation to the Conservatives and policy areas).

Mr Brown thought he had a way of pulling off the move, reassuring liberals that there would be more parliamentary scrutiny while wooing those who supported Mr Blair's stance in the first place. This was his third way. No doubt he assumed that, in the early days of his leadership, goodwill and a sense that he was less messianic in relation to these issues would be enough to help him prevail. The father of the nation would have made us safer while displaying a fresh concern for civil liberties........................

But crude political calculations can mix easily with loftier thoughts. Like Mr Blair, Mr Brown has a tendency to use legislation because of its symbolic value, as if Parliament was little more than a newsroom. Both of them think all the time in terms of headlines, how things will be perceived.

As a double whammy it looks as if the Government will lose the vote (over increasing detentions to 42 days). If that happens Mr Brown would have tried to please everyone and ended pleasing no one, as Mr Blair managed to do on the much larger canvass of the war in Iraq. Mr Brown would be more culpable as he had no need to act, while, as I argued last week, Mr Blair was trapped either way the moment President Bush had decided to remove Saddam.

Shabby instincts for political advantage are driving this dishevelled Government. It's no surprise that the Tory opposition are doing so well at the polls. Brown is an unprincipled coward and both he and Blair's decisions reveal how the New Labour project was always a hollow electoral machine with no thought of what power was for or how it might improve the country.