Not just New
Labour's overwhelming desire to amass all sorts of information about the individual and New
Labour's managerial model of how to govern but also, in particular, a steady shift away from «justice» and towards «control»: towards the arbitrary, unconstrained use of power through the regular invocation of states of exception (terror legislation and Iceland is in this category); the creation of catch - all legislation whose operational interpretation is
at the whim of the
police (photography, questioning individual
police officers); government attempts to constrain the judiciary through tick - the - box sentencing guidelines, and
at an individual level examples such as David Milliband's quite disgraceful prevarication over torture allegations.
In a stumbling explanation of how
Labour would fund the 10,000 extra
police officers, Diane Abbott put the bill
at # 300,000, before suggesting it would cost # 80 million per year - meaning the
officers would earn # 8,000 per year.