Damian Green's arrest is a monstrous abuse of power by the same gangsters who hounded Dr David Kelly to death



'Tired and angry': Damian Green speaks outside the House of Commons after being released from police custody

An Opposition spokesman is arrested without warning on trumped-up conspiracy charges and thrown into jail. His home, constituency and parliamentary offices are simultaneously raided by 20 anti-terrorist officers.

It sounds like Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe, or East Berlin before the Wall came down. But this happened in Britain, in the past 48 hours - the most terrifying manifestation to date of Labour's Stasi State.

The shadow immigration minister, Damian Green, was taken from his home in Kent to a Central London police station, where he was interrogated for nine hours by officers investigating the leak of sensitive information from the Home Office.

Or, as a Met spokesman put it, in classic Plodspeak: 'A 52-year- old man has been arrested on suspicion of conspiring to commit misconduct in a public office and aiding, abetting, counselling or procuring misconduct in a public office.'

This risible, catch-all indictment could be levelled at just about any member of the Government, from the Prime Minister downwards, any day of the week. Labour spent all last weekend leaking details of the emergency Budget. Gordon Brown's early career was built on leaked documents.

Green's 'crime' was to expose the deceit and incompetence of this government's shambolic immigration policy and make public a confidential Home Office memo, which revealed that an illegal alien had been working as a cleaner in the House of Commons.

The information made mockery of the Government's claims to have introduced tough new border controls and laid bare the lies of the past ten years. Which, I suspect, is the reason the inoffensive Green had to be humiliated in such draconian fashion. If there's one thing this government, in general, and this Prime Minister, in particular, hates more than the truth, it's being ridiculed.

They have become so accustomed to living in a virtual one-party state since 1997, that any counter-argument or even the mildest of criticism is treated not merely as legitimate dissent, but as an act of treason.

Interviewed by Adam Boulton on Sky News yesterday, the Prime Minister gave not the slightest inclination that he was in any way troubled by this outrageous arrest of a fellow Honourable Member or the invasion of Parliament by the heavy mob.

He merely denied any 'prior' knowledge and repeated ad infinitum that this was solely a matter for the police. I'm surprised he didn't add that this raid began in America.

'Stasi' state: Gordon Brown speaks in Leeds yesterday after insisting he knew nothing of Mr Green's arrest

Denial of 'prior' knowledge was clearly the 'line to take'. Jacqui Smith, our gormless Home Secretary, said much the same thing.

Frankly, I refuse to believe that Smith wasn't consulted before Green had his collar

felt. The investigation was mounted on her orders into a leak which occurred in her office. Is she really expecting us to swallow her claim that Scotland Yard kept her out of the loop?

And armed with the information that a senior member of the Conservative Party was about to be arrested and treated like a common criminal, Jackboot Jacqui wouldn't have been able to resist sharing this juicy nugget with her boss, the Prime Minister.

Blaming the Old Bill is typical of the innate cowardice of Gordon Brown. Believe me, he is a vindictive man who would have savoured every last detail of Green's embarrassment.

As for this being purely a matter for the police, pull the other one. Imagine the scene at Scotland Yard, as they pore over the latest reports of stabbings, shootings, armed robberies and terrorism alerts and decide which heinous crime to prioritise. 'What do we do next, guv?' 'Bring the motor round the front, Bill. We're going to nick Damian Green.'

Of course, it may be no coincidence that the arrest took place on the outgoing Met Commissioner Ian Blair's last day on the job. The man who put politics into policing was Labour's favourite copper and had been forced to resign by incoming Tory Mayor of London Boris Johnson.

This whole business smacks of payback time - and not just for Commissioner Blair's unceremonious dismissal. Ever since Labour was embroiled in the cash-for-honours inquiry, ministers have been desperate to find something criminal to pin on the Tories.

A police officer removes items from Mr Green's constituency office after the arrest

You don't have to be a cynic to suspect that they decided to use Blair's swansong to even up the score. It's no coincidence, either, that the investigation into illegal donations to Labour was also quietly shelved last week. Deputy Commissioner Paul Stephenson certainly knew about Green's arrest, since he phoned Boris Johnson to tell him.

But why call London's mayor? This was a national, not a local, matter. Surely the obvious first call was to the Home Secretary, especially as she's not only directly responsible for the Met, but will also appoint the next Commissioner.

Stephenson has been running the Yard in the hiatus between Blair's effective sacking and his leavingdo on Thursday night. The permanent job was widely considered to be his to lose.

If there is any evidence that there was collusion between the Yard and the Home Office in the arrest of Green and that it was ordered to impress Smith, Stephenson should be ruled out of the contest and sent to spend the rest of his career in Elstree, directing traffic.



After Blair, everyone is looking for his successor to be a 'safe pair of hands'. What's safe about mounting a heavy-handed operation to arrest a senior MP on the flimsiest of evidence? I'm not a lawyer, but it would appear that no crime has even been committed.

At a very minimum, Stephenson should have told the investigating officers that arresting Green was unwise in the extreme and advised that if they wanted to talk to him they should invite him for a quiet chat at the Yard.

What is of equal concern is that the Speaker agreed to let the police search Green's office at the Commons, declare it a 'crime scene', confiscate his files, mobile phone and laptop.

Gorbals Mick is probably too thick to understand the historical duty of the Speaker to protect the independence of Parliament and its members. This dates back to 1642, when Charles I entered the House by force in an attempt to arrest five MPs and was repelled by the Speaker, who refused courageously to hand them over.

Eventually, Charles paid with his head. Gorbals should pay with his job.

Conspiracy theorists could point to the fact that the raid occurred when Parliament was not sitting, so that no awkward questions could be asked in the Chamber and the traditional protection of MPs' property had temporarily, technically, been suspended.

It's difficult to know on which level this affair is most outrageous. Is it the indifference of the Prime Minister and the culpability of Gorbals Mick in the violation of the sanctity of Parliament? Or the overthetop police operation, which involved not only confiscating Damian Green's bank statements but also forcing him to submit to DNA and fingerprint sampling.

So the shadow immigration minister's biological details join millions of other innocent people on this government's sinister, if insecure, DNA database.

There are 6.5 million people on the fingerprint computer system; the health department is spending £12billion on a NHS database, which will put all our medical records on the internet; another £20billion is being blown on a useless ID cards scheme, which will be open to forgery and abuse; and the children's commissioner has warned about the dangers of the increasing amount of data held on every child from birth.

Britain leads the world in cradle-to-grave surveillance. Labour has spent the past decade collating, spying, monitoring and carpeting the country with CCTV and speed cameras. Even the Stasi didn't think of putting microchips in dustbins or using anti-terror laws to mount undercover operations against those suspected of living a few yards outside a school catchment area.

We've had protesters arrested for exercising their right to free speech, attempts to all but abolish habeas corpus and now we've had a member of the Shadow Cabinet dragged from his home by counter-terrorism officers, simply for doing his job - namely exposing the venality of the Government.

And never forget, this is the same bunch of sadistic gangsters which hounded scientist Dr David Kelly to his death, for telling the truth about Iraq's non-existent nuclear weapons.

Millions of our forebears died in a ditch over centuries for freedoms which have been comprehensively trashed in the blink of an eye by a control-freak government - currently run by a quasi-dictator, elected by neither his party nor the country - with no respect for ancient liberties.

Never again will we listen to their pious preaching about Robert Mugabe's tyranny. This is Gordon Brown's Morgan Tsvangirai moment.

Frankly, I found it difficult to contain my rage when I read of Green's arrest in yesterday's Mail. I know I wasn't alone.

It's not enough that 'lessons should be learned' and heads should roll. This monstrous, abominable abuse of power shouldn't just bring down ministers, or police chiefs.

It should bring down this callous, rotten government.



