Charles Clarke made a decidedly muted appearance on the fringe today to deny the government was taking an authoritarian attitude to civil liberties. No surprises about his position, of course - but Mr Clarke came off rather badly in a three-way debate with Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty and his fellow Labour MP Bob Marshall-Andrews.
"Big Charlie" submitted quietly to Mr Marshall-Andrews' joshing: "It's a pleasure, as always, to hear a political argument, however untenable," the QC joked. A man whose first gesture on standing up is to hoist his belt firmly under his paunch may well be used to being teased. But Mr Clarke scowled when his colleague accused him - smilingly - of having to dump his opposition to identity cards when he became home secretary and inherited David Blunkett's policies. Mr Clarke spoke persuasively of the value of CCTV after the July 7 bombings, but failed to defend the government's plans to make it a crime to glorify acts of terrorism.
Mr Marshall-Andrews described this section of the anti-terrorism bill as "totally rotten law" and predicted that both the Commons and the Lords would reject it. He added, pointedly, that he believed ANC members who destroyed property during the apartheid era in South Africa "should be adulated" and that such a statement would become illegal under the bill.
Ms Chakrabarti was particularly scathing about the proposed three-month detention of terrorist suspects - "not just without trial, but without charge", as she said.
The home secretary was given a relatively easy ride by the audience, many of whom sympathised with his efforts to - as he put it - defend the most fundamental civil liberties in exchange for minor intrusions into personal privacy. He angrily dismissed the suggestion from one audience member that MPs who voted for the war in Iraq were responsible for the London bombings; Mr Marshall-Andrews agreed with Mr Clarke, but added that those who had supported the war should have made it clear that it was bound to increase the risk of a terrorist attack.
On one thing, however, both sides were unanimous: al-Qaida weren't interested in debating civil liberties. "The ambition of al-Qaida is to destroy all the values Labour has fought for," said Mr Marshall-Andrews. The question of how Britain can deprive them of their freedom to do so will be preoccupying MPs this autumn, and today's discussion was a hint of just how ardent the debate will be.
