In as much as his powers allow him, Conor Gearty has had a second attempt to defend Labour against those who suggest that the party has mounted a campaign against liberties and rights since 1997. A New Statesman article, published under the guest editorship of Alastair Campbell this week, repeats many of the same points he made here a few weeks ago and persists in the accusation that those who fear New Labour's erosion of our liberties are really covert Conservatives.
Gearty writes: "The idea that the state is an unwarranted assault on individual freedom is not a progressive one. This kind of libertarianism works to protect privilege by cloaking the advantages of the rich in the garb of personal autonomy, individual freedom and the 'human right' to privacy." This is nonsense. He should perhaps level that accusation at Sir Ken Macdonald, Lord Goldsmith, Vince Cable and Philip Pullman, who all appeared at the Convention on Modern Liberty, which, incidentally, he felt able to disparage even though he did not attend. In particular he might like to take his view about the absence of historical perspective to Lord Bingham and Pullman, both of whom talked about history in their speeches. The point is that none of the speakers at the convention ever claimed there was ever golden age of liberty: simply that Labour has reduced the stock of the nation's liberty and rights, and that the evidence for this is indisputably on the statute book.
