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Comment by stupidcar | Hacker News Reader

What frighten me most is that Labour, supposedly the official opposition to the government, refused to try to stop or improve this bill. Instead they waved it through, abstaining on key votes, and not bothering to table amendments.

All of this is despite Labour being run by figures who have a long history of opposing government authoritarianism. For example, Jeremy Corbyn didn't vote against it. Shami Chakrabarti, who spent years running Liberty, an organisation dedicated to protecting individual liberties, abstained.

What the hell is going on behind the scenes when people like that have been successfully silenced?

When a law this far-reaching and repressive is passed with a conspiracy of silence and acquiescence from both the media and the political establishment, you have to conclude that UK democracy is basically non-functional. It's over.

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I didn't know Shami Chakrabarti abstained. That's totally mad. If there's one thing I would have thought we could rely on her for it was to vote against things like this.

The Labour party have been completely neutered. The membership and the unions clearly want them to take a much more radical left wing approach but the party establishment still want them to be the party Blair built and it's caused this weird stalemate. I think Blair would have backed this bill.

An interesting point is that the bill has exceptions for journalists. I suspect that has encouraged the media to keep pretty quiet about it.

What's weird is that she (and Corbyn) were vehemently against it for a while and then suddenly she went quiet and abstained.

I think Blair almost certainly would have backed this. The other day I rediscovered this article from 2008 about councils using RIPA to catch people littering and flytipping:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3333366/Half-of-counc...

> The Tories condemned the latest figures as further evidence that the law had become a "snooper's charter". "Under Labour, the rights and liberties of law-abiding citizens are being eroded through plans for ID cards, sinister microchip spies in bins and abuse of anti-terror laws by councils," said Eric Pickles, the party's communities spokesman.

Strange reading nowadays. I wonder what Eric Pickles makes of it all.

I was completely shocked that Shami Chakrabart, once the head of Liberty[1] abstained, I thought she was the one ally we definitely had in the bag. I wonder what caused the turnaround; same for Jeremy Corbyn, complete U-turn in position in a really short space of time.

I mean, I'm trying to resist looking for my tinfoil hat but does anyone know of any agencies that have a decade's worth of everybody's communications history and Meta data that may or may not be used against somebody to sway their opinion on a particular subject? No? Didn't think so.

I still feel mad and a bit wrong typing that second paragraph as five years ago it would have just been complete conspiracy theory, but now it's just been passed into law. My country is a disturbing place right now.

[1]: https://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/

No need for any tinfoil hats:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/undercover-with-paul-lew...

" A whistleblower, Peter Francis, has revealed that police compiled secret files on the political activities of Corbyn and nine other MPs, even after they had been elected to the House of Commons.

Francis disclosed that he had read the files on the 10 MPs while he worked for the Metropolitan Police’s special branch.

He added that he had personally collected information on Corbyn, and two other MPs, while he was working undercover infiltrating anti-racist groups in the 1990s. Read this and this for more details of his revelations that were made in March this year."

I don't doubt that the same people who ordered the monitoring of "subversive" anti-racist groups are the same people who are calling him an anti-semite.

Those motherfunsters. But surely this increases my need for a tinfoil hat, no?

Chakrabarti's turnaround is a result of her peerage (which in turn was a thankyou for her support in her impartial review into anti-semitism in the Labour party^).

She'll obviously tow the Corbyn line, and it's most likely that this line was set by the PLP. There's been talk about Andy Burnham (who's running for Mayor of Manchester) having raised concerns, but ultimately bowed out after being told about safeguards being put in - he never actually checked the safeguards and was apparently somewhat surprised when he found that they didn't actually exist.

^Before anyone says otherwise bear in mind Corbyn refused to nominate people to the Lords based on his opposition to the Lords, and she's the only nominated peer he's put forward, immediately after the review concluded but before the internal election.

I have been wondering the same - where the fuck is Labour?

Where in UK politics is the voice of social progress and individual freedom?

It seems to be too busy tearing itself to pieces over idealogical minutiae to be any sort of useful opposition.

Even the SNP seem to be avoiding addressing this issue in any meaningful way, when asked a few years back whether things would be better in an independent Scotland they said:

"The primary function of government is to ensure the security of its citizens and to protect them, their property and way of life against threats. An independent Scotland will have security arrangements that are proportionate, fit for purpose and reflect a full strategic assessment of Scotland's needs and the threats we may face."

Which is great non-answer answer!

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/03/nsa-su...

At least one SNP MP, Joanna Cherry, argued vociferously against the IPB during the parliamentary debate[1]

[1] http://ianopolous.github.io/privacy/Snoopers

They're still there, that's the problem.

I think it's time for the Labour party to go out to pasture. There needs to be a split, take some Conservatives, some UKIP (maybe, if there's any more moderate ones left) but enough to lose the baggage of any one party, lose the extremes and head for the middle ground.

Unless that happens (and it seems at this point it won't) I don't see there being an effective opposition anytime soon.

If there's one thing that Brexit, Trump and the rise of UKIP has proven it's that the public has lost its appetite for "moderation".

Labour needs to focus on deselecting the Blairites who were in favor of 'moderately' invading Iraq and are 'moderately' in favor of making the snooper's charter even worse (e.g. like Yvette Cooper).

Between government mouthpieces and DA-Notices I can understand how the media silence could come about. But the lack of opposition, by people whose entire careers have been built around opposing the government, is quite concerning.

If there is a reason this policy has such broad cross-party support then why isn't anyone allowed to explain what that reason is?

Labour are currently scared to be an opposition in case they get on the wrong side of public opinion and increase their political losses further.

Anything that can be spun as anti-British (i this case making it harder for security services and the military to "do their job") in the current climate is not a battle they want to fight unfortunately.

Everyone is just assuming that Corbyn and Chakrabarti had their arms twisted. But, one, if they were vulnerable to that, don't you think it would have been done before in the many other times they've been nuisances to the state? And two, I don't believe that an arm-twist exists that would get them both to shut up and smile, rather than sing out and damn the consequences. Nor is it plausible to stifle such a public disclosure these days.

So perhaps they were persuaded by actual persuasion, rather than a gun to the head?

Such as for example, somebody had a quiet word with them about The Aliens.

> when people like that have been successfully silenced

Corbyn's a fucking clown. I wouldn't expect him to do anything effective about... well, anything.

His competence isn't really the issue though. Even his biggest opponents admit that he's principled to a fault. He's spent his whole career rebelling against his own side on points of principle, attending anti-government protests and rallies, etc.

I wouldn't necessarily expect Corbyn to organise an effective opposition to this bill, but I would expect him to offer some opposition. For him not to do so is not just disappointing, it's unbelievably weird. It's the kind of unexplained weirdness that means you have to start asking what is going on, and what kind of pressures are being applied, in order to prevent him doing so.

The pressure is being Labour party leader. Labour PMs don't want him to take any more unpopular positions, and he himself must know now that he has to lead the party first and be principled rebel second.

I like him as a politician, but Labour needs a leader that can unite both sides of the party that the leadership contest and the referendum exposed. Even if Corbyn wants to do this, the view now from the outside is that he can't.

But is this something he actually cares about? My impression is that while there are certainly some left/liberal principles he cares strongly about, there are also some that he doesn't seem to care about at all.

Labour gave us RIPA in the first place. They want surveillance as much as the Tories.

The problem is, there are no major parties which are opposed to it. There is no choice.

If you think Labour is in favour of individual rights over the rights of the state, you haven't been paying attention.

> What the hell is going on behind the scenes when people like that have been successfully silenced?

Just think: who has the most to gain? And don't stay limited to the UK.

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