It's the day after the Queen's Speech and we're still picking through the small print to find some troubling details. Not the least of these is the new bill on psychoactive substances, which seems to ban substances until they can prove they are not drugs. It's a quite remarkable piece of legislation which goes against centuries of Britain's common law tradition and flips the standards of UK justice on its head. Predictably, there has been little mention of it and few willing to criticise it in the Commons. Interventions from Labour and the SNP today suggested they will nod it through. It seems that even with reform of human rights law on the back burner, the snoopers charter and the drugs bill will provide plenty of battles for liberals to fight... and then probably lose, if history is any indicator. Elsewhere, Tessa Jowell pulled ahead in the contest to be Labour's London mayoral candidate - although Sadiq Khan is hot on her heels. It's a revealing irony that the fight for the London mayoral candidacy and the deputy leadership are far more interesting than the one for the top job. | |
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