Bruce Anderson: This Government has lost touch with reality over foreign policy, terror and human rights

A friend of mine who often addresses political audiences always builds up to a catchphrase which never fails to win vigorous applause. "In Britain today", he will say, "nothing works." One can understand the clapping. After Terminal 5, it seemed as if the whole country had slipped back 30 years. To judge by other recent events, every day is April Fool's Day. Our administrative and legal machinery has lost contact with reality on a scale for which there is only one precedent: the final years of the Austro-Hungarian empire.

Our ministers' normal response to any problem is to pass new laws, as if we did not have a lot of laws already. Last week, we also learned how some of these new Labour laws are working. Intended to facilitate the surveillance of terrorists, they are being used by local councils to spy on parents who want their offspring to go to a decent school, and on dog owners.

The head of the Secret Intelligence Service is traditionally known as "C". That now seems to stand for catchment area. In view of these additional legal powers, it may be that C should be reinforced by "D", dealing with dog mess. If a script along these lines was offered to a television company, the author would be told to take it away. Even peak-hour comedy for the brain-dead needs some verisimilitude. But this is not a comedy programme. In a difficult, dangerous world, this is how we are governed and there is no one to insist on realism.

The allegations in the latest London terror trial should have reminded everyone of the threats we face. Yet last week, judges prevented the Government from deporting a foreign terror suspect. After that ruling, the Government has a clear task. David Blunkett once said that the Human Rights Act was the biggest mistake of Labour's first term. He was right. That Act must be modified or repealed, so that the Government can perform its most basic duty: protecting the public. Salus populi suprema lex.

Gordon Brown would claim to be legislating along those lines in his Bill to allow terror suspects to be detained for 42 days. There is only one difficulty; an absolute absence of expert testimony in favour of this measure. No serious figure has supported it. Even Admiral Lord West, the Terrorism minister, said 28 days was enough, until he had breakfast with Gordon Brown, changed his mind (if that is the word) and ceased to be a serious figure.

Everyone knows why Mr Brown wants 42 days. It has nothing to do with public safety and terrorism, but everything to do with opinion polls. The PM wants to sound tougher than the Tories. It is acceptable, if hardly desirable, for governments to pass laws on minor issues solely to wrong-foot their opponents. But not of terrorism. That is not a minor issue. This is easily the most cynical, dishonest, despicable misuse of law in the last 200 years.

If the Bill should pass, which is unlikely, then knowing how this government works, the terrorists would have nothing to fear. The powers would be employed to detain parents who were suspected of wanting a good education for their children, or dog owners whose mutt was accused of incontinence.

Apropos of the fear with which malefactors ought to regard the law, a rapist was able to escape from custody this week – for the second time – because the authorities were unwilling to identify him as a dangerous criminal. They were afraid of hurting his feelings. Had he owned a dog, it might have been another matter, but as he is a mere rapist, he is on the loose. At least no one has violated his human right to uninjured feelings.

There is more. The Royal Navy has been instructed not to take pirates into captivity, for fear that they would immediately demand their human rights, including asylum. If one was a pirate, that might seem a good wheeze. How long before there is an outbreak of piracy in the English Channel?

It would appear that there is only one way to deter pirates. As soon as they are apprehended, and even before a human rights lawyer from Cherie Blair's chambers arrives to comfort them, they must be asked whether they are in favour of well-run schools. If they were foolish enough to answer "yes'', they would feel the full rigour of the law. Even the human rights lawyers would regard them as beyond redemption.

When Julius Caesar was on his way to Rhodes to study rhetoric, he was captured by pirates. During captivity while awaiting ransom, he was not intimidated. He told the pirates what he was going to do to them and he kept his word. Well within the 90 days he had promised, he returned in force and, as he had promised, the pirates were crucified. Although he was a more complex figure than Victorian schoolmasters would acknowledge, Caesar used to be part of the intellectual nourishment of British statesmen. He still ought to be able to help them find a middle way between the cross and the Human Rights Act.

Yet anyone who believes that the muddle is all the fault of this government and the human rights lawyers would be deceiving himself. A cloud of unreality has spread out from Westminster and the law courts, to envelop large sections of public discourse in cant and nonsense. Even though almost every other idea (if that is the word) emanating from this government has been discredited, supposedly sensible persons still believe that it is possible to run an ethical foreign policy. In the 19th-century we sometimes practised gunboat diplomacy.

There is nothing necessarily wrong with that, as long as you pick a foe weak enough to be bombarded into submission. But it is fatuous to replace gunboat diplomacy with finger-wagging diplomacy, especially against nations which we cannot intimidate.

The Chinese have every reason to feel aggrieved. Nothing that they have done recently should surprise us. We have learnt nothing about China that any half-intelligent person should not have known at the time when the Olympic decision was taken. Those who have just woken up to indignation against China over Tibet are too intellectually newly-born to be entitled to an opinion. The Chinese believe they were the victims of gunboat diplomacy and are still angry. Finger-wagging diplomacy will just annoy them further, at a time when we need their co-operation in many areas, including Darfur.

Darfur is now the topic of choice for any politician who wants to make cheap sentiment sound high-minded. In his October party conference speech, Gordon Brown talked about Darfur, stretching out the syllables as he did with values. Listeners would have formed the impression that Darfur was his No 1 priority and that he was demanding action this day. Funny that. Six months later, Mr Brown has done as much for Darfur as he has for values.

JK Rowling and some other children's writers have now discovered Darfur. Their plans to bring help would do credit to an intelligent seven-year-old. It may be that Ms Rowling has come to believe in the existence of her wizards, and is proposing to send a battalion of them to Darfur. Otherwise, her plans make no sense. But even Harry Potter and all the magic in Ms Rowling's volumes could not make sense of this government's policies on terrorism.

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