A bad morning for the government<br />

This morning has not been a good one for the government. There’s been an embarrassing admission that 28 days detention will simply lapse on Monday, the Conservative party chairman is delivering a speech that the vast majority of Conservatives think is muddle-headed at best, and the Prime Minister finds himself in a public debate with the mother of a quadriplegic child.

2011 was always going to be a hard year for the government but what should worry Downing Street is that two of these problems are self-inflicted. The whole counter-terrorism review should have been finished before 28 day detention expired. The fact that it has not been makes the government look like it can’t work to a deadline and is drifiting in a crucial area of policy.

Warsi’s speech is a more complicated matter. There are, as David Blackburn and Paul Goodman have noted, some good points in the speech.