Tonight, Jacqui Smith will address the Parliamentary Labour Party. Brown will not attend the meeting but he has outlined the compromises he is prepared to make in an article for The Times this morning. Brown stresses both the complexity of modern terrorist plots and how rarely this power would be used.
As someone who is agnostic on 42 days, the least persuasive part of the piece is when Brown says that if the Home Secretary decided to use the 42 day power, Parliament would then have to ratify this decision. This seems to confuse the role of the legislature and the judiciary. The level of public debate it would entail would also surely prejudice any future trial.
In reality, whether or not 42 days passes or not is going to be determined more by the mood of the PLP towards the Prime Minister than the details of the legislation. Labour backbenchers know that a defeat on this measure would call the Prime Minister’s political viability into question.
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