Liberal Pretends To Care About Crime

The annoying thing about Liberals is…

No, wait, everything's annoying about the L3. Nevertheless, one of the most annoying things is their habit of tormenting kittens while loudly proclaiming that they're taming lions - perfectly exemplified by Sock Puppet's latest effusion.

The Filth are under pressure. For some reason, the yuppie scum have stopped proclaiming that crime is an invention of the tabloids. Meanwhile, the Bill are under pressure for their own, unique, interpretation of reasonable force. There's an election coming up and Nu Lab's strategy is to pretend to be 'tough on crime' - to coin a phrase. Against this background, Sir John Stevens calling for the law to give more rights to householders is about as daring as criticising Dubya at the Guardian Winterval Party - and that's even without taking into account the fact he's retiring anyway.

It is the perfect metaphor for Sock Puppet's career that even while attempting such a blatantly tactical manoeuvre as this, the changes he advocates are so limited as to be pointless. Here's the nub of it:

My own view is that people should be allowed to use what force is necessary and they should be allowed to do so without any risk of prosecution.

'Necessary' rather than 'reasonable'. Not exactly the latter day equivalent of the Emancipation Proclamation. Even Sock Puppet can't hide the basic problem with that approach:

The test at the moment is that you use reasonable force in the circumstances. You do not use excessiveness."

He said that was too imprecise for people to consider in extreme circumstances, when they needed to be clear about their legal rights.

Indeed. 'reasonable force' wouldn't be so bad if it was interpreted, well, reasonably. On the contrary, since virtually the day the statute passed, the legal establishment has been tightening the ratchet until now where we've reached the point that failure to offer intruders a range of beverages and a light snack constitutes a criminal offence.

Yes, it would be a good thing if an incoming Conservative government restored the right of citizens to defend themselves against members of the Criminal Community, but it would be little more than a gesture without a determined effort to root out the type of Neo-Marxist culture warriors perfectly exemplified by Sock Puppet.