The Last Straw Man

Jack Straw has spent years putting up straw man after straw man to defend this government’s invasion of our privacy, its attack on our liberties and its expansion of police powers – and now has the audacity to say we are freer than ever before. Whilst Home Secretary, Straw introduced the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act in 2000, which was allegedly designed to fight terrorism but has allowed councils to spy on people suspected of committing petty offences. As Foreign Secretary he used the straw man of weapons of mass destruction to justify the UK joining the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the fear of terrorism to excuse UK complicity in sending Britons to Guantanamo Bay and obtaining evidence from torture abroad.

His latest straw man was his decision to veto the release of minutes of government cabinet meetings from the run-up to the Iraq war, because doing so would ‘damage’ the government. Not releasing the minutes causes even more damage to public trust in the government and exposes Straw’s suggestion that we have never been freer for the straw man it is. In 2000 Straw rejected an asylum request from an Iraqi man fleeing Saddam Hussein’s torture prisons, saying to him “you should have no concerns if you haven’t done anything wrong.” How can Straw now justify hiding the government’s reasons for going to war, given that most British troops are on their way back from Iraq and a majority of the public want an inquiry into the war?