Well, now that the measure to introduce 90 day’s detention has been defeated and those of us who were against it only have ourselves to blame if we’re dead before bedtime, it’s time to take stock.

I fervently try not to believe that this Government is truly evil but instead cling to the hope that the Prime Minister and his crew are in fact just emotionally-retarded inadequates desperately trying to compensate for being bullied as children. But it’s so difficult some times.

“They will be held accountable,” hinted Charles (”He orders two main courses for lunch“) Clarke darkly about his opponents on Sky News last night. Tony Blair hopes those who were against him “do not rue the day“.

The headlines, if there is another terrorist bombing, almost write themselves. In fact the Number 10 press office probably wrote those headlines this morning and put them in a safe place ready for passing to the New Labour in-house magazine. The intellectualism shown in The Sunt’s (sic, copyright Larry) headline this morning (”TRAITORS!“) will go right out the window. Oh yeah, it’ll be “well if you’d only listened to me…” from Blair and “You bastard’s might as well have pulled the pin yourselves” from the Sunt.

It looks like the arguments about moral agency that were brought to bear by Blair in the aftermath of the July bombings may have to be dusted off and turned against him and The Sunt. If Iraq wasn’t a factor in the bombings, then neither will the call to safeguard civil liberties be in future ones. As much as Blair and Clarke regard “liberals” as a threat to national security, it’s suicide bombers, not Guardian readers, who cause carnage.

Shrewd politicians know that the value of your public opinion can go up as well as down. The great unwashed were told to stick their objections over the Iraq war in their foxholes. Referendum on the EU constitution? Knack off. What about hanging? Joe Bloggs would have it back tomorrow apparently but politicians are not about to give it to them. (No, I’m not advocating hanging.)

But this week, Blair pulled the public to his sweaty bosom and declared: “It’s you and me against the world, kidder”, like an over-emotional uncle after too many pale ales. Sooner or later, the British public are going to find they’ve been fucked but never loved. Blair cannot be bought, merely rented (apologies to whoever I’ve stolen that from). Next time, “90%” of the public are going to find he couldn’t give a monkey’s for their pet peeve unless it complements whatever’s bugging him that week.

It’s a dilemma for us who want more direct democracy. It’d be great to have more say in the way the country’s run but, to be patronising and misanthropic for a second, letting your average Sunt reader have the keys to the kingdom would be like giving Osama bin Laden a fast-breeder reactor for Xmas. Particularly if Joe Public’s opinion is to be canvassed by some of the intellectually, if not actually mathematically, dishonest opinions polls we’ve seen in the last few weeks.

The stitch up of and - in this rare case - embracing of public opinion began last week and continues unabated. John Reid on The World at One on Radio 4 this lunchtime, accused the presenter Nick Clarke of using “precisely the kind of language that was used by the Tories”. Drowning all their kittens in one bucket it would seem, Charles (”He orders two main courses for lunch”) Clarke used exactly the same tactic with John Humphreys on the Today programme last week. And what does the BBC do in the face of this cunning gambit? It grabs its ankles. I suppose if the BBC cops it from both sides it must be doing something right but this conflating the Corporation with the Tories and painting it as being somehow anti-New Labour is laughable. But with the BBC wanting more money, public sympathy towards it is malleable.

As if this and the unseemly romancing of public opinion wasn’t enough (the public not realising that all the Government wanted was a quick, grunting bunk-up before straightening it’s tie and saying “I’ve never told her that I love her - except at those times when you’ve *got* to say something for appearance’s sake” before getting out of the car and going back into the club) the crawling over the victims of the July 7 bombings was pretty stomach churning. Like a reverse Pontius Pilate, Charles (”He orders two main courses for lunch”) Clarke, washed his hands in the blood:

Tony told me that families and victims were saying to him, ‘Don’t let the terrorists do this again, do whatever you can to stop them.’ After that, when you listen to liberal London, you think they are pathetic. These kind of debates are too dominated by lawyers, both in the Commons and the Lords

Brave words from a man with a bullet-proof car and enjoying two lunches. Sympathetic as he is towards the victims of the bombings when he’s pushing his own agenda, those reserves are as dry as the bottle of Burgundy after one of his gargantuan repasts (”He orders two main courses for lunch”), when it comes to making their lives more comfortable.

Now, the victims of the bombings deserve every sympathy but, with the greatest respect, their experience does not grant them special insight or confer on them a greater say in this argument than anyone else. If it was my kids, I’d be screaming for bloody retribution which probably isn’t the best position for advocating new laws.

I was reminded of this sketch from the ace That Mitchell and Webb Sound:

Radio Presenter: Those are are the headlines at 5.09. And for an immediate reaction to today’s events I think we can speak to Tom Hilton. Hello, Tom.

Tom: Er, hello?

Radio Presenter: Chris Powell here from Radio 4, thanks for speaking to us. Can I ask what your response is to today’s announcement that Rail North East will not be funding the laser-assisted train early warning system?

Tom: Erm, well yeah. I personally think it’s a shame.

Radio Presenter: So, it’s shame on the management? Shame on the Government?

Tom: Well, I suppose, but look, can I just say I’m really not the best person to talk to about this, I mean it’s weird you even had to call me. You see, by a spooky coincidence, I actually lost my wife in a train crash.

Radio Presenter: yes, we know.

Tom: One exactly this kind of system could have prevented.

Radio Presenter: That’s why we’re in touch with you, Tom.

Tom: Oh. Oh, right. Blimey. That does seem a bit, almost, ghoulish.

Radio Presenter: Well, no. It’s because you’ve got personal experience of a rail tragedy that your views are so important.

Tom: Really? I would have thought that it was because I’ve got personal experience of a rail tragedy that my views should be dismissed out of hand.

Radio Presenter: No. No, look. Would you say, that to you, safety is by far the most important issue facing the rail network?

Tom: Well, of course I would. My wife just died in a train crash.

Radio Presenter: Thank you.

Tom: But you really should talk to someone else. It’s impossible for me to have any objectivity at all.

Radio Presenter: Right, but if spending the three billion on system could bring back your wife that would be worth it?

Tom: Well, obviously. Although I must stress I lack any objectivity.

Radio Presenter: Nevertheless, what would you say to the minister? What would your message be to him?

Tom: My message would be, “Minister, good luck in judging how to allocate your finite resources given the many competing demands you face.”

For many people who’ve lost relatives or been injured in such circumstances, campaigns and media appearances can be part of the grieving process or, in some cases I’m sorry to say, a way of avoiding the grieving process. But being caught up in such terrible circumstances doesn’t make them any more qualified to form public policy.

Not all the people injured in the July bombings allowed themselves to be used for party political ends. Did Clarke and Blair canvas all of them? Rachel from North London put it eloquently on her blog (”I cannot, and do not speak for all the victims, and nor can, and nor should Tony Blair and Charles Clarke.“) as did John Tulloch in today’s Guardian about the exploitation of his experience by The Sunt:

This is using my image to push through draconian and utterly unnecessary terrorism legislation. Its incredibly ironic that the Sun’s rhetoric is as the voice of the people yet they don’t actually ask the people involved, the victims, what they think. If you want to use my image, the words coming out of my mouth would be, ‘Not in my name, Tony’. I haven’t read anything or seen anything in the past few months to convince me these laws are necessary.

I’ll leave Larry to comment further (I’m trying to moderate my potty mouth) other than to say if you take lessons in anything from a woman who frightened her partner to the point that he felt compelled to dial 999 and then used her position to bury the story, you’re pitiable. To read Tulloch’s story and then for Rebekah Wade to use it to score the cheapest of political points makes her little more than scum. Tulloch shows more compassion and humanity in this one paragraph…

Two photographs, he says, struck him particularly forcefully: “One of the suicide bombers, Germaine [Lindsay], with his wife and babies. Here was this loving woman with her children, their faces pixillated out to protect them. It brought tears to my eyes. I just felt sad for her and what’s going to happen to her.”

…than Wade has shown in her entire miserable existence.

That’s the level to which the so-called debate from these people has sunk. Putting words in people’s mouths. The (libellous) cries of “TRAITORS!”. Sympathy when expedient, hard words when not. Listening hard when what’s said is affirming, deaf when it’s not useful. The intimations of dissenters’ culpability in any future atrocity. All in all, a graceless spectacle (and that’s said without any schadenfraude).

It seems to have been forgotten that the current detention period is about to be doubled to a lengthy 28 days and getting legislation renewed after the lapsing of a sunset clause never troubled any government. It’s the old boiling frog again. This is the second doubling of the detention period in three years. If New Labour are prepared to wait it out, they’ll get their 90 days within six years if they play it clever (just ask for wildly inordinate periods every couple of years and then meet the opposition halfway). But no. They want it now. NOW, NOW, NOW, NOW, NOW!

It’s like watching the spoilt kid who throws a strop when he doesn’t win pass-the-parcel at his own birthday party: nobody knows quite where to look and pointing at the huge pile of presents stacked up in the corner (this is, after all, Blair’s only defeat in eight long years of getting his own way) counts for nowt.