The Fall of Alan Johnson (aka 'Mr. Authoritarian')

[Jamie Scott]

I used to really like Alan Johnson - I mean, what was NOT to like? Clearly quite Left-wing, charming, nice background, decent Health Secretary, and a strong advocate of electoral reform and proportional representation from the Labour front benches. Then he became Home Secretary, and things started so well: no more compulsory ID cards, he proclaimed. Great news, Alan! It's so welcome to have a liberal Home Secretary after years of awful people like Jacqui Smith! Long may this continue!

Except it didn't....

Alan clearly began to read 'The Daily Mail' over the summer because his actions veered towards the irrational Right, the intolerable authoritarian. The firing of Prof. David Nutt for expressing his honest opinion about how cannabis is not a dangerous drug was outrageous, and demonstrated Johnson's evident dislike for: (a) dissent; (b) independence; and (c) science. It was a simply hideous decision that led to real questions about the Home Secretary - it was becoming clear he was not the man of the people we former fans had hoped, but instead, he was just another New Labour stooge pursuing headlines rather than public benefit, and with a worrying eagerness to curtail individual freedom.

Alan's drive along Rock Bottom Avenue continued last week when he banned Islam4UK, a group that clearly had no direct and provable link to terrorism. It was a sad day for British democracy that an - admittedly repulsive - organisation was shut down seeingly simply because it wanted to protest against the Afghan War.

I have now lost my faith in Johnson, and think I may no longer support him come the Labour leadership elections in the summer after Brown's fall. David Miliband - an impressive Foreign Secretary over the past few years - might be my alternative. Of course, Alan could still save his soul and do something decent in the name of civil liberties and moral policy - like loosening up the immigration rules, perhaps, or scrapping IPPs - but I suspect he won't. He'll just continue sitting in his little Whitehall office, sacking disobedient advisors, rubbing his hands at the thought of more power come the summer, all the while eroding yet more British freedoms.

What a pity.