Reporting News and opinions
There is an old British political habit which deserves rather more scrutiny than it usually receives: when governments want the public to accept an uncomfortable policy, they wrap it in the Union Jack and call it national security.
Some political leaders leave office and quietly retreat into the background. Others spend their retirement writing memoirs that nobody reads and giving speeches that nobody remembers.
When a political movement cannot quite explain where Britain should go, it apparently finds comfort in explaining where Britain used to be.
The slogan gained prominence in the aftermath of the Birmingham pub bombings and the subsequent conviction of six Irish men the now infamous Birmingham Six. Their case quickly became a lightning rod for allegations of coerced confessions, police misconduct, and a justice system more interested in closure than correctness.
There was something important about Andy Burnham's intervention at Prime Minister's Questions. Not simply because of what he said, but because of what it appeared to recognise: Britain has not merely been badly governed. Britain has been travelling in the wrong ideological direction for decades.
