Blair's values

AC Grayling at the Guardian doesn't believe Tony Blair's values are British values.

"Motivating the illiberal policy of Blairishness is a huge and poisonous fallacy. It is that the first duty of government is the security of the people. This is a dangerous untruth. If it really were true then we should all be locked into a fortress behind the thickest walls of steel and concrete, and kept still and quiet in the dark, so that we can come to no harm...

Yes, the government should be active and do its best to safeguard the populace, but consistently with the truth that life is risky, and that freedoms are more precious than safety.

Mr Blair should be fiercely protecting our liberties against the intended effect - the intended effect, note - of the assaults of fanatics whose conception of the good society is Taliban Afghanistan. The intended effect is to make us lock doors and hide away.

On 7/7 Mr Blair said "these atrocities will not force us to change our way of life." He then proceeded to change our way of life by making us all numbered conscripts in society instead of free citizens - for that is what ID cards do. Instead of protecting our liberties he is busy giving them up in the vain, in fact ridiculous, hope that doing so will keep us safe. It will not: to put 60 million citizens under permanent police surveillance to catch 60 or even 600 disgusting criminal lunatics is both a crime against freedom and an utterly futile act.

Does Mr Blair hope that what he thinks of as the Britishness of the British will make them accept this nonsense meekly? I suppose one has to accept that if he is right on this point, we deserve him."

Not a Blair fan.