Dominic Raab

CCTV cameras at every street corners, citizens' DNA taken after every arrests, a raging debate about identity cards and biometric, everything and its contrary branded 'Human Rights!'... has the UK completely lost its mind?!

How on earth did we get there? How a country shaped by the thoughts of John Locke and John Stuart Mill ended up reflecting a system whereas the State, all-powerful, oversteps more and more upon individual liberties? The answer, for Dominic Raab, fits in two words: New show more Labour. Take politicians with a Communist/Trotskyist past yet having redefined how socialism ought to be, hand them the keys of a whole country those past might be liberal, but, who was then the prey of insecurities, multiculturalism and terrorism, and, within barely a decade later, you'll have a kingdom where everything seems to have been thrown upside down.

A paranoid fear of terrorism led to liberticidal laws; the fight against crimes led to a police state; a misplaced obsession with 'rights' led to criminals being excused away for their behaviours while their victims were left completely side-lined; and, all in all, triumphed an ideology which couldn't care less about individual and civic liberties. The picture painted here of Britain under Tony Blair then Gordon Brown is bleak to say the least! And yet...

International barrister specialist of human rights, and so with a more than valuable outlook, the author surely delivers a relevant uppercut outlining how threatening to our liberties was New Labour! It's a pity, though, that Domini Raab, being also a Tory politician, uses the last pages of an otherwise remarkable expose as a soapbox to his own political campaign, targeting social mobility as much as the nanny state in criticism which, even if right in my opinion, were out of order in here...

Nevertheless, this little book is a political masterpiece. More than denouncing some policies and their failures, he demonstrates above all how the conception of 'freedom' as perceived then by a whole swath of the Left was alien to Great Britain, to the point of threatening its liberal heritage.

'Smile, you're on CCTV'! show less

Scary stuff