3 things the Greening of Mandelson tells us about the police state

1. It doesn’t prove we aren't living in a police state

People are claiming that the greening of Count Mandelson proves that we are not living in a police state. They say the fact that Leila Deen could do this without major repercussions shows that we are still free.

This is a strawman. The point that most people make is not that we live in a fully fledged police state now, but simply that we have built the apparatus of a police state. And it would only take a small adjustment in the attitude of this or a future government for that apparatus to be used to oppress citizens much more vigorously than it currently is.

It also ignores the counter cases – just because there was no excessive response this time does not mean that there have not been many excessive responses in other cases.

Martin Kettle in the Grauniad claims:

"Deen might well be lying dead in the street as gun-toting security guards reacted to the assault"

She isn’t, but Jean Charles DeMenezes is

"Or she might have been whisked away to a secret police centre to be tortured and locked away"

She wasn’t, but Binyam Mohamed and others have been.

"Cameramen who witnessed the incident would have been rounded up, their video confiscated and their cameras smashed"

They weren’t in this case, but there are well documented cases of the police attempting to do exactly this, and recent legislation making it illegal to photograph a copper will make it easier to do in the future.

Excessive responses, of the kind that you might expect in a police state do happen. They may not happen in all cases, but they happen too often, and we have all the structures and laws in place for them to happen more.

2. It will be used to move us closer to a real police state.

People on the BBC are asking ‘what if it were acid?’, ‘what if it were a bomb?’, ‘if someone can get to a cabinet minister that easily, surely we need more security?’

This is exactly the kind of thinking that set up the apparatus of the police state, and will allow it to be used with more vigour. Taking a relatively minor event, examining what the worst possible alternative outcome of that event could have been, and responding as though that worst possible alternative had actually happened is a very dangerous way to make policy. It treats minor events in the same way as the worst ones, and casts moderate people as potential extremists.

I’m certain that one outcome of this will be that Mandelson’s security will be increased, as will that of other ministers. They will be more suspicious of the public in general, and protesters in particular, making them even more remote and detached from us that they already are.

3. It shows the importance of scrutiny and free media

That this happened in full view of witnesses and the media cannot have escaped Madelson’s and the police’s notice. Any over-reaction or attempt to suppress the incident would have been politically damaging. Had this happened away from the media’s gaze, can we be sure the response would not have been more robust? This is why any attempts to restrict freedom of the media, photographers, bloggers, or any of us to scrutinise those in authority must be strongly resisted. That scrutiny is one of the few things that prevents the apparatus of the police state being used to excess.