Our boneheaded intervention in Libya, which we were told was to prevent violence and killing, was doomed to failure before it began. The enthusiastic approval of military intervention by our gullible MPs now appears even more ridiculous given our own inability to keep order on the streets of London, and prevent the deaths of innocent people across our country and Libya.

We try to throw our weight around on the international stage so our Prime Minister can pretend to be an ‘International Statesman’, and so we can continue to deceive ourselves into believing we remain a world power, and not face up to mounting economic and social problems at home.

But these foreign misadventures are not in our national interest or increasingly in our capability, as we dismantle what is left of our armed forces. Britain long ago ceased to be a major player on the world stage – militarily, economically and morally.

Our sovereignty and hard won freedoms have slowly been ceded by our politicians to the faceless bureaucrats of benevolent European integration. We are no longer a free nation, but a subservient state to a foreign and anti-democratic Empire.

Our economy lies in tatters, labouring under the weight of a bloated welfare state, crippled by government debt and sending millions of young adults to acquire meritless degrees at Universities in subjects that nobody wants.

Our society has been corrupted and atomised, with each passing generation having little in common with the next, and little sense of genuine community or belonging. Respect for others, property and authority have disintegrated after decades of state ‘entitlements’, weak justice and assuring youth that rights come without responsibility.

As we have receded from the public sphere and genuine democratic participation, the state has expanded to fill the gap, making it’s assault on our ancient liberties even easier than before. Thus, our liberties are no longer freedoms, but ‘rights’ given to us by the state – rights which can be amended or taken away should the state so please.

And the process continues. While deeply disturbing, the manner in which our Prime Minister and puppet Parliament righteously clamoured for the blocking of social and media websites during violent outbreaks was almost entirely predictable. Five months previously the same Prime Minister and same Parliament had condemned Gaddafi for doing much the same when attempting to quash the rebellion against his rule.

This is the automatic reaction of politicians who find it so much easier to invent new laws or increase the power of the state. Water cannons and rubber bullets won’t fix generations of neglect. The rot at the heart of British society won’t be undone with a few new laws, and the further encroachment of the state.

If we really want to solve the crisis then, then it will take decades to repair – as long, if not longer, than it took to undermine. But we won’t. Instead, we shall call for the seemingly quick solution, for the heads of the violent thugs rather than those that bred them in the first place. We shall call for the army (what’s left of it) to take to the streets, give the police greater powers and ultimately strengthen the state’s role and weaken ours.

An anti-mob shall arise, as unthinking and destructive as the street mobs they oppose, calling for the reduction of our liberties in order to ensure our safety. It is the rule of the mob, but of a different kind.

This is how liberty dies. Not through violence itself, but in the pursuit of ‘security’.

This question cannot be answered because, in truth, we have never fought such a battle. If only we had. Instead, we have been sold a myth – a lie if you will – about a supposedly dogged pursuit of drugs, their users and suppliers by the various arms of the state. The reality is sadly rather different.

In response to my above assertion of there never having been a war on drugs, Joshua Lachovic wrote on his blog:

And you haven’t noticed the war on drugs? You haven’t noticed that the global prohibition kills thousands each year? You haven’t heard practically every politician of the past thirty years refer in some way to the ‘war on the drugs’? You haven’t heard any policeman who refers to the war on drugs? You haven’t noticed the £1.5bn that the UK spends yearly on the war? Nor have you noticed the time spent by every police force in the country trying to fight this war on drugs?

All the while, there are still drug users (as there will forever be), people still die because of drugs and people’s lives are still ruined because of drugs. Relaxing the enforcement and governing of banned substances? I suppose you hadn’t noticed mephedrone be criminalised because of media hysteria last year. I suppose you hadn’t noticed magic mushrooms be criminalised earlier this decade. Nor had you noticed that with a police force such as the one in Sussex, over the past decade crime has fallen, while drug crime has increased. To imply that we aren’t fighting a war on drugs is frankly naive, to say the very least.

Unfortunately for poor Joshua, he makes a number of glaring errors in his argument. To begin with, what he calls the ‘global prohibition’ of drugs (which doesn’t exist, because it is not prohibition) does not kill thousands each year. Drugs kill people; ‘prohibition’ does not.

Even if certain politicians, sections within the media and parts of the police ‘service’ refer to a ‘war on drugs’, this does not mean we are actually fighting one. Repeating a lie or a mistruth enough times still does not make it the truth.

If we were really fighting a ‘war on drugs’ then we would be locking up drugs users for long periods of time, or fining them heavily, or raiding University campuses. But we are not. Instead, most drugs users, if they are even bothered by an unlikely visit from the police, are given a caution (which essentially means being let off) or at most a suspended sentence (again, being let off). So very rare is it that a person is sent to prison for using drugs, even with multiple previous convictions. Does that sound like a ‘war on drugs’?

As for the magic mushrooms and mephedrone Joshua mentions, what of them? Adding extra drugs to a list of banned substances means very little when the ban remains largely unenforced. As it is, we’ve seen a less than half-hearted attempt to pay even lip service to the existing laws, and a law is only as good as its enforcement.

The pro-legalisation rabble within the media and political class find it incredibly convenient to pretend we are having a real ‘war on drugs’. This allows them, coupled with the continual undermining and weakening of the law and its enforcement, to claim said ‘war’ to be lost, with the consequence as the pursuit of legalisation.

However, where Joshua is correct is when he says there will always be drug users. Most laws are not one hundred percent effective, but the purpose of enforcing a real ban on certain substances is to discourage as many people as possible from their use. Let us not forget, these are extremely harmful substances, whose effects on brain chemistry, behaviour and the human body are still not fully understood. They cannot be taken safely or indeed more safely as the harm reduction lobby would have us believe.

As a man of principle, unlike so many of our useless Members of Parliament, Mr Davis has put his beliefs and country before his political career and for that should be applauded. As a result Labour are running scared and have refused to field a candidate to help defend their stance.

Unsurprisingly, Gordon Brown has attempted to label Mr Davis’ resignation as a crude stunt while various Government Ministers have said the by-election to be a waste of tax payers’ money and are calling for Mr Davis to pay for its costs – which is curious since the Labour party under Brown and Blair have carelessly wasted billions on various crackpot schemes and initiatives, so are hardly in a position to lecture anyone else on the use of public funds.

However, while Mr Davis is undoubtedly a man of principle and a strong opponent of this Government’s continual attacks on our civil liberties, there is almost certainly more to his resignation than meets the eye. This is as much about the political direction of the Conservative party as it is about Government legislation.

I very much suspect, though of course I have no proof, that David Davis quit the Shadow Cabinet and publicly announced that he was standing down as an MP because, behind the scenes, David Cameron had not promised to repeal Labour’s ‘42 days’ bill if the Conservatives were to form the next Government.

I say this because I think Cameron’s private reaction to ’42 days’ was probably very similar to his initial responses concerning a post-ratification referendum of the Lisbon Treaty where he chose to avoid taking any real stance (now he has grudgingly admitted that such a referendum would be ‘impossible’,) or the way he has carefully manoeuvred into giving a ‘free vote’ on the repeal of Labour’s useless and class-hatred inspired Hunting Act, rather than an unequivocal pledge to abolish it.

Cameron’s likely refusal to abolish the ’42 days’ legislation was probably the last straw for Mr Davis whose views on this issue and many others have been out of step with David Cameron’s new brand of politics for some considerable time now. By resigning his seat and position as Shadow Home Secretary, Mr Davis forced Cameron and the newly appointed Shadow Home Secretary, Dominic Grieve out of their silence and into making a public promise to repeal the legislation.

Yet, by resigning his Parliamentary seat and therefore turning the focus on Labour, David Davis has rather cleverly saved the Conservative party from a great deal of embarrassment and media scrutiny. Had he just quit the Shadow Cabinet, the media speculation would have been about the potential split between Cameron and Davis whereas now it is about the issue of civil liberties and Labour’s poor record on this front.

What’s more, another reason Mr Davis may have resigned was that he has rapidly tired of being a sort of John Prescott style figure for the Conservatives whose only purpose was to keep the tribal and gullible voting Tory in spite of the fact the party lacks any actual semblance of conservatism.

As things stand it looks likely that David Davis will be re-elected as Member of Parliament for Haltemprice and Howden. Yet, even if this is the case he will not retake the position of Shadow Home Secretary. But, as he acknowledges, this is not important. The main target was to force David Cameron and the Conservative party into pledging to repeal Labour’s ’42 days’ bill, which he has achieved. President John F. Kennedy once said that:

The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.

For David Davis, the cost of our freedom (if the Conservatives do indeed form a government and repeal Labour’s legislation) came at a high personal price to his short-term political prospects – but he was willing to pay it and not surrender his beliefs, and for that I am sure many people in this country will be very grateful.

Most MPs that chose to resign have usually been grudgingly forced to do so after being shamefully exposed by the media with their hand caught in the till or up a woman’s skirt – or something even worse.

Indeed, so rare an event is it when an MP does anything on principle, especially taking the decision to resign over their beliefs in order to highlight the issue further, that the media establishment doesn’t quite know what to say or do with itself.

Regardless of media reaction, I expect that many people, both in Haltemprice and Howden and throughout Britain, may well be rather impressed by Mr Davis’ decision. Bearing that in mind along with the fact that it appears that the Lib Dems and potentially Labour will not be fielding candidates against him, he should therefore be comfortably re-elected.

Yet unfortunately, as always, there is a downside to this latest development. Once again media focus will regrettably be drawn away from the Lisbon Treaty and any referendum demands currently being made, and quite possibly the result of the vote in the Irish Referendum tomorrow. Not that it would have made much difference of course, but still disappointing nonetheless.

Perhaps this outcome was in the end not all too much of a surprise since there will always be individuals willing to prevent others engaging in democratic and free debate with whose views they do not agree?

Many Universities in Britain currently hold a ‘no-platform’ policy for groups such as the BNP and the likes of David Irving. Only last year the University of Bath’s Student Union voted to bar Nick Griffin from speaking at a private event hosted in one of its auditoriums. Therefore it actually came as a pleasant surprise to discover that the Oxford Union had actively voted to allow Mr Griffin to be challenged in an open debate.

Regardless of whether you agree with Nick Griffin or David Irving (and I for the most part do not) then it should be generally accepted that if their views are so wrong, then they should be challenged through debate and their arguments shown to be incoherent – not instead to try and force Mr Griffin and Irving into silence, which benefits no-one and in the end often has the undesirable effect of providing them with public sympathy.

Thus it is not so much a problem that protests against the speakers took place, as this was perfectly within their right, but it was the manner in which they did protest that was disagreeable and wrong. The Oxford Union voted democratically by a two to one margin to allow Nick Griffin and David Irving to speak at a private establishment, and yet by trying to prevent the debate from taking place at all or baring ticket holding members from entering the hall, the Leftist protesters in affect stooped to an apprehensible level. As I said previously, if the views of Griffin and Irving are so obviously wrong, as many of them quite clearly are in my opinion, then all that need be done is to prove them so in debate.

What’s more, arguably a great deal more fuss than was necessary surrounded the debate. Had those persons who disagreed with Nick Griffin not protested in the manner that they did at his being allowed to speak, then last night’s event in Oxford would not have hit the national headlines nor would the BNP have gained anywhere near as much media coverage. Therefore in reality, those supposedly most against the views held by Nick Griffin and David Irving did most to help promote them – all without actually challenging them through open debate either.

In general there is, I would imagine, an ulterior motive behind the façade of outrage and indignation expressed by protestors like those in Oxford yesterday and anti-fascist campaigners elsewhere. As Daniel Hannan pointed out a week or so ago on his Telegraph blog:

The answer, I think, is that Lefties like to exaggerate the threat from what they call ‘the far Right’ in order to taint, by association, the mainstream Right.

In his post, Daniel later goes on to correctly outline that there is in fact very little actually right-wing or indeed conservative in the programmes of continental neo-fascist parties throughout Europe, inclusive of the British National Party. However, a convenient myth has been developed around the ‘right-wing’ whereby without reason, the left can lump the predominately socialist inclined fascists together with the conservative right and in doing so attack small-state conservatives who, as Daniel Hannan again remarks, ‘couldn’t be ideologically further removed’ from the neo-nazis.

Once again regarding the debate that eventually took place in Oxford last night; ours and future generations must remember that there really can be no compromise in exercising ours and others’ right to free speech, no matter how odious or repugnant the views of those we disagree with may be.

The Telegraph reports that under the proposed plans ‘the IMF would take a more hands-on role in monitoring global markets and lending’ to help prevent future global monetary problems. Quite what this would practically amount to is anybody’s guess at the moment, but, based on previous form, I’m not really sure that I like the sound of what it may be implying – especially since these will not be arbitrary powers casually handed over by our politicians.

So, once again the British Government is ready to give away our sovereign powers to another democratically unaccountable external organisation without even the thought of consulting the electorate. It’s certainly worth reflecting upon the extent of the powers currently wielded by the IMF and other globe-spanning organisations over which the voter has next to no influence. Monolithic organisations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund make decisions and craft far-reaching policy initiatives that are taken without popular consent, yet affect each and every one of us.

Tony Benn, who, while being wrong about so much, was most certainly on to something when remarking recently in a speech before local Labour party members that:

I think what we’re seeing in Europe is the beginning of a much, much bigger and more dangerous trend – the death of democracy generally. Leaving aside for a moment Brussels; the IMF is not elected by anybody, the World Trade Organisation is not elected by anybody, multinational corporations are more powerful than nation states and they’re not elected by anybody. The Central Bank in Frankfurt is not elected by anybody…

Prophetic? Perhaps. Only time will truly tell. However, in the meantime, as power is slowly drained away from individual nation states (often aided quite willingly by domestic politicians,) democratic legitimacy and participation also rapidly recedes.

Decisions are taken ever further away from the voters, and the individuals that make up these supranational organisations are on the whole appointed, not elected. They are unaccountable and often have extensive powers which cannot be easily removed or extracted from their vice-like grip, and in fact often grow greater as time passes. If institutions such as the IMF are not in any real way democratic now, it is unlikely they will ever become so at anything more than a very superficial level designed to give the illusion of choice and democratic accountability – without actually providing either.

Equally disturbing in my view are the misguided notions of a utopian future that provide motivation for many IMF, World Bank, UN and EU supporters. All claim their organisations to be pursuing what is often sinisterly referred to as the ‘common good’, and whose members, much like those of the EU Commission, are very good at believing they are doing what is best for the people – just so long as the people are never actually asked.

Such moves towards undemocratic authoritarianism must be resisted at every opportunity – though this is admittedly difficult with our Labour Government currently at the helm. However, until we elect a government capable of fully resisting these far reaching constitutional changes, we will have to bide our time – but by then it may already be too late.

How prophetic. He was completely correct in his observation – except for the year. I think he must actually have been describing our current Labour Government with their torrent of legislation criminalising the ordinary person, attempts to spy on us night and day with compulsory identity cards, and monitoring us with secret organisations such as SOCA.