Abu Qatada fiasco shows this government has lost its way

THE FAILURE of 'the authorities' to deport the Islamist radical Abu Qatada to Jordan because the European Court of Human Rights is worried he might not receive a fair trial is making people uneasy. The case is now seen by most not as a difficult one-off but as a symptom of a deep-seated disease within our national life. The entire apparatus of the state seems to have migrated away from common sense.  
 
It would be bad enough if the state had merely drifted into a kind of laissez-faire lassitude, tolerating violence and disorder but at least allowing ordinary people to get on with their lives with the minimum of interference. But just as it has lost vigour in carrying out its necessary functions like keeping the Queen's Peace and securing our borders, it seems to be energised at the ludicrous periphery.  
 
A High Court judge bans prayers before council meetings in Devon. Another finds the wearing of a cross by a nurse on night duty unlawful. The Inland Revenue spends five years and millions of pounds pursuing the manager of a football team through the courts for a few thousand pounds which it says it is owed – only for a jury to dismiss the case unanimously before the digestives arrive for the first tea break. At the same time, the Revenue makes sweetheart deals with rapacious foreign banks and rip-off companies.  
 
The on-going asylum and immigration fiasco of which Qatada is a symptom does more to poison our public life than any other issue. Its shortcomings and the ridiculous Euro-legal caravan marching profitably and destructively in its wake are a disgrace.  
 
To be fair, Her Majesty's Government can still pack a punch in the field of deportation - but only to the United States at the behest of the Americans as a result of an odiously one-sided treaty negotiated by Tony Blair. If Abu Qatada had been a dodgy banker or a hacker wanted by the FBI he would have been heading for Sing Sing long ago.
 
The whole system has gone mad and remains mad nearly two years after a general election. Forget the various sticking plaster solutions – negotiating the transfer of Abu Qatada to Jordan in a way that would please the refined sensibilities and legal scholarship of the Moldovan and Albanian judges at the European Court of Human Rights. Just ignore them. Silvio Berlusconi did. The French never take a blind bit of notice if it does not suit them.
 
And once we have despatched Qatada to a Jordanian prison we need to pass legislation that returns control of our borders to Parliament and the day-to-day policing of them to the Home Office – not the courts, our courts or anyone else's.   
 
Then we should get on with deporting a host of other criminals and troublemakers who are not British subjects. To kick off with, we need something similar to 'The Palmer Raids' in 1920s America - named after the Attorney General of the day, A. Mitchell Palmer, who ordered them.  

America had experienced a series of bomb outrages perpetrated by recent immigrants from Europe with anarchist backgrounds – but the Justice Department couldn't prove it. The anarchists then made the mistake of blowing up Attorney General Palmer's house in Washington.  He swung into action aided by a young and determined Justice Department official, J Edgar Hoover. Three thousand recent immigrants with known anarchist and communist connections were rounded up. Most were released after a few days but a hard core of 500 were deported in short order.
 
Palmer's great insight or judgment was that the immigration status of non-US citizens was and should be an administrative rather than a legal matter. Immigrants were, of course, entitled to the protections of the Constitution and due process if involved in either criminal or civil proceedings on US territory. But until citizenship had been granted it was a privilege for them to be in America – one which the US authorities could withdraw at any time on national security grounds.
 
Among the deportees were over 100 Russian anarchists, communists and troublemakers to whom the United States had given safe haven from the Tsar's secret police some years earlier. Many found the new Soviet Russia not to their liking either. A few managed to escape to other European countries where, chastened by their experiences, they generally led blameless and productive lives.

Unfortunately, for those who remained in Russia, Stalin took a dim view of anyone, even good Bolsheviks, who had lived in the West for any length of time; most were despatched to the Gulags where doubtless they had the leisure to ruminate on their ingratitude and folly. ·