There is a mystery about the media coverage of the Newark by-election result.  The most interesting thing about it was the abysmal failure of the official opposition, just one year ahead of a general election.  The New Labour percentage vote actually dropped, and even just taking the New Labour v Tory vote, the New Labour swing from Tory was only 2 per cent.  That is an almost unprecedentedly poor performance by an opposition in a by-election at this stage in a parliament, and a very, very plain indication of what was already obvious – that Miliband is not going to be entering the door of No. 10.

Yet Sky News, the BBC and the Guardian have virtually nothing to say about New Labour’s disastrous result.  Both Sky and the BBC this morning managed to give their analysis on the by-election without even mentioning New Labour at all.  What can be the cause of this reticence?  Is it that they are not anxious to point out to Scots that their choice is independence or more Tory government?

Actually just read that Obama quote again:

“we obviously have a deep interest in making sure that one of the closest allies we will ever have remains a strong, robust, united and effective partner”

If the United States truly believes it has a deep interest in making sure that Scotland does not become independent, we can be quite certain that America will be pulling out all the stops to make sure that No wins.  The language is the language of intelligence service tasking memoranda, which Obama is consciously or unconsciously reproducing.  I have personally been involved in a great deal of intelligence service tasking.  Intelligence service resources, both personnel and financial, are deployed to a greater or lesser extent to a task according to an assessment of the depth of national interest involved.  If Obama has decided the US has a deep interest in the result of the Scottish independence campaign, we can expect hidden interference at Ukrainian levels.

“we obviously have a deep interest in making sure that one of the closest allies we will ever have remains a strong, robust, united and effective partner.”

Translation – “Thanks for sending so many young Scots to die in Iraq and Afghanistan for us.  Look forward to seeing them die in Syria or Iran soon.  Keep the cannon fodder coming.  Sorry have to nip off now to approve some teenagers on a drone kill list.  Keep storing those nuclear warheads for us.”

New Labour were the chief culprits in moving Britain away from a liberal democracy and into an authoritarian state.  The series of “anti-terror” laws they put through were the most draconian in British history, far outweighing anything the government of Lord Liverpool did with the Six Acts.  Yet the entire liberal establishment went along with Blair, and those of us who warned we were sliding fast away from democracy were denounced as conspiracy theorists.

You hope there will be moments which will wake people up.  I not only hoped but believed that I could myself trigger such a moment when I blew the whistle on the Blair/Straw policy of widespread complicity in torture.  I discovered to my great personal cost, and as a matter of cathartic personal disillusionment which has defined my entire life since, that the establishment were perfectly OK with torture.

I should like to believe that today’s advent of totally secret criminal trials in the UK is another moment when revulsion might set in.  But I am not holding my breath, as an 800 year right to open justice is removed.  Theresa May had already applied to have another case heard in secret in which the government is being sued for complicity in torture.

I know from eye-witness report that it was only Jack Straw’s fear of an open trial and a free jury that prevented my own prosecution under the Official Secrets Act for blowing the whistle on torture.  If I did it today I would get a secret court and no jury. Now two men stand to be imprisoned for life on the basis of “evidence” from the intelligence services which even the accused are not to be allowed to see.  Remember this is “evidence” from the same intelligence services who told you that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.  Anything they have to say against anybody must always be open to the widest public scrutiny.  The idea that people should be convicted in secret on stasi evidence ought to be truly shocking.