Civil liberties and an embattled PM

To be fair to Gordon Brown, he has never budged from his conviction that the police need reserve powers to detain terrorist suspects for up to 42 days without charge.

He, at least, has stuck to his principles over a matter in which he firmly believes our national security is at stake.

But can the same be said for those would-be Labour rebels who are now rallying behind him?

Only a few weeks ago, they were attacking the 42-day proposal as an unacceptable assault on our civil liberties  -  a view the Mail has long shared.

So why have they changed their minds? True, Mr Brown has been on the blower, subjecting them to much personal persuasion and arm-twisting.

And, true again, the Government has promised judicial and parliamentary safeguards for civil liberties, which we welcome as far as they go (though the details are hazy).

But is the case for extending police powers beyond the current 28 days any clearer today than it ever was?

No. But this debate is no longer about the rights and wrongs of extending detention without charge. It's all about shoring up the authority of an embattled Prime Minister.

To put it bluntly, many Labour rebels cynically calculate that if they inflict any more wounds on their leader, they will jeopardise their own seats.

Is that any proper basis for a decision about one of the most ancient British liberties of them all?

The Mail is still waiting for convincing evidence that the police really need these new powers. Until we have it, we must agree with Shadow Home Secretary David Davis: 'We believe we cannot defend our freedoms by sacrificing them.'

Indulging a tyrant

Face of evil: Mugabe addresses the food summit meeting in Rome

Back home in Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe's thugs are murdering and torturing opposition supporters in the run-up to the long delayed second round of the presidential elections.

After 26 years of genocide, corruption and seizing white farmers' land, they have already reduced the breadbasket of Africa to an economic basket-case.

Inflation is running at 165,000 per cent, making the currency effectively worthless. Meanwhile 80 per cent of the population are jobless and desperately hungry.

And where is the monster who has deliberately caused all this suffering? He is gorging himself in a five-star hotel in Rome - at the invitation of the United Nations, if you please.

With sickening irony, he is there to address a conference on - wait for it - the international food crisis.

How in the name of humanity can this tyrant, who has slaughtered tens of thousands of his people and starved millions more, be given an international platform to preach about hunger?

Utterly predictably, Mr Mugabe has made the most of the UN's hospitality, outrageously blaming Britain for destroying his country's economy by mobilising global sanctions.

There may indeed be a sense in which we bear some responsibility for Zimbabwe's plight. But that's only because we indulged Mugabe for so long.

Shamefully, we even awarded him an honorary knighthood in 1994, which has yet to be withdrawn.

Too late, ministers now see the horror of Mugabe's regime. But how do they show it?

Why, International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander announces he will refuse to shake hands with him.

That'll teach him, won't it? The only European platform Mugabe deserves is a place in the dock at the International Court - to face charges of genocide.