If you take the protection of the law away from any minority, however unpopular, you endanger all minorities and all individuals

Shabbiness of several kinds underpins the controversy about the Human Rights Act. The newspapers campaigning against it are motivated by political opportunism, by a familiar blame reflex and by a xenophobia that scarcely merits the usual epithet "thinly veiled". David Cameron, in declaring that his party will reform or scrap the act, attaches to himself all this shabbiness, but in an uglier form: the power of newspapers is by tradition without responsibility, but the power of opposition leaders is not. What he says, in other words, matters rather more. Shabbiest of all, however, is the position of the government, a Labour government too cowardly to rebut the falsehoods surrounding this debate, too weak to denounce the act's critics for what they are and too compromised by its record to stand for principle. Leadership is needed, but instead ministers pander and apologise and the Prime Minister promises yet more meddlesome legislation. Shamelessly, they encourage the idea that there is something seriously wrong with the act, as they have been doing almost since the day they incorporated it into our law.

Ministers should instead be saying, in ringing tones, some of the following things. The European Convention on Human Rights, which the act makes part of our laws, is not some dodgy charter got up by foreigners to help other foreigners and criminals make our lives a misery: it is a great instrument of human freedom born out of the worst war in the history of the continent. Moreover, it should be a matter of pride that the convention was to a considerable extent written by British legal experts and British civil servants, with the active encouragement of a great British government, and that the United Kingdom was the first country to ratify it, in 1951. High in the minds of those involved was an idea of exporting some of the benefits of Britain's long experience of democracy: they wanted everyone across the Continent to enjoy defined freedoms and to live safe from the abuse of official power.

A half-century may have passed before, to borrow the phrase used by the government at the time, the convention was "brought home" by the Human Rights Act, but long before that it was protecting British people, in Britain. Down the years, the European Court of Human Rights ruled against British governments on matters such as the rights of homosexuals in Northern Ireland, corporal punishment, legal aid, the rights of the mentally ill, access to childcare records, the rights of soldiers facing courts martial and the freedom of the press. In fact, it was partly to spare the country the embarrassment of constantly washing its dirty linen at Strasburg that the act was first proposed.

Ministers should also be saying not that the act (or the judge who interprets it) is too nice to Afghan hijackers, but that a right is a right even if some of those who enjoy it are not your cup of tea. Look again at the list of Strasburg rulings in the paragraph above: who were the chief beneficiaries? The weak, the marginal, the unregarded - all protected by the convention when their government let them down. Perhaps, when ministers are laying down the principles of Britishness to be taught in our schools, they could include this: if you take the protection of the law away from any minority, however unpopular, you endanger all minorities and all individuals.

The calculation of the Daily Mail, of David Cameron, and sometimes, it seems, of the government, is that Middle England doesn't care about minorities, or the weak, or foreigners, or people who for whatever reason are under arrest or in court or in jail. Those people don't buy a lot of newspapers and they don't sway marginal constituencies, so let the devil take them, is their view. The state is there, they believe, merely to make life better for the law-abiding and the mainstream - you know, all those hard-working families ministers keep talking about. It was in part to safeguard us from such reckless thinking that the people of 1951 defined our rights; they knew where it could lead. Every one of us is part of a minority of some sort. Every one of us is capable of being marginalised, excluded, abused. We need protection, and fortunately we have it. Our human-rights heritage is not something to apologise for or to hide from, still less to compromise. It is something to shout about. year ago, on 23 May 2005, we published a cover feature entitled "The nuclear charm offensive - how the spin is taking us in". We provided details of the intense public-relations campaign conducted by the nuclear industry, and its success in picking off recalcitrant politicians, chief executives and journalists. All the while, the government maintained that nothing had been decided and that its promised review would be an objective assessment of Britain's energy needs and security.

The debate is vital, particularly regarding the environmental impact, and we pursue it vigorously in the NS. In Downing Street, however, the matter is closed. Even before the review is published, but supposedly after reading an early draft, Tony Blair has declared that he has made up his mind. In truth, he did so long ago; talk to the contrary was a ruse. And he wonders why his popularity is at an all-time low.

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