Think the not-a-relaunch is going very well. Real sense that there is no need for a relaunch and there hasn't been one. Yet also a sense of renewal. Almost of a second launching.
And great to have the Terrorism stuff back on the go. We've been having a mull on this. Think the important thing in the detention debate is to keep on hitting the unseen evidence, which means that everyone else should shut up because they don't understand what the debate is and never can. Think the sense that we cannot release a lot of the stuff because it would give the nation such heebie-jeebies that Joe Public might foul themselves at the greengrocers is a very strong line for us. Re detention times- think this is a killer area, but we need to be flexible. We have brainstormed some numbers we might want to shift to if the climate changes:
89 days. Ninety days was obviously flavour of the month last time and now has a bad ring about it. But if initial reaction is fine with going to 56, we may need to up the ante. We could then say: "Yes, actually you know what, we were right about what we wanted the first time. But we've listened to the criticism that 90 was too much, so how about 89?" It's quite a curmudgeonly, robust, out-flanking number. Similar numbers might be the even more aggressive 91, or the curvaceous, more emollient 88?
Seven days. This could be a fallback if the debate turns all civil-liberties and too-many-speed-cameras-y. It's passive-aggressive politics. The tone would be: "Look, if everyone thinks we're being draconian, fine, all right we'll just say seven days. It won't be enough, we'll all get blown up but, yeah sure, why not, seven days, seven will be all right, seven will be fine, I don't think." Might look petulant, but we could float it that the pointy-headed chattering classes (ie, Cherie) have pushed us into it and we hope they're pleased with themselves.
37 days. Sort of quirky number that could gather support as the NME/Dazed and Confused urban hipster choice of detention period. Quite a cool prime number.
730 days. The outrider. The argument is: if we can lock 16-year- olds in education for two extra years, what the hell's wrong with holding suspected terrorists in custody for two years? This is the lunatic number that might shift debate. Be good if we could get Alex Carlile and Mel Phillips and a few others floating this sort of massive number. 740, 800, 400 and 365 would all be similar numbers with their own compelling logic once we found it. The advantage is that you can then come in and say these are crazy numbers, and we need a much more acceptable number.
40 days. Forty days and 40 nights. Biblical feel to this. We might push it as the number we were really aiming for when we overbid on the 56 days. Solid number. Very Brownite. Think this is our fallback number. Very plausible meat-and-potatoes solid-sounding number.
Let us know your thoughts.
