The first Queen's Speech of this new government promises to light the bonfire of New Labour's authoritarian vanities. The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition's pledge to "restore freedoms and civil liberties through the abolition of identity cards and repeal of unnecessary laws" is not only to be welcomed, but sets a challenge to the half- dozen candidates who would be Labour's next leader.
The centrepiece of this attempt to repair some of the damage wreaked by the legislative mania of Labour in power is the Freedom (or "Great Repeal") Bill. This will begin to dismantle the "database state" that historians will judge the most disastrous legacy, other than the Iraq war, of the New Labour years. It is right to abandon the ID card scheme, the National Identity Register and the ContactPoint database. There is not, and never was (not even when the anti-terrorist emergency was at its most pressing), any plausible, principled argument for placing such constraints on individual liberty.
The proposals to extend the Freedom of Information Act, to protect trial by jury and to introduce "safeguards" against the misuse of anti-terror legislation and better regulation of CCTV are also welcome, as is the pledge to protect the right to non-violent protest. (However, this undertaking was, as Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty observed, somewhat undermined by the arrest, on the morning of the Queen's Speech, of the veteran anti-war protester Brian Haw. That Mr Haw's arrest was greeted with approval in some sections of the Tory press is a reminder to David Cameron that he will have to work hard to sell this liberal programme to the more lumpen elements in his own party.)
Despite some significant omissions - the speech made no mention of detention without trial or control orders, or the Tory plans to replace the Human Rights Act with an undefined Bill of Rights - all this poses a formidable test for Labour. The next leader will have no choice but to do battle with Mr Cameron and Nick Clegg on the liberal terrain that they are establishing, whatever the voices of unreconstructed authoritarianism inside the party might counsel (step forward, David Blunkett and John Reid).
Labour must recognise that the civil liberties agenda is no longer merely a fetish of those it once disparaged as "Hampstead liberals". Ordinary voters throughout the country can feel the deadweight of bureaucratic interference. On 24 May, for example, we learned that local councils are invoking the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act in order to spy on citizens they suspect of the most trivial offences.
The challenge facing Labour is not just a matter of practical politics, however; it is one of guiding philosophy. The illiberalism represented by Mr Blunkett and Mr Reid is written into the party's very DNA. But there are other dissident, decentralising strands in Labour thinking, and it is time these were rediscovered.
In short, Labour must not allow the coalition to claim liberalism as its own. This need not entail any compromising of its core commitment to social justice. After all, as the great social liberal L T Hobhouse, celebrated by the freethinking MP Jon Cruddas in his essay on page 31, argued a century ago: "The 'right to work' and the right to a 'living wage' are just as valid as the rights of person or property."
