Once merely messianic, Blair is now unhinged

Michael Portillo

Identity cards will not make us safer. That is the view of Dame Stella Rimington, the former head of MI5, speaking in Birmingham last week. That opinion must have earned her the prime minister’s contempt. He likes to cite support from the security services or top policemen each time he devises a proposal to limit our historic liberties.

The sniffy response from No 10 was that Rimington was a private individual who was entitled to her opinion. It was a stupid way to describe one who had spent her career defeating terrorism. Her intervention further weakened the government’s flimsy case. Its ID cards bill got a further mauling in the Lords.