Come on Mr Blunkett, prove you're a man

Maybe there's a logic to David Blunkett's attempt to intern foreigners he regards as potential terrorists by using a law that can't apply to British suspects. It was an effort to boost national pride by helping home-grown hopefuls to take Britain to the top of the world terrorist rankings. With this special law, the opposition could all be locked up while our team carries on training. Then one day a British local paper will be able to run a story "Local man scoops al-Qa'ida 'Hijacker of the Year' award". And Sue Barker can grin "What a marvellous day for Britain," as our boy grabs a Union Jack and does a lap of honour round a smoking hole in the ground.

No other explanations make much sense. The Government claims that they had to bring in a new bill that allowed interning prisoners without trial because the suspects were connected to the 11 September attack. But surely there must have been a law that already dealt with things like that, and they could have been charged with breaking it? Or is there nothing in British law that covers arranging for planes to be deliberately flown into major landmarks? So that before Blunkett's new bill, the police could have captured these people, but the sergeant would have announced, "The trouble is, technically, exploding the twin towers isn't an offence. We can try to do them for behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace, but as it wasn't actually them flying the planes we'll be hard pressed to make it stick."

One of the problems in employing the old-fashioned method of charging people, then trying them, is that in most high-profile cases in Britain in the last 25 years, we've ended up banging up the wrong people. So this new ruling was designed to change all that and allow the police to bang up the wrong people before the crime's even been committed. For example a sharp criminologist with an eye for detail might work out that one of the interned, who is disabled and cuts himself regularly as he's "suicidal" after receiving electric shock treatment in Israel, isn't the number one threat to international harmony.

I suppose someone in the government's heard there was a suicidal Arab and panicked. Their next bill will state that whenever anyone called Mohammed rings the Samaritans, they're to be immediately bundled into a hole in the ground nowhere near a shopping centre. And this must be why most bus companies haven't got round to installing disabled access on their vehicles. When that wheelchair's packed with Semtex and goes off in a town hall that's recently had ramps fitted, won't the local authorities feel silly.

The clue to the probable reason for introducing internment is in Blunkett's initial statement when he announced the bill, that lawyers who opposed it were "airy-fairy". What sort of person accuses someone of being "airy-fairy"? Blokes from Sunderland in the 1960s perhaps – "Na boy o' mine's gan be na soft Southern lawyer, ya can get doon shipyard and hammer rivets inta sheet metal ya airy-fairy ponce." But you can't call people "airy-fairy" when you're a Labour minister with a beard. And this is the real issue, it's a desperate cry to look hard. He'll bring back the ducking-stool next, so that when someone from a civil liberties group complains he can say, "What are you, a pouf? Stop mincing and drown someone like a man."

He's probably hoping to be the star of a fly-on-the-wall documentary called "The Blunketts", where he can sit on a settee with his shirt off, covered in tattoos and arguing with his kids before going into town to bite the head off an owl in public.

So Blunkett and New Labour seem to enjoy their regular tellings-off from the European Court of Human Rights. They're like the boy who comes back from the headmaster's office, smirking that they've been caned again but it didn't hurt. And they defend their position with the same logic as that displayed by The Sun, which declared: "The judges have broadcast the all-clear for al-Qa'ida terrorists to live safely in Britain." That's right. And they've done this by insisting that Britain abides by a rule that applies to the whole of Europe. We have to be tougher on terrorists than the rest of Europe, by taking measures such as interning suicidal disabled people who've been electrocuted, because if all of Europe has the same rules, the terrorists will all want to come here. So they can blow things up and on their time off catch an afternoon at the cricket.

And all this comes from the country that likes to pride itself on how it taught the world the ideas of justice. I suppose it's like a band that's never afraid to abandon the trends it claims to have set, and move on to a different phase. Blunkett should do an interview for the New Musical Express where he says "Yeah, like trials and juries, that's just so 1990s, I mean like internment is where it's at big-style, and like evidence? Don't even go there."